Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the genius writer of over 1000 titles. He has revolutionized modern day writing. Authors like Stephen King, Bentley Little, Joe R. Lansdale, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman have all been inspired by this one man. Some of his works like, “The Call of the Cthulhu” have even spawned various cults across the world. One of them, Circle of Lovecraft, at one point included Stephen King and Neil Gaiman in it. Lovecraft’s writing is just an adventure to read all throughout.

    HP Lovecraft has been born in a well-to-do rich family. His grandfather, Whipple V. Phillips, was a business man and the operation behind the Lovecraft fortune. Whipple would make Howard read fiction stories such as: The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Seven Thieves, and more in those categories. When Whipple died in 1904 Howard was put in such a great state of depression that he was contemplating suicide at a time.

In 1908 Lovecraft claimed to suffer a “nervous breakdown” and he, as a consequence to that, did not earn his high school diploma. The breakdown has most likely been caused by his difficulty in higher mathematics, which is required to become a professional astronomer. Also since he failed to finish his high school education he could not attend his desired university, Brown. These failures lead to a great self-loathing, disappointment, and shame later on in his life.

    From 1908 to 1913 Lovecraft has lived in such a way that he has almost no contact with anybody except his own mother. This life was do to,  his “nervous breakdown” and the fact that he did not get into Brown University. During this time Lovecraft was reading “pulp” magazines of his day.  Whilst reading this he stumbled upon the love stories of Fred Jackson. Lovecraft despised his work and in 1913 wrote a letter against Jackson and his work. This letter, published that same year, had all the fans of Fred Jackson in an uprising against it. Lovecraft and Jackson’s defenders were arguing about Jacksons stories. During this Edward F. Daas, President of the United Armature Press Association, noted Lovecraft’s argument and the controversy behind Jackson’s stories. In 1914 the UAPA (United Armature Press Association) asked Lovecraft to join them, he did. In the following years (1915-23) Lovecraft published thirteen of his own paper, The Conservative, and he also wrote poems, essays, and stories for other journals.

     In 1919 Lovecraft’s mother’s mental and physical state started to fail. She was admitted to the same hospital his father was admitted to, Butler Hospital. On May 21st, 1921 Lovecraft’s mother had died. Surprisingly Lovecraft overcame his depression in just a few weeks or at least overcame it enough to go to an amateur journalist convention in Boston. This is where he met Sonia Haft Greene, his wife to-be. In 1923 as opposed to getting married Lovecraft also got a job as a professional writer, as he got recognized for some of his earlier works by Weird Tales.

     Even though Lovecraft has had many friends in New York he still felt isolated and depressed because of it. This little isolation depression caused him to write “The Shunned House.”  By 1926 Lovecraft and Sonia were not getting along and by 1929 they got a divorce. This made Lovecraft start traveling all the greatest antiquarian sites in the world. This time was when Lovecraft wrote his greatest stories ranging from “The Call of Cthullhu” to “At the Mountains of Madness.”  In 1936 Lovecraft got diagnosed with cancer of the intestines. He died on March 15th, 1937.

    Throughout the years critics all across the world have been studying Lovecraft. Many have adored him and referred to him as “The Literary Copernicus” but there are also a few who have found controversy or they just plain disliked his work. I for one believe he is an amazing author and I have a good ninety percent of all Lovecraft critics on my side.   
    In the six short sorties “Polaris,” “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” “The Terrible Old Man,” “The Tomb,” “The Other Gods” and “Hypnos” are all based off nightmares and fantasies. Most, if not all, of Lovecraft’s books, stories, and poems are pure imagination and fantasy. A few of his stories were based off of his depression and loathing of life.
    “Polaris” was the first story I read, it gave me a melodramatic look at it. It was catching, once I started reading I couldn’t stop. Even though it was just a short story I enjoyed it very much, until the end. It left me with a horrible feeling, the story seemed to have gone nowhere. This seemed to happen for a few of Lovecraft’s early stories.

    One of the stories that I haven’t mentioned above is “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” The reason I haven’t mentioned it is because it was impossible for me not to put it down. It was basically just a poetic description much less then a story. I thought of this story as just standing out and just being the weakest story Lovecraft has written.
    Written at the same time was “The Tomb,” and “The Other Gods.” These ones were some that I believed to have been the best ones in the collection that I have read. The reason I enjoyed these so much was because they had straightforward language but it goes into detail enough for you to enjoy it but it doesn’t take over the whole story. Lovecraft also used allusions from his other book “Necronomicon.” He brought the character Abdul Alhazred from their.

    “Hypnosis” was written in a first person point of view. This one is one that you will just have fun with. The thing about this story though is that it is heavily borrowed from “The Shadow Out of Time” were a chemistry professor make a potion, puts himself in a mental coma for five years but in those five years he was apparently interacting with his colleagues, doing his work and all that. He then started seeing extraterrestrial beings
in his thoughts and dreams. “Hypnosis” was sort of like this, it was a surreal nightmare were this kind of thing happened.    

    Lovecraft was not someone who enjoyed foreigners very much. In fact he went through a sort of depression because he believed he was surrounded by them. His story “The Terrible Old Man,” is written because of his dislike of foreigners. It’s about an old man with a treasure that lies somewhere within his house and three foreigners who try to steal his treasure. The first two robbers go into the house talking with the old man about the treasure while the last one just waited outside so that he could go and steal it. The one waiting outside got impatient but as he was going to go in the front gate opens but it wasn’t the guys friends. The three foreigners are then found on the beach mutilated. I’m guessing that was Lovecraft’s way of saying he doesn’t like foreigners at all.

    Another one of my favorites was “The Doom that Came to Sarnath.” It was just exiting and full of surprises, twists and turns. Again Lovecraft used allusions from his other stories in here. I’ve also noticed that “Sarnath” was used in a different story that I’ve read. By this I can tell that Lovecraft favors allusions and has confidence in his works because he knows that the only people that would catch those allusions are the ones that have read his other works.  The story itself is about a group of people who were looking for land and founded “Sarnath” but next to it their was a place called Ib and it was inhabited by people that came from the moon. The foreigners killed the Ib people but the chief priest of the moon people cursed Sarnath. Decades later when Sarnath was at

the peak of its power the “moon” people attacked and took over Sarnath. After the fist half of the story I could already tell what was going to happen at the end but just the way it was written propelled me to continue on with the story.

    Howard Philips Lovecraft modernized the genre of horror and science fiction. Many of the modern day authors think of him as an idol. Lovecraft like Poe was unrecognized during his lifetime but has now spawned a huge fan base. Lovecraft, in my opinion, is an amazingly incredible author, it might take time for others to appreciate him though. But for the ones that do have learned the morals that Lovecraft was putting in his work.