Happy Birthday, H.P. Lovecraft!

Well, today is the 117^th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s birth. Happy birthday to the Old Gent from Providence! The horror world must still pay tribute to the great innovator, and rightly so. Perhaps one day as a result, Lovecraft will be as common a household name as Poe. He’s certainly on his way there with each passing year. Nothing illustrates this better than the literary heights Lovecraft’s tales have ascended to with the Library of America’s recent prestigious edition of his works. Among others in the Library’s set, Lovecraft now shares a place with his idol Poe as a writer of the weird and fantastic, as well as Philip K. Dick.

Lovecraft was born on August 20^th, 1890, and died on March 15^th, 1937. His life was wrought with physical and emotional ailments, literary obscurity, and a slide toward genteel poverty. However, far from the recluse of common perception, it was also filled with friends, travel throughout North America, creative pursuits scholarly and artistic, and countless letters. His time here was tragically cut short by poor nutrition and intestinal cancer, which ultimately did him in.

The fascinating question of what might have been if Lovecraft lived longer is explored by Peter Cannon in his work, The Lovecraft Chronicles. It is told through a series of three fictional manuscripts from people who knew Lovecraft at different points in his more successful, longer life. Overall, the book is a fascinating exploration making generous use of quotes and ideas from HPL, and charts a mostly realistic path from Cannon’s careful biographical research. Personally, I found it ended on a sour note with the manner of Lovecraft’s alternate death in the 1960s, but it is otherwise a worthy read filled with humor and unseen conflicts worthy of an extended life for the great author.

Finally, for those dying to read HPL today in his memory, Project Gutenberg Australia has a wide selection of his best tales here. Luckily enough for us, virtually all of Lovecraft's writings are in the public domain (or will be shortly), despite years of disputes by various parties seeking to control the rights to Lovecraft's output.

I posted a Cthulhu cake at the top in honor of the occasion. Clever (and possibly tasty) as it is, however, I think Lovecraft’s fondness for iced cream would have drawn him more to this:

Mmmm, blasphemously delicious!

-Grim Blogger