HP Lovecraft: An American Writer of Horror and Weird Function

To know about a writer is always interesting and so today we are talking about an American writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a writer of horror and weird fiction. He was born on 20th August 1890 in the United States. He spent most of his life in New England. When he was born, the family was affluent but soon after the death of his grandfather dissipated. Once he wrote a critical letter in 1913 to a pulp magazine, it led his involvement in pulp fiction. Lovecraft wrote and published stories that used to be on his view of humanity and its place in this universe.

H.P. Lovecraft – Educated in Weird Tales

H.P. Lovecraft was living with his mother and his maternal aunt Annie and Lillian after the hospitalization his father. Because of his father’s illness, he is mother remained in grief. So in these times, Whipple became the father figure to him. He always encouraged Howard to have an appreciation of literature, especially of English poetry and classical literature. He educated him and the classics and in original weird tales too. Moreover, till now, the exact sources of his weird tales are not identified. He was very much influenced with Edgar Allan Poe to whom he described as his “God of Fiction”.

HP Lovecraft ‘s Collection

The Ancient Track:The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft is the book where there is a collection of all the poetries of this writer. On the other hand, one can find much of his juvenilia, essays on various topics like political, philosophical, and literary, archaic travelogues, and many other works in miscellaneous writings. His first essay was ‘Supernatural Horror’ which was published in 1927. Basically, it is a historical survey associated with horror literature available with endnotes as The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Used British English

The use of British English by Lovecraft is only because of his father’s influence. Describing his father, he said that he was so anglophilic that he presumed to be an Englishman. According to Phillips, his father always want him to avoid using American phrases and words. From here, it influenced him a lot. So he stretched his boundary of language and ultimately it caused Lovecraft to develop a deep affection for the British Empire as well as the British culture.

Last years of HP Lovecraft

He witnessed the publication of The Shadow Over Innsmouth in late 1936 as a paperback book. Before his death, the doctors were not examining him for a month. When you visit a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. Till the death, he remained hospitalized. He died on 15th March 1937 in Providence, United States. He was on the Philips family monument along with his parents.

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