`   -     - He is notable for blending elements of science fiction and horror; and for popularizing ``cosmic horror``: the notion that some concepts, entities or experiences are barely comprehensible to human minds, and those who delve into such risk their sanity. Lovecraft has become a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the ``Cthulhu Mythos,`` a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a ``pantheon`` of nonhuman creatures, as well as the famed Necronomicon, a grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works typically had a tone of ``cosmic pessimism,`` regarding mankind as insignificant and powerless in the universe.    -     - Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, and his works, particularly early in his career, have been criticized Joshi, S.T, The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction, McFarland & Company, 2001, ISBN 978-0786409860 as occasionally ponderous, and for their uneven quality. Nevertheless, Lovecraft’s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded Joshi, 2001 Joshi, S.T. H. P. Lovecraft: A Life 1996 ISBN 0-940884-88-7 King, Stephen, Stephen King’s Danse Macabre Berkely, 1987, ISBN 978-0425104330 Jones, Steven and Kim Newman (editors) Horror: The 100 best books New York: Carol and Graff, 1998, ISBN 978-0786705528 Joshi, S.T. The Weird Tale, Wildside Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0809531226 Clute, John and John Grant The Encylopedia of Fantasy, St. Martin's Griffin, 1999, ISBN 978-0312198695 Joshi, S.T, The Evolution of the Weird Tale, Hippocampus Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0974878928 as one of the most important horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though often indirect.     -     - == Biography ==    - === Early life ===    - Lovecraft was born on 20 August 1890 at 9:00 a.m. in his family home at 194 (now 454) Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. The house was torn down in 1961. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman of jewelry and precious metals, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, a woman who could trace her ancestry in America back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. His parents married, the first marriage for both, when they were in their thirties. This was unusually late in life given the time period. In 1893, when Lovecraft was three, his father became acutely psychotic in a Chicago hotel room while on a business trip. He was brought back to Providence and placed in Butler Hospital where he remained until his death in 1898. Lovecraft was informed that his father was comatose during this period but it is now almost certain that Winfield Scott Lovecraft died from tertiary syphilis Luc Sante, ``The Heroic Nerd``, in The New York Review of Books, October 10, 2006.    -     -     - Lovecraft thereafter was raised by his mother, his two aunts (Lillian Delora Phillips and Annie Emeline Phillips), and his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. All resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a child prodigy, reciting poetry at age two and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with classics such as The Arabian Nights, Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and children's versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey. His grandfather also stirred young Howard's interest in the weird by telling him his own original tales of Gothic horror. His mother, on the other hand, worried that these stories would upset him.    -     - Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, both physically and psychologically. Due to his sickly condition and his undisciplined, argumentative nature he barely attended school until he was eight and then was withdrawn after a year. He read voraciously during this period and became especially enamored of chemistry and astronomy. He produced several hectographed publications with a limited circulation beginning in 1899 with The Scientific Gazette. Four years later he returned to public school at Hope Street High School.    -     - Whipple Van Buren Phillips' death in 1904 greatly affected Lovecraft's life. Mismanagement of his grandfather's property and money left his family in such a poor financial situation they were forced to move into much smaller accommodations at 598 Angell Street. Lovecraft was so deeply affected by the loss of his home and birthplace he contemplated suicide for a time. In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, he suffered a nervous breakdown and consequently never received his high school diploma. ST Joshi suggests in his introduction to ``The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories`` that a primary cause for this breakdown was his difficulty in higher mathematics, a subject he needed to master to become a professional astronomer. This failure to complete his education (he wished to study at Brown University) was a source of disappointment and shame even late into his life.    -     - Lovecraft wrote some fiction as a youth but from 1908 until 1913 his output was primarily poetry he wrote while living a hermit's existence and having almost no contact with anyone but his mother. This changed when he wrote a letter to The Argosy, a pulp magazine, complaining about the insipidness of the love stories of one of the publication's popular writers. The ensuing debate in the magazine's letters column caught the eye of Edward F. Daas, President of the UAPA, who invited Lovecraft to join in 1914. The UAPA reinvigorated Lovecraft and incited him to contribute many poems and essays. In 1917, at the prodding of correspondents, he returned to fiction with more polished stories such as ``The Tomb`` and ``Dagon``. The latter was his first professionally published work, appearing in Weird Tales in 1923. Around this time he began to build up a huge network of correspondents. His lengthy and frequent missives would make him one of the great letter writers of the century. Among his correspondents were the young Forrest J. Ackerman, Robert Bloch (Psycho) and Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian series).    -     - In 1919, after suffering from hysteria and depression for a long period of time, Lovecraft's mother had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Butler Hospital like her husband before her. Nevertheless, she wrote frequent letters to Lovecraft, and they remained very close until her death on May 21, 1921, the result of complications from a gall bladder surgery. Lovecraft was devastated by the loss.    -     - === Marriage and New York ===    - A few weeks after the death of his mother Lovecraft attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston where he met Sonia Greene. Born in 1883, she was of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry and seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, and the couple moved to the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Lovecraft's aunts may have been unhappy with this arrangement as they were not fond of Lovecraft being married to a tradeswoman (Greene owned a hat shop). Initially Lovecraft was enthralled by New York but soon the couple was facing financial difficulties. Greene lost her hat shop and suffered poor health. Lovecraft could not find work to support them both so his wife moved to Cleveland for employment. Lovecraft lived by himself in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and came to intensely dislike New York life.This situation is closely paralleled in the semi-autobiographical ``He``, as noted by Michel Houellebecq in H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life Indeed, this daunting reality of failure to secure any work in the midst of a large immigrant population—especially irreconcilable with his opinion of himself as a privileged Anglo-Saxon—has been theorized as galvanizing his racism to the point of fear.H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, Michel Houellebecq    -     - A few years later he and Greene, still living separately, agreed to an amicable divorce, which was never fully completed. He returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years. Due to the unhappiness of their marriage, some biographers have speculated that Lovecraft could have been asexual, though Greene is often quoted as referring to him as ``an adequately excellent lover`` .    -     - === Return to Providence ===    - Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived in a ``spacious brown Victorian wooden house`` at 10 Barnes Street (the address given as the home of Dr. Willett in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) until 1933. The period after his return to Providence—the last decade of his life—was Lovecraft's most prolific. During this time period he produced almost all of his best-known short stories for the leading pulp publications of the day (primarily Weird Tales) as well as longer efforts like The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and At the Mountains of Madness. He frequently revised work fo