Lovecraft Country: A Brief Introduction to H.P. Lovecraft and Cosmic Horror

American author Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft, created one of the most enduring literary genres: Cosmic Horror. He was a prolific writer who penned numerous stories under his own name, as well as hundreds of ghost-written works. His work has shaped the writing of science fiction, fantasy, and horror ever since. Lovecraft was obsessed with the rapidly disappearing antiquarian world that surrounded him. Many of his characters were “men out of time,” who did not belong to the contemporary worlds in which he placed them. They were tragic figures who, in many cases, found themselves stumbling onto some horrific truth that shatters their sanity. Over the course of his works, Lovecraft made a conscious effort to connect his works together in place, time, and characters, thereby creating one of the first expanded universes in popular fiction.  His creations: the people, alien races, gods, places, invented texts, and concepts, were freely shared among his contemporaries and used by later authors to form the Cthulhu Mythos. This Mythos has been the touchstone of much of Hollywood’s television and movie landscape and can be seen as the basis for many of the familiar pop culture icons of the last century.

Howard was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island to Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (Susie) Phillips Lovecraft.  He was the couple’s only child. His early life was repeatedly marred by personal tragedy. His father had a psychotic break when Howard was only three years old, and had to be committed to Butler Hospital, the local asylum. He had shown no indication of mental illness prior to his breakdown. Winfield died five years later, while still in the care of Butler Hospital.

After the death of her husband, Susie moved into her parents’ home, where her sisters also lived. In 1904, Howard’s grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, died; he left his dwindling finances and household to Susie’s care. She was unable to continue his business, and the vast estate fell into disrepair, it was sold a few years later. This antiquated home environment and the old quarters of the city of Providence was a fertile ground for Lovecraft’s literary endeavors.

In 1919, Howard’s life was once again shaped by mental illness, his mother was committed to the same hospital where his father had died in 1898. Lovecraft wrote to friends and in private diaries that this experience was much more painful and terrifying than his father’s illness. Susie died in 1921 due to complications arising from gallbladder surgery. For the rest of his life, he would experience periodic mental and emotional breaks, likely connected to a family history and his own experiences with his parents’ illnesses.

Between 1911 and 1913, Howard wrote numerous letters to the editors of the pulp and weird fiction magazines, usually praising, though sometimes condemning, other authors’ works.  These letters eventually brought him to the attention of the editors of Argosy, a pulp fiction magazine, which led to his career as a professional writer. Howard wrote not only his own short stories but also took on commission work as a ghostwriter, work for which he was often left unpaid.

Lovecraft’s experience with mental illness both haunted and inspired him, shaping the theme of many of his stories: that of protagonists striving to keep their sanity in the face of an absolute horror and forbidden knowledge. These stories revolved around a series of ancient deities known as the Great Old Ones and the Elder Races, who were not native to Earth but had lived on the planet millions of years before humanity. From this he birthed the genre of Cosmic Horror.

These foul beings from beyond the stars had colonized Earth before most “native” lifeforms evolved. Over the course of millions of years Earth had been the ground for them to clash with other groups of the Elder Races. The most famous of these gods is the creature Cthulhu, for whom the entire series is named. Lovecraft, and the numerous authors who have continued the Cthulhu Cycle, present mankind as a young race who has no clue as to the cosmic terrors of the universe. The true horror of these entities is that they simply do not care about humanity, assuming they even noticed the species.

Here is where Lovecraft gave his human characters agency: they either stumbled upon the truth or were working to resurrect the Elder Gods and the Old Ones.  Some of Lovecraft’s best stories (especially At the Mountains of Madness and The Call of Cthulhu) revolve around his human characters finding this horrific truth of the universe: man is not alone and is blind to his coming destruction. While most times the humans manage to thwart the immediate threat, they cannot wholly stop the coming apocalypse.

Another essential element to many of Lovecraft’s stories is their locations: old, foul cities, towns, or villages he dreamed up that reflected the real landscape around him in Rhode Island.  The colonial cities of the Eastern Seaboard are among the oldest European settlements in the United States.  Lovecraft recreated some of these cities with new names and new histories to reflect the background of his characters and their environment. The cities of Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingport, and Dunwich (roughly correlating to Ipswich, Salem/Danvers, Marblehead, and Newburyport, respectively) are the most famous. These towns are composed of ancient, storied streets that date back before the founding the United States where the characters can find sources of both good and evil. He also created a school, Miskatonic University, a research institution whose main focus seems to be the strange history and occurrences of Lovecraft’s universe. It is here that many of his characters conduct research to dig up the background of their family or the events they experience.[1]

In those same towns villains, heroes, and regular people walk side-by-side.  The idea of cults, secret societies, and the conflicts among and between these are scattered throughout Lovecraft’s fictional universe.  In some cases, the villains are warlocks seeking immortality who hide amongst regular men (The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a masterpiece of this type of Lovecraftian horror).

One of Lovecraft’s archetypal stories are hidden ancestry tales. In these, the characters are on a personal quest to track down information regarding their ancestors and the towns in which they were born.  Usually the ancestor in question had fled their original town, gone insane over an extended period, or simply disappeared. As the character approaches the birthplace of their extended family, he begins to realize that people in the surrounding area do not care for their more reclusive neighbors. Having arrived in his family’s ancestral hometown, he slowly realizes that something is really out of place about the people living there: some have physical deformities, others cannot form words properly, and, in some cases, only a certain age group is present on the streets. The character settles in and does more digging, only to find a terrible secret that shatters his worldview and threatens his life.  He can only attempt to flee or be captured by the hostile townspeople. [2]

Lovecraft died of intestinal cancer on 15 March 1937, in poverty and having found little recognition. It was only in death that his stories moved away from the niche pulp magazines to larger public’s attention. Once that happened, Lovecraft’s stories and the genre of Cosmic Horror exploded into the mainstream. Lovecraft’s stories have been adopted and adapted in literary and cinematic formats since the 1940s. H.P. Lovecraft’s legacy continues to cast its shadow in science fiction and horror books and films over a century after his death, as seen with HBO’s new series, Lovecraft Country.

Come back for more History on Screen with the Szilagyis, where we will have an essay discussing the historical and cultural elements of Lovecraft Country each week.

For further reading:

S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft, volumes one and two.

The works of H.P. Lovecraft, available in various editions
An audio version, H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Omnibus, volumes one and two is an excellent edition and is available on Audible.

[1] Miskatonic has inspired a real line of university-themed clothing apparel, glasses, and accessories only rivaled by merchandise for its fellow fictional school, Hogwarts

[2] An excellent example of this type of story is The Shadow over Innsmouth.