H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft enjoyed but little success during his lifetime. Although he early attracted a small core of avid fans (many of them writers themselves) he never achieved more than semi-regular publication in the pulp magazines of the day. Never as popular as writers like Seabury Quinn, Lovecraft earned most of his always meager income revising and rewriting the works of others, even ghostwriting "Under the Pyramids" (1924) for escape artist Harry Houdini. It was through publication in amateur magazines and later in Weird Tales that Lovecraft was to come into contact with other authors of the macabre tale.

These contacts included already accomplished professionals like Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, as well as talented young writers like Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, and a teenage Robert Bloch. As fate would have it, Lovecraft would make the personal acquaintance of only a few of these people, but long-standing friendships were maintained through voluminous correspondence - long, discursive letters filled with lengthy discussions of literature, philosophy, and science. Before his death this circle of correspondents would include such recognizable names as Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, J. Vernon Shea, E. Hoffman Price, and Fritz Lieber. Some of these letters are collected in the five Arkham House volumes and others are published by Necronomicon Press. Brown University, in Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, maintains a catalogued Lovecraft collection with thousands more.

Lovecraft's fictional worlds and histories were often discussed, as were the worlds created by Smith and other writers. It was not long before Smith and Lovecraft carried over this sharing of ideas into their fiction, referring to each other's creations in their stories. It was Smith who gave birth to such deities as Tsathoggua, Atlach-Nacha, and Abhoth, and who created the magical tome, the Book of Eibon. It was Smith's magical, prehistoric Hyperborea that Lovecraft frequently referred to in his tales. This idea was soon picked up by other authors. Robert E. Howard (whose most famous creation is still Conan the barbarian) created the dreaded Unausprechlichen Kulten and the mad poet Justin Geoffrey, author of the terrible People of the Monolith. These were also incorporated into Lovecraft's stories, along with references to Howard's prehistoric Cimmeria.

The young Robert Bloch provided the blasphemous books De Vermiis Mysteriis and the Cultes des Goules as well as the interstellar and invisible star vampire that devoured a thinly disguised HPL in Bloch's "Shambler from the Stars" (1935). Bloch's creations were quickly absorbed by Lovecraft, who also revenged his "murder" by dispatching protagonist Robert Blake in the "The Haunter of the Dark" (1936). Long-time friend Frank Belknap Long brought to the collection both the hounds of Tindalos and the Space-Eaters, as well as Chaugnar Faugn, who appeared in "The Horror in the Hills", a story by Long based on one of Lovecraft's many vivid dreams.

August Derleth added the most to the now-growing collection of Great Old Ones and alien races. Continuing to write new Cthulhu Mythos stories long after Lovecraft's death in 1937, he created, among others, Cthugha, the Tcho-Tcho people, Ithaqua, and the sand-dwellers. Basing a number of his tales in Lovecraft's fictional towns of Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, he introduced such characters as Dr. Shrewsbury, who, with the use of magicks, voyaged through space to visit the vast alien library circling the star Celaeno. Although many disagree with Derleth's interpretations (his desire to create a pantheon of good gods based on Lovecraft's Nodens, and his attempts to define Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep as elementals) none will deny this man's tireless efforts in keeping the works of Lovecraft in print and available to the public in the decades following HPL's death.

One of Derleth's favorite additions to the Mythos was Hastur, a great being supposedly trapped beneath the Lake of Hali near the city Carcosa on a planet circling the star Aldebaran. Although briefly mentioned by Lovecraft in early tales, these were actually the creations of Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), American journalist and early exponent of the weird tale. Bierce was an early influence on HPL, as were a number of other writers. His favorite author was always Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), and Poe's influence can be clearly seen in some of Lovecraft's first adult fiction. "The Outsider" (1921) perhaps most closely emulates Poe's style and subject matter. Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was another early influence; his story "The Great God Pan" (1894) is very similar in theme to Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror." Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) also left his mark on Lovecraft. A mysterious play, The King in Yellow, figures in some of Chambers' stories and probably inspired Lovecraft to create the Necronomicon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and the other tomes of eldritch lore for which his tales are famous. It was Chambers who first borrowed from Bierce the Lake of Hali and Carcosa, perhaps inspiring Lovecraft to attempt transpositions.

Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) was probably Lovecraft's strongest contemporary influence. It was Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana (1905) that encouraged Lovecraft to write several dream-based stories and first provided him with the idea of an artificial pantheon of gods. Algernon Blackwood, another contemporary admired by HPL, drew upon Native American legends for the version of the Wendigo later adapted into the Mythos by August Derleth, which is there called Ithaqua.