Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born at 9 a.m. on August 20, 1890, at
his family home at 454 (then numbered 194) Angell Street in Providance
Rhode Island. His mother was Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, who could
trace her ancestry to the arrival of George Phillips to Massachusetts in
1630. His father was Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman for
Gorham & Co., Silversmiths, of Providence. When Lovecraft was three
his father suffered a nervous breakdown in a hotel room in Chicago and
was brought back to Butler Hospital, where he remained for five years before
dying on July 19, 1898. Lovecraft was apparently informed that his father
was paralyzed and comatose during this period, but the surviving evidence
suggests that this was not the case; it is nearly certain that Lovecraft's
father died of paresis, a form of neurosyphilis. |
With the death of Lovecraft's father, the upbringing of the boy fell
to his mother, his two aunts, and especially his grandfather, the prominent
industrialist Whipple Van Buren Phillips. Lovecraft was a precocious youth:
he was reciting poetry at age two, reading at age three, and writing at
age six or seven. His earliest enthusiasm wasfor the Arabian Nights, which
he read by the age of five; it was at this time that he adapted the pseudonym
of "Abdul Alhazred," who later became the author of the mythical Necronomicon.
The next year, however, his Arabian interests were eclipsed by the discovery
of Greek mythology, gleaned through Bulfinch's Age of Fableand through
children's versions of the Iliad and Odyssey. Indeed his earliest surviving
literary work, "The Poem of Ulysses" (1897), is a paraphrase of the Odyssey
in 88 lines of internally rhyming verse. But Lovecraft had by this time
already discovered weird fiction, and his first story, the non-extant "The
Noble Eavesdropper," maydate to as early as 1896. His interest in the weird
was fostered by his grandfather, who entertained Lovecraft with off-the-cuff
weird tales in the Gothic mode. As a boy Lovecraft was somewhat lonely
and suffered from frequent illnesses, many of them apparently psychological.
His attendance at the Slater Avenue School was sporadic, but Lovecraft
was soaking up much information through independent reading. At about the
age of eight he discovered science, first chemistry, then astronomy. He
began to produce hectographed journals, The Scientific Gazette (1899-1907)
and The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy (1903-07), for distribution amongst
his friends. When he entered Hope Street High School, he found both his
teachers and peers congenial and encouraging, and he developed a number
of long-lasting friendships with boys of his age. Lovecraft's first appearance
in print occurred in 1906, when he wrote a letter on an astronomical matter
to The Providence Sunday Journal. Shortly thereafter he began writing a
monthly astronomy column for The Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner, a rural paper;
he later wrote columns for The Providence Tribune (1906-08) and The Providence
Evening News (1914-18), as well as The Asheville (N.C.) Gazette-News (1915). |
In 1904 the death of Lovecraft's grandfather, and the subsequent mismanagement
of his property and affairs, plunged Lovecraft's family into severe financial
difficulties. Lovecraft and his mother were forced to move out of their
lavish Victorian home into cramped quarters at 598 Angell Street. Lovecraft
was devastated by the loss ofhis birthplace, and apparently contemplated
suicide, as he took long bicycle rides and looked wistfully at the watery
depths of the Barrington River. But the thrill of learning banished those
thoughts. In 1908, however, just prior to his graduation from high school,
he suffered a nervous breakdown that compelled him to leave school without
a diploma; this fact, and his consequent failure to enter Brown University,
were sources of great shame to Lovecraft in later years, in spite of the
fact that he was one of the most formidable autodidacts of his time. From
1908 to 1913 Lovecraft was a virtual hermit, doing little save pursuing
his astronomical interests and his poetry writing. During this whole period
Lovecraft was thrown into an unhealthily close relationship with his mother,
who was still suffering from the trauma of her husband's illness and death,
and who developed a pathological love-hate relationship with her son. |
Lovecraft emerged from his hermitry in a very peculiar way. Having
taken to reading the early "pulp" magazines of the day, he became so incensed
at the insipid love stories of one Fred Jackson in The Argosy that he wrote
a letter, in verse, attacking Jackson. This letter was published in 1913,
and evoked a storm of protest from Jackson's defenders. Lovecraft engaged
in a heated debate in the letter column of The Argosy and its associated
magazines, Lovecraft's responses being almost always in rollicking heroic
couplets reminiscent of Dryden and Pope. This controversy was noted by
Edward F. Daas, President of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA),
a group of amateur writers from around the country who wrote and published
their own magazines. Daas invited Lovecraft to join the UAPA, and Lovecraft
did so in early 1914. Lovecraft published thirteen issues of his own paper,
The Conservative (1915-23), as well as contributing poetry and essays voluminously
to other journals. Later Lovecraft became President and Official Editor
of the UAPA, and also served briefly as President of the rival National
Amateur Press Association (NAPA). This entire experience may well have
saved Lovecraft from a life of unproductive reclusiveness; as he himself
once said: "In 1914, when the kindly hand of amateurdom was first extended
to me, I was as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can
be...With the advent of the United I obtained a renewal to live; a renewed
sense of existence as other than a superfluous weight; and found a sphere
in which I could feel that my efforts were not wholly futile. For the first
time I could imagine that my clumsy gropings after art were a little more
than faint cries lost in the unlistening world." |
It was in the amateur world that Lovecraft recommenced the writing
of fiction, which he had abandoned in 1908. W. Paul Cook and others, noting
the promise shown in such early tales as "The Beast in the Cave" (1905)
and "The Alchemist" (1908), urged Lovecraft to pick up his fictional pen
again. This Lovecraft did, writing "The Tomb" and "Dagon" in quick succession
in the summer of 1917. Thereafter Lovecraft kept up a steady if sparse
flow of fiction, although until at least 1922 poetry and essays were still
his dominant mode of literary expression. Lovecraft also became involved
in an ever-increasing network of correspondence with friends and associates,
and he eventually became one of the greatest and most prolific letter-writers
of the century. |
Lovecraft's mother, her mental and physical condition deteriorating,
suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919 and was admitted to Butler Hospital,
whence, like her husband, she would never emerge. Her death on May 24,
1921, however was the result of a bungled gall bladder operation. Lovecraft
was shattered by the loss of his mother, but in a few weeks had recovered
enough to attend an amateur journalism convention in Boston on July 4,
1921. It was on this occasion that he first met the woman who would become
his wife. Sonia Haft Greene was a Russian Jew seven years Lovecraft's senior,
but the two seemed, at least initially, to find themselves very congenial.
Lovecraft visited Sonia in her Brooklyn apartment in 1922, and the news
of their marriage on March 3, 1924, was not entirely a surprise to their
friends; but it may have been to Lovecraft's two aunts, Lillian D. Clark
and Annie E. Phillips Gamwell, who were notified only by letter after the
ceremony had taken place. Lovecraft moved into Sonia's apartment in Brooklyn,
and initial prospects for the couple seemed good: Lovecraft had gained
a foothold as a professional writer by the acceptance of several of his
early stories by Weird Tales, the celebrated pulp magazine founded in 1923;
Sonia had a successful hat shop on Fifth Avenue in New York. But troubles
descended upon the couple almost immediately: the hat shop went bankrupt,
Lovecraft turned down the chance to edit a companion magazine to Weird
Tales (which would have necessitated his move to Chicago), and Sonia's
health gave way, forcing her to spend time in a New Jersey sanitarium.
Lovecraft attempted to secure work, but few were willing to hire a thirty-four-year-old-man
with no job experience. On January 1, 1925, Sonia went to Cleveland to
take up a job there, and Lovecraft moved into a single apartment near the
seedy Brooklyn area called Red Hook. |
Although Lovecraft had many friends in New York--Frank Belknap Long,
Rheinhart Kleiner, Samuel Loveman--he became increasingly depressed by
his isolation and the masses of "foreigners" in the city. His fiction turned
from the nostalgic ("The Shunned House" (1924) is set in Providence) to
the bleak and misanthropic ("The Horror at Red Hook" and "He" (both 1924)
lay bare his feelings for New York). Finally, in early 1926, plans were
made for Lovecraft to return to the Providence he missed so keenly. But
where did Sonia fit into these plans? No one seemed to know, least of all
Lovecraft. Although he continued to profess his affection for her, he acquiesced
when his aunts barred her from coming to Providence to start a business;
their nephew could not be tainted by the stigma of a tradeswoman wife.
The marriage was essentially over, and a divorce in 1929 was inevitable. |
When Lovecraft returned to Providence on April 17, 1926, settling at
10 Barnes Street north of Brown University, it was not to bury himself
away as he had done in the 1908-13 period; rather, the last ten years of
his life were the time of his greatest flowering, both as a writer and
as a human being. His life was relatively uneventful--he traveled widely
to various antiquarian sites around the eastern seaboard (Quebec, New England,
Philadelphia, Charleston, St. Augustine); he wrote his greatest fiction,
from "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) to At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
to "The Shadow out of Time" (1934-35); and he continued his prodigiously
vast correspondence--but Lovecraft had found his niche as a New England
writer of weird fiction and as a general man of letters. He nurtured the
careers of many young writers (August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Robert Bloch,
Fritz Leiber); he became concerned with political and economic issues,
as the Great Depression led him to support Roosevelt and become a moderate
socialist; and he continued absorbing knowledge on a wide array of subjects,
from philosophy to literature to history to architecture. |
The last two or three years of his life, however, were filled with
hardship. In 1932 his beloved aunt, Mrs. Clark, died, and he moved into
quarters at 66 College Street, right behind the John Hay Library, with
his other aunt Mrs. Gamwell in 1933. (This house has now been moved to
65 Prospect Street.) His later stories, increasingly lengthy and complex,
became difficult to sell, and he was forced to support himself largely
through the "revision" or ghost-writing of stories, poetry, and nonfictions
works. In 1936 the suicide of Robert E. Howard, one of his closest correspondents,
left him confused and saddened. By this time the illness that would cause
his own death--cancer of the intestine--had already progressed so far that
little could be done to treat it. Lovecraft attempted to carry on in increasing
pain through the winter of 1936-37, but was finally compelled to enter
Jane Brown Memorial Hospital on March 10, 1937, where he died five days
later. He was buried on March 18 at the Phillips family plot at Swan Point
Cemetery. |
It is likely that, as he saw death approaching, Lovecraft envisioned
the ultimate oblivion of his work: he had never had a true book published
in his lifetime (aside, perhaps, from the crudely issued The Shadow over
Innsmouth [1936]), and his stories, essays, and poems were scattered in
a bewildering number of amateur or pulp magazines. But the friendships
that he had forged merely by correspondence held him in good stead: August
Derleth and Donald Wandrei were determined to preserve Lovecraft's stories
in the dignity of a hardcover book, and formed the publishing firm of Arkham
House initially to publish Lovecraft's work; they issued The Outsider and
Others in 1939. Many other volumes followed from Arkham House, and eventually
Lovecraft's work became available in paperback and was translated into
a dozen languages. Today, at the centennial of his birth, his stories are
available in textually corrected editions, his essays, poems, and letters
are widely available, and many scholars have probed the depths and complexities
of his work and thought. Much remains to be done in the study of Lovecraft,
but it is safe to say that, thanks to the intrinsic merit of his own work
and to the diligence of his associates and supporters, Lovecraft has gained
a small but unassailable niche in the canon of American and world literature. |