Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890 - 1937)

Early life

H. P. Lovecraft clawed himself free of the unnameable [horror] of being imprisoned alive in the womb at 9:00 A.M. on August 20, 1890, bewildered to find himself in a house at 194 Angell Street in [Providence, Rhode Island]. Howard screamed in terror to discover his father, [Winfield Scott Lovecraft], was a traveling silverware salesman. His mother, [Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft], was a descendant of [George Phillips], who, in turn, was one of the first pilgrims to America. Winfield Lovecraft suffered an astounding [nervous breakdown] when Howard was just three, and crawled back into the [grave] five years later.

Youth

Howard was a sickly boy, frequently [plague]d by illness (both mental and physical) throughout his childhood. This did not diminish his love for the unspeakable (not to mention thankless) [profession of writing]. He wrote poetry and stories starting in childhood, but did not begin to be recognized for them until 1913, when he wrote an attack, in [verse], on the [insipid love stories] that filled the pulp magazines in those days. Who could have pictured the unimaginable surprise on his face when the President of the [UAPA] ([United Amatuer Press Association]) wrote him and asked him to join? Lovecraft eventually became the President of the UAPA himself, but before this would occur, he would have begun writing the tales of complete and utter horror which turn even today's readers into [terrified puddles of quivering flesh].

Marriage

Shortly after his mother's death in 1921, Howard met the unnameable beast that he would subsequently make his [wife]. [Sonia Haft Greene], a Russian Jew living in [Brooklyn], married H. P. Lovecraft on May 24, 1924, and ran a hat shop for a while, until, of course, misfortune overtook them and the hat shop went belly-up. She subsequently became quite ill, and entered a [sanitorium]. Howard moved back to Providence in 1926 and [divorce]d Sonia in 1929.

Death

Some of Lovecraft's most famous [At the mountains of madness|writing]s were written after his return to Rhode Island. He continued to write until he succumbed to the unspeakable [intestinal cancer|cancer] that moved through his intestines on March 10, 1937. It was mainly due to two of his friends that we have any of his works today. [August Derleth] and [Donald Wandrei] had some of Lovecraft's works put into a hardbound edition in 1939, and Derleth subsequently finished many of Lovecraft's incomplete works.

H.P. Lovecraft (person)