H.P. Lovecraft: A Titan of Terror

Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:

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He’s American literature’s titan of terror, the writer who created some of the most iconic names in sci-fi. In his 46 short years of life, H.P. Lovecraft was responsible for the alien god Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, and the haunted town of Arkham, where things always go bump in the night. He inspired everyone from Stephen King to Jorge Luis Borges to the writers of Batman. His work has penetrated pop culture so deeply that you can even buy plush toys of his creepiest monsters. Yet H.P. Lovecraft was a man virtually unknown in his lifetime, living as a recluse in Rhode Island. He created a sprawling fictional universe that fused traditional horror with cutting-edge science in new and revolutionary ways, and then he died before more than a handful of people could read it.

In this video, we explore how this virtual high meadow became sickness, isolation, and his own prejudices to become the 20th century’s master of horror. One of the recurring themes in Lovecraft’s work is ordinary families hiding dark secrets in their lineage. You don’t have to look too hard to find the inspiration for this in August 20, 1890, when Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born into the stately ancestral home of one of the oldest families in Providence. His mother’s side were wealthy aristocrats with rumors of inbreeding in their backgrounds, while his father was a traveling salesman already suffering from undiagnosed syphilis. Before young Howard was even three, his dad had a nervous breakdown brought on by his disease and was confined to a lunatic asylum. Although the old man lived another five years, Lovecraft would never see him again.

Despite the setback, Lovecraft’s mother, Sarah, tried to give her child a relatively normal life. The two moved in with her father, the incredibly wealthy Whipple van Buren Phillips. It was here that Lovecraft got his first taste for the uncanny; one of Whipple’s party tricks was to invent chilling ghost stories on the spot, much to the delight of his grandson. Still, Whipple couldn’t make up for the obvious hole in young Lovecraft’s life. From almost the day that his father collapsed, Lovecraft was paralyzed by psychological maladies. At the age of six, he had night terrors of faceless men that were so acute he would be left trembling for days. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he barely attended school. While Sarah was raising him, Whipple’s house was stacked with books. Even on days he missed school, Lovecraft was reading his way through the Arabian Nights, Edgar Allan Poe, and even scientific journals. By 1898, Lovecraft was a self-declared atheist and scientist, producing his own homemade magazines on geology.

Strange as his childhood was, it was at least stable, but sadly, that wouldn’t last. On March 27, 1904, Whipple suffered a massive stroke and died the next day. Immediately, Lovecraft’s life was turned completely upside down. It turned out Whipple’s finances had been badly mismanaged, and within days of his death, Lovecraft and his mother were evicted from the house and forced to move into a cramped apartment. The shock was so great that Lovecraft, by now a boy of fourteen, contemplated drowning himself in the Barrington River. Although it wouldn’t come out into the open for a few more years, the day Whipple died was effectively the day that Sarah and her son both went mad.

In 1908, Lovecraft suffered a catastrophic breakdown largely related to this tragedy. Unable to finish high school and unable to attend university, he locked himself away with his mother, cutting off all contact from society. Over the next five years, their relationship turned toxic. Whipple’s death had damaged Lovecraft, and it twisted Sarah; she became verbally abusive towards her teenage son, calling him grotesque and telling him to never leave her side. By 1913, the two were living as codependent recluses. Lovecraft never left home before sunset and spent his endless free time reading pulp magazines. It was during this time that he developed both crippling social anxiety and an abnormal fear of the cold. In short, Lovecraft’s life was painfully depressing, lacking in friends and goals, and he was in danger of simply vanishing from the history books.

But his life was about to be saved by the unlikeliest of heroes: a romance novelist. You’ve probably never heard of Fred Jackson, but had you mentioned his name to H.P. Lovecraft in 1913, the Rhode Island recluse would have been less than pleased. Jackson’s tales were clichéd and formulaic, and Lovecraft, perhaps somewhat masochistically, often wrote letters to the Argosy magazine attacking Jackson’s lack of talent, each time doing so in rhyme. This bizarre behavior caught the attention of Edward F. Das, president of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Intrigued, Das offered Lovecraft a job, and so began one of the unlikeliest literary careers in history.

Flattered by Das’s attention, the 24-year-old Lovecraft took to amateur press work like a fish to water. He wrote essays, published magazines, composed poems, and finally left his mother’s stifling embrace to make some friends. It was those friends who convinced him to try his hand at fiction. Lovecraft had written stories as a child but never anything serious until the summer of 1917, when he sat down and wrote “Dagon,” the story of a shipwrecked sailor who finds himself trapped on a mysterious island filled with the ruins of a hideous civilization. “Dagon” is a short, creepy piece that already contains the seeds of Lovecraft’s greatest works.

In 1919, Lovecraft’s mother had a total breakdown and was confined to a lunatic asylum. She spent two more years raving before finally passing away in May of 1921. Suddenly orphaned and still too strange to fend for himself, Lovecraft was taken in by his aunts, Lillian D. Clarke and Annie E. Phillips. This would not be a happy relationship. Before we dive into that, we should introduce the last significant character in Lovecraft’s life: Sonia H. Greene, a Russian Jew seven years Lovecraft’s senior. Sonia was a familiar face in the amateur press scene and independently wealthy from her successful hat store. Barely two weeks after Sarah’s death, Sonia was visiting an UAPA convention in Boston when she was introduced to the newly orphaned Lovecraft. Somehow, the two hit it off.

What followed wasn’t exactly a fairy tale romance. Lovecraft was so disinterested in sex that Sonia had to encourage him into intimacy by giving him textbooks on romance to study. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lovecraft would later claim he was a virgin when they met. Still, the two genuinely liked one another. On March 3, 1924, they wed in a secret ceremony, only informing Lovecraft’s disapproving aunts by letter. Not long after, Lovecraft left Rhode Island and moved in with Sonia in New York. It was spring 1924, and life was good. Lovecraft was having his first stories professionally published in “Weird Tales,” and Sonia’s hat business was booming. Things were finally getting on track.

Except, of course, it couldn’t last. Sonia was unwell, and by the end of 1924, her illness was consuming so much of her time that the hat shop went bust. Lovecraft, meanwhile, bungled his one shot at a stable income by turning down an opportunity to write for a rival pulp magazine. Come Christmas of 1924, the two were broke. On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved alone to Cleveland for a job left behind in New York, while Lovecraft rented a tiny apartment in Brooklyn’s notorious Red Hook. It was a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Lovecraft hated Red Hook; he absolutely hated it. Surrounded by immigrants and suddenly alone and broke again, he descended into a bitterness that found expression in the worst kind of racism.

Yes, it’s time for us to talk about Lovecraft’s problematic views. Lovecraft held deeply prejudiced beliefs, which are hard to reconcile with his literary legacy. For example, in 1912, at age 22, he wrote a poem referring to Black people in derogatory terms. He was also anti-Semitic, expressing disdain for Jewish people in his writings. However, it’s worth noting that Lovecraft’s racism was complex. His wife Sonia was Jewish, and he had Jewish friends, including the poet Samuel Loveman. Lovecraft was openly racist in the abstract but seemed to discard those beliefs when faced with people he personally liked.

As 1925 dragged on, Lovecraft’s feelings towards foreigners turned into something close to horror. The dread he felt surrounded by a sea of non-white faces morphed into a genuine phobia. It’s been argued that this phobia influenced Lovecraft’s work, with his tales of nameless forces and unknowable aliens reflecting his inner feelings towards New York’s multicultural population. By early 1926, Lovecraft had had enough. He wrote to his aunts, begging for help. They agreed to engineer his return to Providence, but at a price: Sonia would not move to Rhode Island, and he would never see her again. Exhausted and desperate to escape the city he hated, Lovecraft agreed, moving back to Providence on April 17, 1926.

In the summer of 1926, a hideous creature rose out of the waters of the South Pacific—a monster with an octopus-like head and a scaly body. This creature was Cthulhu, and it would become one of Lovecraft’s most important creations. Cthulhu was Lovecraft’s first creation after returning to Providence, an elder god biding its time in the depths of the sea, waiting for the moment humanity would awaken it and destroy the world. Cthulhu has gripped our imaginations ever since.

When Lovecraft first introduced Cthulhu, he had little hope for his latest monster beyond a small paycheck and some fleeting recognition. Luckily, his friends had other ideas. Over the years, Lovecraft had built a circle of pen pals, including Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, and writer August Derleth. When these friends read “Cthulhu,” they went absolutely nuts. It encouraged them to start writing their own tales set in the same universe, leading to the creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.

As this mythos was growing, Lovecraft went through his most productive streak as a writer. Something about moving back to Rhode Island energized him, and in a handful of years, he wrote some of his greatest hits, including “The Color Out of Space,” “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and “At the Mountains of Madness.” It was a master working at his peak, conjuring vistas of alien cities and horizons unlike anything readers had ever experienced before.

Lovecraft may have been living in semi-poverty with two domineering aunts and no access to the woman he loved, but it was clearly doing wonders for his productivity. Even the Wall Street Crash of 1929 failed to dent his newfound enthusiasm. As the 1930s got underway, he was scraping together enough funds to take long jaunts along the coast of New England. But as we’ve learned about Lovecraft’s life, all good things must come to an end, and soon enough, they did.

In 1932, Lovecraft’s aunt Lillian Clarke died. Despite her overbearing personality, Lovecraft was devastated. He and his surviving aunt Annie were forced to move into a tiny apartment, marking the beginning of a long slide into grinding poverty. Lovecraft may have been writing his greatest work at this point, but it was long, complex stuff that had no mass appeal. What he needed were short, punchy tales that he could sell regularly, not something like “At the Mountains of Madness,” which took five years to find a buyer.

Lovecraft had too much integrity—or perhaps too much stubbornness—to lower his standards. He only took on ghostwriting work to survive. Back in 1924, he had ghostwritten for Harry Houdini, and the two had become friends. Sadly, the ghostwriting of Lovecraft’s final years took up all his time and left him drained and as poor as ever. He resorted to eating expired food to survive, and that was only when he could afford to eat at all.

One of the positive achievements Lovecraft made during these gloomy years was to keep up his letter-writing. It’s estimated he sent a hundred thousand letters in his lifetime, second only to the great French philosopher Voltaire. By spring 1936, Lovecraft had almost given up on his fiction; his only story since 1930 had been “The Shadow Out of Time,” now considered a late classic. Why this sudden lack of interest in alien worlds? It may have been because Lovecraft had begun documenting an illness he called “the grip,” which was actually cancer. As 1936 wore on, it ate away at his intestines until his insides were riddled with tumors. Like the recluse he was, Lovecraft refused to see a doctor.

That summer, more bad news came: Robert E. Howard, the Conan writer and Lovecraft’s friend, committed suicide. The death of his pen pal sent Lovecraft spiraling into a depression from which he never fully recovered. By spring 1937, it was clear something was deeply wrong. Lovecraft had written nothing but four poems in over a year. He was in constant agony and consumed by dark thoughts, often sitting alone at night in his cold, gloomy apartment, haunting the darkened room like one of his own creations.

On March 10, 1937, the pain finally became too much. Lovecraft checked himself into the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital, but by then, the cancer had progressed too far for any treatment to help. Five days later, on March 15, 1937, H.P. Lovecraft passed away. In his last moments, it’s possible he wondered what would become of his work after he died. If he did, we can only assume he thought his writings scattered across cheap pulp magazines would soon be forgotten.

However, he had encountered August Derleth. After Lovecraft died, Derleth decided to give the old master the literary send-off he deserved. In August 1939, Derleth founded Arkham House Publishers specifically to publish hardback editions of Lovecraft’s stories. “The Outsider” and others appeared that same year but were not initially successful. However, Derleth, despite being a hack writer who failed to grasp Lovecraft’s vision, was a loyal friend with deep pockets. Over the next few years, he kept Arkham House afloat, putting out volume after volume of Lovecraft’s tales and even translating them into foreign languages.

This turned out to be an excellent move. In post-war France, the French translations of Lovecraft’s works became hugely popular. By the 1960s, Lovecraft was so popular abroad that it made financial sense for Arkham House to re-release his stories stateside. The timing couldn’t have been better, as a new wave of films was making horror popular again. Legions of people who had never read horror or sci-fi flocked to Lovecraft.

By the 1970s, Lovecraft had a serious fan base. His influence was undeniable; writers like Stephen King encouraged others to read Lovecraft, and a group of American fans even replaced Lovecraft’s small tombstone with a gigantic one bearing the legend “I, Providence.” The cult of Lovecraft, like the cults that gather around Cthulhu, could no longer be ignored. In the years since, the myth of Lovecraft has only grown. His stories have entered the canon of American fiction, with volumes released by Penguin Classics and the Library of America. Influential figures like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Guillermo del Toro have all been influenced by him.

Lovecraft is arguably the best-known horror writer whose name isn’t Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps the best way to explain the enduring appeal of H.P. Lovecraft is through the words of Erica Henderson, the Marvel artist responsible for Squirrel Girl. Speaking to The Guardian in 2013, she said, “Lovecraft made a world where humans are alone, floating on a raft in a terrifying larger universe that we cannot possibly comprehend because our time in it has been so short, and we are so insignificant compared to the horrors from the Cthulhu Mythos.” Much of modern horror is based on that idea. We wouldn’t have “Ghostbusters” without Lovecraft.

That’s the best argument I can think of for his work. He may have been a weirdo and held despicable beliefs, but Lovecraft was an artist who would come to influence the very way we think about horror. From his twisted mind, he brought us nightmares we’d never even dreamed of before—nightmares that still haunt us to this day.

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This version maintains the essence of the original transcript while removing inappropriate language and sensitive content.