H. P. Lovecraftwas born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where
he lived most of his life. Frequent illnesses in his youth
disrupted his schooling, but Lovecraft gained a wide knowledge of
many subjects through independent reading and study. He wrote many
essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the
writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp
magazineWeird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction.
His relatively small corpus of fiction-three short novels and about
sixty short stories-has nevertheless exercised a wide influence on
subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading
twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. H. P.
Lovecraft died in Providence in 1937.
S. T. Joshiis a freelance writer and editor. He has edited Penguin
Classics editions of H. P. Lovecraft'sThe Call of Cthulhu and Other
Weird Stories(1999), andThe Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird
Stories(2001), as well as Algernon Blackwood'sAncient Sorceries and
Other Strange Stories(2002). Among his critical and biographical
studies areThe Weird Tale(1990),Lord Dunsany- Master of the
Anglo-Irish Imagination(1995),H. P. Lovecraft- A Life(1996), andThe
Modern Weird Tale(2001). He has also edited works by Ambrose
Bierce, Arthur Machen, and H. L. Mencken, and is compiling a
three-volumeEncyclopedia of Supernatural Literature. He lives with
his wife in Seattle, Washington.
I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be
surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the
classic horror tale
*Stephen King*
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