Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was of predominantly of British stock on both sides of his family, consumed by eccentricity. His mother keep his son from contact with the outside world. She treated him like a girl, and made him wear his hair long until the age of six. Lovecraft's father, named after the hero Winfield Scott, was a traveling salesman, who went mad, probably from syphilis, was institutionalized, and died when his son was five.

Lovecraft suffered from terrifying nightly disturbances and nightmares which lasted until his own death. This deeply personal material also clinged to his stories, such as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1928). "From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person.

He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind."

Lovecraft grew up as a fringe member of the conservative New England aristocracy. He was educated at local schools, although often he was kept away from school by his overprotective mother. Lovecraft's poor health as a young boy led him to read voluminously from his grandfather's old library.

During this time he found the works of Edgar Allan Poe, who had visited several times the library in Province, and who became the model for his literary compositions. He also read works by Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, and Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), who inspired him to write the short novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926-27). "The most poignant sensations of my existence are those of 1896, when I discovered the Hellenic world, and of 1902, when I discovered the myriad suns and worlds of infinite space," Lovecraft once said to his friend. In his early career Lovecraft struggled to assimilate all these literary influences he encountered, finding his own voice after years of writing.

After two and half years of high school, he had a "nervous collapse" and failed to leave secondary school with a diploma. However, he was fascinated by science and by the age of 16 he wrote on astronomy for local newspapers. At the age of 27 he was still at home, writing gloomy tales for amateur publications.

The publisher of Weid Tales magazine, Clark Henneberger, become interested in the work of the Rhode Island hermit, a character not far from his stories, and published 'Dragon' in the Octobor 1923 issue. Henneberger bought everything he wrote. For Harry Houdini, the famous magician who "contributed" to the magazine, Lovecraft ghostwrote 'Imprisoned with the Pharaohs' (1924). Eventually Lovecraft was offered the job of editor at Weird Tales, but he turned the offer down.

Lovecraft's mother died when the author was 31 - at the same insane asylum as his father. Lovecraft continued to live with his two aunts. His marriage in 1924 with Sonia Greene, who was seven years his senior, lasted only until 1926. Sonia was a Jew and she has recalled that her husband hated Jewish immigrants, but he was an "adequately excellent lover."

After two miserable year in New York, an example of the disintegration of society, "a babel of sound and filth," Lovecraft moved back to Providence, where he spent the rest of his life with his aunts. Social contacts Lovecraft maintained mainly by mail - Lovecraft's letters to Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) alone averaged about 40,000 words a year. While still in his thirties, he began referring to himself as an "old gentleman" and signing his letters as "Grandpa". L. Sprague de Camp has claimed in Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) that the author wrote over 1000,000 letters.


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