THE COLLECTIBLE LOVECRAFT

“The most important U.S. horror writer since Edgar Allan Poe.”

— Publishers Weekly

Since his death in 1937, H.P. Lovecraft has lived two lives.

First, Lovecraft is notable for his 60 or so stories that have captivated readers from the first time they were published until the present day. During his lifetime, Lovecraft's professional sales and limited popularity were only to be found in pulp magazines such as WEIRD TALES and AMAZING STORIES. Instead, he chose to spend most of his time submitting his writing to private journals, fan magazines and other such publications, some that were esoteric even back then. It was not until Arkham House, founded by Donald Wandrei and August Derleth, who deemed Lovecraft's work to be important enough to preserve, published a book of his collected tales, "The Outsider and Others", two years after his death in 1939. It was only then that he began to be more widely recognized and found some traction in mainstream literature. After more editions by Arkham House, Lovecraft's work enjoyed a resurgence of interest in 1970 with numerous publications that contained his fiction (the Ballantine/Beagle Adult Fantasy series immediately comes to mind).

In the last decade, Lovecraft has become extremely popular with fans of horror, science fiction and even gaming. Many films have adapted his work since Roger Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963) Daniel Haller's DIE, MONSTER DIE! (1965), and Vernon Sewell's CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR (1968). Countless books have been written about Lovecraft and his literary influence since L. Sprague de Camp's seminal, but sometimes criticized, biography in 1975. However, Lovecraft's crowning achievement was when a collection of his stories was published by The Library of America and edited by Peter Straub, confirming, as well as ensuring his literary legacy.

Second, Lovecraft has been recently demonized for being, as one writer put it, a "pathological racist". This is not surprising considering the current climate of attempting to remove large swaths of history and literature by a mob of woke-thirsty revisionists. It is irrational to think that the past can be removed, or the removal of the past will make society "better", or perhaps more accurately, "less worse"; it's just not plausible. Like the current saying goes: "Once seen, it cannot be unseen". One only needs to remember Whoopie Goldberg's recent on-screen rant during the talk show, "The View", where she claimed that the Holocaust was "not about racism", as an example. The fact that the "Final Solution" was codified in Hitler's autobiography, "Mein Kampf" (1925), and put into practice in the 1930's adds more credence than any other misinformed assertion. That Ms Goldberg took a Jewish name only makes the matter more bewildering.

I would venture a guess that most, if not nearly all readers of Lovecraft's work are respectful of the traditions and beliefs that form an essential part of his oeuvre. In today's terms, Lovecraft would certainly be considered a racist, but not during the time in which he lived. Many people were in fear and felt threatened by the mass immigration of people from Europe and Asia during this time, the same feeling that were prevalent during the previous century. Lovecraft's problem was that he infused these common feelings in his writings. It seems silly to have to say this, but naysayers are infrequently convinced that their views are spurious, if not outright erroneous

The article below is from the April, 2000 issue BOOK AND MAGAZINE COLLECTOR (#193), and and offers an unfiltered discussion of his life and work.

NOTE: The pen and ink illustration shown at the top of this post is copyright (c) 2004 by Linda Navroth.