Remembering H. P. Lovecraft:
August 20, 1890–March 15, 1937
Greg Johnson
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island, and died there of cancer on March 15, 1937. An heir to Poe and Hawthorne, Lovecraft is one of the pioneers of modern science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. Lovecraft is a literary favorite in New Rightist circles, for reasons that will become clear from a perusal of the following works on this website.
By Lovecraft himself:
Short stories and letters:
- “The Street”
- “Polaris”
- “The Racial Worldview of H. P. Lovecraft,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
About Lovecraft:
Book:
- James J. O’Meara, The Eldritch Evola . . . & Others
Podcast:
- Jonathan Bowden, “H. P. Lovecraft: Aryan Mystic”
About the Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature:
- Greg Johnson, “The Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature”
- Greg Johnson, “Leo Yankevich Wins the Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature”
Articles and reviews about Lovecraft:
- Kerry Bolton, “Lovecraft’s Politics” (Translations: Czech, Portuguese, Ukrainian)
- Kerry Bolton, “The Influence of H. P. Lovecraft on Occultism”
- Jonathan Bowden, “H. P. Lovecraft”
- Jonathan Bowden, “H. P. Lovecraft: Aryan Mystic” (Czech translation here)
- Samuel Francis, “At the Heart of Darkness”
- Alex Graham, “Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness”
- Greg Johnson, “H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (Spanish translation here)
- Greg Johnson, “The Lovecraftian Art of Harold Arthur McNeill”
- Alex Kurtagić, “The Gentleman from Providence”: Review of S. T. Joshi’s I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft
- Trevor Lynch, Review of Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown
- James J. O’Meara, “The Corner at the Center of the World”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Eldritch Evola”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Lesson of the Monster; or, The Great, Good Thing on the Doorstep”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Princess and the Maggot”
- James J. O’Meara, “‘A General Outline of the Whole’: Lovecraft as Heideggerian Event,” a review of Graham Harman’s Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
- James J. O’Meara, “The First Steampunk: H. P. Lovecraft’s The Conservative”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Original Weird Critick: H. P. Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Horror! The Horror! Reflections on the H. P. Lovecraft Award”
- James J. O’Meara, “Walk a Mile in Lovecraft’s Shoes”
- James J. O’Meara, “Lovecraft’s Lost Labors: The Origins and Function of the Necronomicon”
- James J. O’Meara, “Our Hemingway, Only Better: Lovecraft Illuminated”
Articles and reviews making substantial use of Lovecraft:
- James J. O’Meara, “A Light Unto the Nations: Reflections on Olaf Stapledon’s The Flames”
- James J. O’Meara, “Mike Hammer, Occult Dick: Kiss Me Deadly as Lovecraftian Tale”
- James J. O’Meara, “Lovecraft in a Northern Town: John Braine’s The Vodi”
- James J. O’Meara, “Knowing All the Angles: The Lovecraftian Fiction of Don Webb”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Dunsany Horror”
- James J. O’Meara, “The First Alt-Right Novel? M. P. Shiel’s Weird Anti-Semitism”
- James J. O’Meara, “Behind the Wicker Man”
As for editions of Lovecraft’s writings, I recommend the Library of America volume H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, ed. Peter Straub (New York: Library of America, 2005), which contains 22 stories and novellas, including all of Lovecraft’s classic mature works, such as “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” “The Colour out of Space,” “The Dunwich Horror,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” “The Dreams in the Witch House,” “The Thing on the Doorstep,” “The Shadow out of Time,” and “The Haunter of the Dark.” All of the texts are based on S. T. Joshi’s definitive edition of Lovecraft’s fiction.
Joshi’s edition is published in three volumes: The Dunwich Horror and Others, selected by August Derleth, ed. S. T. Joshi (Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1963); At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, selected by August Derleth, ed. S. T. Joshi (Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1964); and Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, selected by August Derleth, ed. S. T. Joshi (Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1965). (One must exercise great care in ordering these volumes from Amazon.com, as there are many inferior editions with similar names. The more recent printings are afflicted with hideously cheesy cover art.)
To complete one’s collection of Lovecraft’s fiction, one needs to buy two more volumes. First, there is The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, ed. S. T. Joshi (Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1989), contains works wholly or partially ghost-written by Lovecraft, including some crucial contributions to the Cthuhlu mythos, such as the masterful novella “The Mound,” the fruit of profound meditations on cultural decadence. Second, one needs The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft, ed. S. T. Joshi (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2001).
Joshi has also edited a five volume edition of Lovecraft’s Collected Essays. August Derleth and various collaborators also published a five volumes of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters.
I also recommend S. T. Joshi’s H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1996), which has now been superseded by an expanded, two-volume biography I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2010). Also very interesting from a political and philosophical point of view is Joshi’s H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Gillette, N.J.: Wildside Press, 1990), which deals with Lovecraft’s philosophy of life and art.
The best online resource on Lovecraft is The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
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6 comments
Thanks for the article. I’m just getting into Lovecraft now and this is very helpful.
FYI though, the link to the Bowden podcast seems to be linking to the O’Meara article instead.
I used to like some of Lovecraft’s stuff when I was younger, but now it seems more corny than anything else. A couple stories I still remember fondly though are “Cool Air” and “Behind the Wall of Sleep”
H.P. himself was basically a sickly, hypersensitive loser who couldn’t really be comfortable in his own WASP environment let alone anywhere like the fantasy lands he created. If he was alive today he’d probably be the exact kind of basement-dweller the blue hairs accuse the Right of being. Not really the kind of guy to admire in my opinion.
If someone creates new genres and mythoi and his work and memory live on, I would say that makes him a sick, hypersensitive winner.
If he liked kittens, as per the above picture, then that should be good enough by any estimation.
ACTUALLY, in the above photo he was caught in the act of his favorite pastime… KITTY STRANGLING!!!
Two fairly recent movies in which Cthulhu appears are “Life” (2017), in which Ryan Reynolds states, “This is some real reanimator shit, isn’t it?” The second movie in which Cthulhu appears is “Prometheus” (2012) which overpowers the engineer at the end of the movie.
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