Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 12:19:17 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Plato's Atlantis: Fact, Fiction or Prophecy?
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=CarolAnn_Bailey-Lloyd
http://www.underwaterarchaeology.com/atlantis-2.htm
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

H. P. Lovecraft

Pages: [1] 2   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: H. P. Lovecraft  (Read 681 times)
0 Members and 65 Guests are viewing this topic.
Zodiac
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4530



« on: August 20, 2007, 02:53:37 am »



Lovecraft at approximately age nine.

Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, both physically and psychologically. Due to his sickly condition and his undisciplined, argumentative nature he barely attended school until he was eight and then was withdrawn after a year. He read voraciously during this period and became especially enamored of chemistry and astronomy. He produced several hectographed publications with a limited circulation beginning in 1899 with The Scientific Gazette. Four years later he returned to public school at Hope Street High School.

Whipple Van Buren Phillips' death in 1904 greatly affected Lovecraft's life. Mismanagement of his grandfather's property and money left his family in such a poor financial situation they were forced to move into much smaller accommodations at 598 (now a duplex at 598-600) Angell Street. Lovecraft was so deeply affected by the loss of his home and birthplace he contemplated suicide for a time. In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, he suffered a nervous breakdown and consequently never received his high school diploma. ST Joshi suggests in his biography of Lovecraft that a primary cause for this breakdown was his difficulty in higher mathematics, a subject he needed to master to become a professional astronomer. This failure to complete his education (he wished to study at Brown University) was a source of disappointment and shame even late into his life.

Lovecraft wrote some fiction as a youth but from 1908 until 1913 his output was primarily poetry he wrote while living a hermit's existence and having almost no contact with anyone but his mother. This changed when he wrote a letter to The Argosy, a pulp magazine, complaining about the insipidness of the love stories of one of the publication's popular writers. The ensuing debate in the magazine's letters column caught the eye of Edward F. Daas, President of the UAPA, who invited Lovecraft to join in 1914. The UAPA reinvigorated Lovecraft and incited him to contribute many poems and essays. In 1917, at the prodding of correspondents, he returned to fiction with more polished stories such as "The Tomb" and "Dagon". The latter was his first professionally published work, appearing in Weird Tales in 1923. Around this time he began to build up a huge network of correspondents. His lengthy and frequent missives would make him one of the great letter writers of the century. Among his correspondents were Robert Bloch (Psycho), Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian series).

In 1919, after suffering from hysteria and depression for a long period of time, Lovecraft's mother had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Butler Hospital like her husband before her. Nevertheless, she wrote frequent letters to Lovecraft, and they remained very close until her death on May 21, the result of complications from a gall bladder surgery. Lovecraft was devastated by the loss.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2007, 02:54:18 am by Zodiac » Report Spam   Logged


Pages: [1] 2   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy