H. P. Lovecraft: A Short Biography

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and editor. Unfortunately, and all too common for geniuses in their own time, H. P. Lovecraft is far more well-known and respected posthumously than he ever was in life. In fact, many today consider Lovecraft as the true patriarch of modern horror, and his influence is prevalent in much of today’s popular horror and Gothic fiction works.

BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born August 20th, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island, to father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, and mother, Sarah Susan Phillips. His father, a traveling salesman, took ill when Lovecraft was three and was subsequently placed in a psychiatric hospital until his death in 1898. His mother was the daughter of Whipple Van Buren Phillips, a successful businessman in his day.

Along with being an impressively intelligent youth, we can now look back and see three significant childhood factors that would profoundly impact the man Lovecraft would later become. First, he was an only child raised almost exclusively by his mother and her two sisters. This fact, in and of itself, would not have had such an impact except that his mother is noted as being emotionless, affectionless, puritanical, mean, and abusive. For example, she is known to have continually referred to her child as “hideous,” along with other such egregious terms. Lovecraft himself later told his wife that how his mother raised him left him constantly feeling devastated.

Second, Lovecraft was frequently ill. These physical bouts played into his mother’s continued isolation of the boy from people and the world and further fed his growing insecurities. These constant attacks of physical illnesses and continued mental breakdowns plagued Lovecraft throughout his life.

Third, the only man in his life was his maternal grandfather, who had a passion for reading and telling ghost stories. This relationship led to two notable outcomes: Lovecraft could read well above his age level, recite known works, and compose original poetry by age 6. On the other hand, he also developed a great fear of what was lurking in the dark. This early-rooted angst followed him all the days of his life and featured prominently in his works.

Lovecraft held a lifelong fascination with science and was intent on becoming an astronomer. However, his struggles with advanced mathematics and his continued poor health kept him from further schooling and completing his astronomy pursuits. During that time, adding further insult to injury, his family’s fortune had been squandered on poor investments, forcing Lovecraft to remain in seclusion and poverty at home under his mother’s thumb for most of his early life. Under these conditions, his battered self-esteem only allowed him to work as a ghostwriter and rewrite editor. If his life had continued on that trajectory, it is highly doubtful that any of us would have heard the name H. P. Lovecraft. However, three significant events coalesce to change the course of his life.

First, in 1913, Edward F. Daas, the United Amateur Press Association president, took a personal interest in Lovecraft and encouraged him to become a member. This backing seemed to give him the courage to release his own work. He began contributing essays and poems, and by 1916, Lovecraft had published his first story. By 1922, he was finally consistently getting paid for work under his name. The subsequent two course-changing events in the life of Lovecraft occurred in tandem.

In the early 1920s, he started building a close circle of literary friends, which, by 1924, he gave the name “Kalem Club.” This group of devotees was instrumental in pushing Lovecraft to submit his work, under his name, to the pulp magazine “Weird Tales,” which would publish the vast majority of Lovecraft’s work through what remained of his brief life.

During that same period, Lovecraft was in Boston attending a convention for amateur journalists, where he met Sonia Greene. The two began a courtship that culminated on March 3rd, 1924, when Lovecraft found the courage to stand against his family’s wishes by marrying Sonia. The newlywed couple followed their nuptials with a move to Brooklyn. However, cohabitation in the city would be short-lived for the pair as ongoing financial and health issues soon found his bride relocating to Cleveland. Lovecraft himself remained behind, financed by a small allowance from his wife.

HIS WORK

Even after his mother’s death and breaking away from what remained of his family, Lovecraft would never get over the scars he carried. Looking back, it is easy to see this damage featured prominently in his work and personal life. He lived his days in extreme poverty and self-imposed exile as a recluse, publishing the vast majority of his writing almost exclusively in pulp magazines.

Along with his short story works, totaling over 70, Lovecraft wrote several short novels. Among them, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” and “The Shadow of Innsmouth” are still considered his best works.

Most of his pulp works and novels focused on the themes of the uncontrollable nature of fate, the dark decline of man, and the destructive outcomes of pursuing knowledge. His work was so unique that many still use the term “Lovecraftian Horror” to describe the sub-genre “Cosmic Horror,” found under the classification of horror fiction. We often use these sub-genre terms interchangeably to describe horror fiction that focuses on the unknowable and incomprehensible.

INTERESTING AND NOTABLE

Although Lovecraft spent most of his life in seclusion from direct contact, he spent nearly as much time writing letters as he did works of fiction. A few of the most notable beneficiaries of his mentorship by correspondence were writers Robert Bloch (the author of Psycho) and Robert E. Howard (the creator of the Conan the Barbarian series).

Lovecraft held several interesting ghostwriting clients throughout his lifetime, including the great Harry Houdini.

DEATH AND IMPACT

In 1936, at the young age of 46, Lovecraft was diagnosed with small intestinal cancer. His lifelong love of science, writing, and fascination with the macabre drove him to keep a detailed diary of his illness right up to the moment of his death.

On March 15th, 1937, Lovecraft died as he lived — a reclusive, marginally known person in abject poverty. At the time of his burial, only a minor cult following noted and mourned his passing. However, after his death, Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s genius went on to be recognized and to continue influencing later generations of writers, filmmakers, artists, poets, and even video game designers. Today, many consider H. P. Lovecraft to be the single most significant author of his genre in the 20th century.

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Dagon, by H. P. Lovecraft

Read on, or listen to our telling of the story here…

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue.

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill.

I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence.

I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.

As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.

All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain.

It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me.

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!