Lovecraft, Howard Phillips

In a letter, Lovecraft traced his ancestry back through Llunwy of Wales, to Ghoth the Burrower (one of the Little People) and a series of Romans of the Viburnia gens (family), thence to Nyarlathotep, and finally to Azathoth. [HPL Family (online text)]

A number of Lovecraft's splendid tales were inspired by dreams [RB Demon].

Lovecraft met with the painter Richard Upton in Boston, where Upton showed him something shocking (probably a painting of a ghoul). On October 13, 1926, Lovecraft wrote to Upton, asking to meet again. Lovecraft may have received a visit from Upton in early December, as Upton returned from Providence to Boston on December 10. Simon Waverly and Albert Keith found Lovecraft's hand-drawn maps of Arkham and of the South Pacific, showing the location of R'lyeh. Lovecraft's occult knowledge may have come from dreams. Simon Waverly speculated the Lovecraft might have begun serious occult research in 1926, after returning to Providence from New York. [RB Strange]

Lovecraft invited the writer Robert Blake to Providence, visited with him frequently, and accompanied him on several nocturnal strolls. When Lovecraft learned of Blake's visit to the Free-Will Church, he offered words of warning and advice, but was too late to prevent Blake's untimely death. At the urging of Blake's friend Edmund Fiske, Lovecraft performed his own investigation, interviewing Father Merluzzo and Patrolman Monahan, and unsuccessfully attempting to contact the physician Dr. Dexter. Lovecraft then wrote a fictionalized account of Blake's last months (The Haunter of the Dark). Lovecraft cloaked the meaning of his prophecy Nyarlathotep, but even so, They from Outside may have gotten to Lovecraft because he knew too much. [RB Steeple (online text)]

Lovecraft fictionalized some Arkham scandals and Miskatonic University research projects in a sensational way. Lovecraft was visited by Albert Wilmarth when the latter was investigating the death of Robert Blake. Georg Reuter Fischer read some of Lovecraft's stories. Miskatonic University never tried to suppress Lovecraft's stories or take legal action, partly out of fear of generating additional publicity, and partly because some of the researchers thought Lovecraft's work might help prepare the world for the possible truth of their hypotheses. In 1937, Wilmarth was worried about Lovecraft's failing health, and mentioned that Lovecraft was in the hospital. When Lovecraft died, Danforth notified Wilmarth by telegram, and observed "THE WHIPPOORWILLS DID NOT SING." [FL Terror2]

Project Arkham was founded to investigate the truth behind Lovecraft's stories. In the near future, Lovecraft's writings are suppressed, and Judson Moybridge writes The Fall of Cthulhu to prove that Lovecraft's works were merely fiction. [RB Strange]

Readers

Tony Alwyn thought that Lovecraft had a good imagination. Josiah Alwyn had a copy of The Outsider and Others, and thought that The Shadow Over Innsmouth might not be fiction. Leander Alwyn left a coded letter that included references to names that also appeared in The Outsider and Others. [AWD Beyond2]

Jefferson Bates quoted a statement by a "little-known American writer in the tradition of the Gothic" that "the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." The statement comes from Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu. [AWD Valley (online text)] A longer version of the same quote appears at the beginning of Nayland Colum's narrative [AWD Keeper].

A quote from Lovecraft's The Picture in the House appears at the start of Jack's narrative. Upton Gardner had a copy of Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others, which Gardner thought might help to explain the events at Rick's Lake. Jack saw correspondences between the stories in The Outsider and Gardner's notes. Prof. Partier said that Lovecraft knew the truth behind various happenings, including those at Innsmouth and Dunwich. [AWD Dweller]

Nayland Colum believed that Cthulhu was a creation of Lovecraft's imagination, though Laban Shrewsbury argued that this was not the case. Shrewsbury referred to the accounts of the Nameless City in the Necronomicon and in Lovecraft's work. [AWD Keeper]

Asaph Gilman noted that Lovecraft died within a year after the publication of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. He believed that Lovecraft was on the track of momentous discoveries regarding Cthulhu. He felt that some inquiry was needed into Lovecraft's allergy to cold and his extreme loathing of all seafood. Asaph Gilman referred to the Johansen narrative recorded by Lovecraft, and to the presence of ichthyic and batrachian men in Lovecraft's fiction. [AWD Gorge]

Dr. Jamison showed Robert Norris stories by H. P. Lovecraft about Cthulhu and R'lyeh. Norris doubted that these stories where the source of Allison Wentworth's ravings. [AWD Wind (online text)]

Andrew Phelan's manuscript begins with a quote from Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time, which later on is also quoted by Laban Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury said that Lovecraft came close to the truth, and that Lovecraft wrote thinly-disguised fiction about the happenings at Innsmouth. Shrewsbury referred to the curious illness that removed Lovecraft from the scene after he wrote stories that revealed progressively more of the Cthulhu-Nyarlathotep-Great Old Ones cults. Shrewsbury felt that Lovecraft was one of the few who might have given any credence to the Celaeno Fragments. [AWD Curwen]

Marius Phillips thought that Lovecraft's fictions were bound with fact, and wondered if Lovecraft died because he came too close to the truth [AWD Seal (online text)].

Laban Shrewsbury referred to the Johansen narrative, discovered in Lovecraft (in The Call of Cthulhu) [AWD Island].

Amos Tuttle and Paul Tuttle noticed that the Ph’nglui chant appears in both the R'lyeh Text and in Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu [AWD Hastur].

John Conrad regarded Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu as one of the three master horror tales [REH Children (online text)].

The old lore is not all Lovecraft's invention. He drew on genuine sources such as the Necronomicon and Song of Yste for his stories, but changed a few names and added his own details. [RAL Graag (online text)]

A writer who used to live in Rhode Island (presumably Lovecraft) knew a lot about an old book (presumably the Necronomicon) associated with the letters AA (presumably Abdul Alhazred), and also knew about "that place" (that is, Settler's Wall). This writer (Lovecraft) wrote of such things as fiction, and corresponded about them with Dave Fenner. [RAL Settlers]

The narrator Rambeau quotes from Lovecraft's The Thing On the Doorstep [DWR Music (online text)].

Elmer Harrod read Lovecraft's story The Call of Cthulhu in Old Dethshill cemetery. He pondered the fact that some of Lovecraft's stories are based on unusually vivid dreams. [JVS Graveyard]

Lovecraft is the supposed narrator of a series of dreams recounted in JVS Snouted.

Related Information

Author of: At the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu, The Haunter of the Dark, The Outsider and Others, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Thing On the Doorstep.

Compare with: Ech-Pi-El, Providence author, a.

See Also: Lovecraft mythos.

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