Pathologically hermetic, wracked with oedipal guilt, dogged by illness and melancholy - Howard Phillips Lovecraft might have slithered, gibbering and twitching, from the pages of the most formulaic Stephen King pot-boiler.
Lovecraft's Freudian fantasies constitute the bedrock of contemporary horror fiction. A dense gloom enshrouds his prose. A glut of phobias - he was terrified of cold climes, women and foreigners - amplified his congenital ennui. From this rich seam of dementia, the loner hewed an elaborate myth cycle. Rooted in the American Gothic tradition of Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe, the Cthulhu mythos oozed acrid despair.
Born in 1890 to middle class Rhode Island parents, Lovecraft's salesman father died, mad and intestate, in 1908. Lovecraft thereafter cultivated an incestuous closeness to his mother (she would follow her husband to the asylum in 1921). Their relationship inspired a Lovecraft protege: Psyhco author Robert Bloch.
Poor health denied Lovecraft a place at university. In the early 1920s, he decamped to New York and contributed to pulp rag Weird Tales. He attracted a wide circle of correspondents including Conan the Barbarian author Robert E Howard.
Lovecraft wedded Sonia Haft Greene (seven years his senior) in 1924 but their marriage swiftly foundered and he returned to New England. There, until stomach cancer claimed him at 47, Lovecraft produced his most enduring work. Towering dark fantasies, such as The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness, ensure HP Lovecraft's position at the doyen of modern horror.
For More about HP Lovecraft see the website at www.hplovecraft.com