Scriptorium - H.P. Lovecraft. By S.T. Joshi Introduction Why study H. P. Lovecraft? In the minds of some critics and scholars this question still evidently requires an answer, and will perhaps always require an answer so long as standard criticism maintains its inexplicable prejudice against the tale of horror, fantasy, and the supernatural. In the space I have I cannot hope to present a general defense of the weird tale; but I can at least suggest that Edmund Wilson's condemnation of Lovecraft's work as "bad taste and bad art" ("Tales of the Marvellous and the Ridiculous" [1945]) may, at the very least, have been a little myopic.
The ancillary question "Why read H. What we must do, then, is to see what there is about Lovecraft that is worth studying, and why, one hundred years after his birth, he commands so large a popular and a scholarly following. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on 20 August 1890 in his native home at 454 (then 194) Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island.
H.P. Lovecraft | Profiles | Features. Mention of the name Howard Phillips Lovecraft might elicit nothing more than a noncommittal shrug from most people, but for fans of the macabre he is still a revered figure, held in awe for his unique literary visions of cosmic horror. Lovecraft spent most of his life (1890-1937) in Providence, Rhode Island. The last son of a once-wealthy family, he devoted his life to literature, soon finding that his strengths lay in tales of the uncanny. These stories attracted a small following among the readers of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, and his correspondents included a formidable roster of early horror writers. Since his early death, the popularity of his work has grown – in ways he could never have imagined – inspiring countless stories and novels, films, cartoons, games and even cuddly toys.
His tales have continued to compel readers because of their convincing melding of fact and fantasy and their evocation of a world both phantasmagoric and believable at the same time. HP Lovecraft: The author's notes for his novella "At The Mountains of Madness" The Vault is Slate's history blog. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here. This is one of seven pages of plot notes that horror author H.P.
Lovecraft produced while planning his 1936 novella “At the Mountains of Madness.” The writer, who had fallen on hard times, used a deconstructed envelope in an attempt to save paper. The novella, written in 1931 and published in 1936 in the pulp magazine Astounding Stories, is one of Lovecraft’s best works. Narrated by a traumatized geologist, William Dyer, the tale is framed as a warning, and reads like a cross between an expedition report and an exorcism. In Lovecraft’s mythology, ancient beings of profound malevolence lurk just below the surface of the everyday world. The exhibit “The Shadow over College Street: H.P. H. P. Lovecraft. Everyone's favourite horror writer and hilarious racist, HP Lovecraft.
How the man known as Howard Phillips Lovecraft[1] came to have an Uncyclopedia entry written about him is a fact of whose blasphemous origins we shall never be privileged to know. That it is written at all is miracle enough, for we live on an infinitesimal and placid island of literacy, consoled by structured and educated ignorance, swallowed in the midst of the boundless black seas of inconceivable truths to which we owe our own existence, broiling with a slobbering idiocy that inhabits both timeless places and unknowable concepts far beyond those precious few possibilities that can be reached by our wildest and most broken of nightmares. Who wrote such blasphemous, unrelenting and wicked ramblings shall remain a mystery; for the following is a peculiar message that had suddenly and inexplicably materialized as an article on Uncyclopedia. ///Here begins the message/// edit The message edit Early life edit Mental illness.
» How to read Lovecraft: A practical beginner’s guide The Teeming Brain. NOTE: When you’re finished with this article, be advised that it has a sequel. After reading “Lovecraft: Invading the ego with shadows from the id,” a friend and coworker asked if I could “give a first-time Lovecraft reader a title to start with!” The answer to such a request is of course a resounding yes, and after typing and sending an email response to my friend, I found that I had actually created a low-key, all-purpose mini-introduction to Lovecraft as a whole, aimed specifically at anybody who has no background knowledge of him and designed intentionally to maximize a person’s enjoyment and understanding of his work.
It also draws almost entirely on free material available on the open Internet. So here’s a somewhat expanded version that I figured I would share here with the Teeming Brain audience, for those among you who are likewise looking to take the plunge into Lovecraft territory for the very first time. 1. 2. 3. H. 4. 5. 6. 7. Read “The Call of Cthulhu.” READ MORE ONLINE. “H. » Deadly pedantry: How (and how not) to murder art, literature, and H. P. Lovecraft The Teeming Brain. The “practical beginner’s guide” to H. P. Lovecraft that I published here last month has received a lot of attention and traffic, but not all of it has been necessarily positive.
One observer, Teeming Brain regular xylokopos, commented, “What is the point of this detailed, beforehand investigation into the man’s life and correspondence[?] . . . . I certainly understand and sympathize with the criticism. Sometimes this hindrance is due to an inherent quality of idiosyncrasy, complexity, or some other sort of difficulty in the work itself.
This is why I think there’s definitely a place for the formal type of introduction that I laid out in my post. That said, I do take xylokopos’s criticism to heart, and I’m perfectly happy to admit that I myself have had many wonderful literary and artistic experiences by skipping the classroom approach and simply diving right into someone’s work. How to Read Lovecraft: A Practical Beginner’s Guide (Short Version) STEP TWO: Weep for your lost sanity.