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Last edited by Clean Up Bot
March 31, 2017 | History

H. P. Lovecraft

20 August 1890 - 15 March 1937

An American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.

Comment by Russell Hoban from The Guardian:

The main thing about HP Lovecraft is his too-muchness; he never uses three adjectives when five will do, but he writes words that haunt the memory: "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." My recall of the multiplication table is shaky but those words disquiet me today as freshly as when I first read them.

Where did dead Cthulhu come from? Why did he rise up from the murky depths of Lovecraft's mental ocean? I say it's because there is a need for him and the rest of the maestro's monsters. Why is there such an appetite, such a hunger for scary stories and films? I think there is a primal horror in us. From where? From the Big Bang when Something came out of Nothing? From the nothingness we must become at life's end? I don't know, but I know it's there and we like to dress it up with a bolt through its neck or a black rubber alien suit; or as Cthulhu. Get a load of this: "A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings", with elements of "an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature", "but it was the general outline of the whole that made it most shockingly frightful". Close your eyes and try to imagine this creature of non-Darwinian evolution. Just the look of this bozo is already a major horror, and we're not even into the story yet. While he's dead and dreaming in his house at R'lyeh ("Dun Foamin"?) his Cthulhuvibes are spreading worldwide and causing strange rites and observances here and there. Lovecraft is not everybody's mug of Ovaltine but I have always found him horribly cosy.

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Photo of H. P. Lovecraft
Subjects
American Horror tales, Fiction, Accessible book, Protected DAISY, Internet Archive Wishlist, In library, Supernatural, Paranormal fiction, Horror tales, OverDrive, Cthulhu (Fictitious character), Horror, Horror tales, American, Cuentos de terror estadounidenses, Short Stories, American Authors, Correspondence, Supernatural in literature, American Fantasy fiction, Translations into Russian, Authorship, Classic Literature, Collection and preservation, Criticism and interpretation, English Horror tales
Places
Massachusetts, Antarctica, Arkam, Dunwick, Miskatonic, New England, Providence (R.I.)
People
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), Lovecraft, Blackwood, Blake, Charlie Chaplin, Darlet, Frank Belknap Long, George Kirk, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), Llopis, R. H. Barlow (1918-1951), Rafael Llopis, Randolph Carter, Samuel Loveman, Sonia H. Greene
Time
20th century, 1897-1937

Links (outside Open Library)

Alternative names

  • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
  • Howard Philips Lovecraft
  • H. P Lovecraft
  • Howard P. Lovecraft
  • H.P Lovecraft
  • H.P. Lovecraft
  • H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
  • H. P. LOVECRAFT
  • H., P. Lovecraft
  • Lovecraft
  • H.-P. Lovecraft
  • Howard Lovecraft
  • H Lovecraft
  • H.P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu Mythos)
  • H.P. Lovecraft Cddemn 8035

History Created April 1, 2008 · 9 revisions Download catalog record: RDF / JSON

March 31, 2017 Edited by Clean Up Bot add VIAF and wikidata ID
February 19, 2017 Edited by Anonymous Edited without comment.
May 17, 2011 Edited by George Edited without comment.
May 17, 2011 Edited by George Edited without comment.
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user initial import