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H. P. Lovecraft:: A Short Biography
H. P. Lovecraft has been the source of unending fascination since his death in 1937. He himself chronicled many aspects of his life in thousands of letters, and they reveal every aspect of his actions and beliefs. Born in 1890 in Providence, R.I., he was a precocious reader and writer, and also developed an early interest in science. Unable to finish high school, he became one of the greatest autodidacts of his time. Discovering the world of amateur journalism in 1914, he began writing essays, poetry, and fiction. The founding of the pulp magazine Weird Tales provided him with the opportunity to find a devoted readership for his weird tales, and he became a titan in the realm of pulp fiction as his tales of the “Cthulhu Mythos” attracted a wider audience. But he failed to find commercial success in his lifetime, and his work had to be rescued from oblivion by the devoted work of his friends. S. T. Joshi, long regarded as the leading authority on Lovecraft, has now written a succinct biography that focuses on the main events of Lovecraft’s life as well as the central features of his work and his associations with such colleagues as August Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, and others.
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
108 pages, Paperback
Published July 25, 2018
3 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
S.T. Joshi
793 books452 followersSunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James, and has edited collections of their works.
His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.
Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.
In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.
Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.
In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.
Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.
His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.
Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.
In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.
Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.
In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.
Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 7, 2019
A much abridged and less intimidating biography compared to Joshi’s chunker (1200 pages!!) I Am Providence . This is probably a better place for those who are interested but not fanatically devoted to learning about Lovecraft’s personal life.
This book gives broad overviews of different important phases of Lovecraft’s life: his childhood, his isolated hermit years, his brief stay in New York, his return to Providence and creative outburst of story writing, and his early death followed by his posthumous success.
As far as quality goes, Lovecraft scholarship doesn’t get better than Joshi’s thorough work. You can never go wrong picking up a Joshi book. He’s one of the few you can count on to give an intelligent analysis about facets of Lovecraft’s life and philosophy as well as his written work. I may not always agree with him, but the quality of his research and critiques can’t be beat.
There’s probably not much new here for someone who’s already well read on Lovecraft, but this is a great introduction for those wanting to get an overview of Lovecraft’s life (from a place other than Wikipedia).
This book gives broad overviews of different important phases of Lovecraft’s life: his childhood, his isolated hermit years, his brief stay in New York, his return to Providence and creative outburst of story writing, and his early death followed by his posthumous success.
As far as quality goes, Lovecraft scholarship doesn’t get better than Joshi’s thorough work. You can never go wrong picking up a Joshi book. He’s one of the few you can count on to give an intelligent analysis about facets of Lovecraft’s life and philosophy as well as his written work. I may not always agree with him, but the quality of his research and critiques can’t be beat.
There’s probably not much new here for someone who’s already well read on Lovecraft, but this is a great introduction for those wanting to get an overview of Lovecraft’s life (from a place other than Wikipedia).
March 14, 2019
Though about 1100 pages shorter than Joshi’s exhaustive biography I Am Providence (which I still have yet to read), A Short Biography seems to get the job done in 10% of the time.
Quick, easy to read, and lacking most of Joshi’s egotistic flair, A Short Biography was a great read and gave me way more information than I thought was possible about an author who influenced me tremendously while getting my bachelor’s degree.
It’s been a long while since I read any Lovecraft, so not only was this bio a great look at his life, but it also encouraged me to dust off my Lovecraft collection and go nose-deep into his works.
Quick, easy to read, and lacking most of Joshi’s egotistic flair, A Short Biography was a great read and gave me way more information than I thought was possible about an author who influenced me tremendously while getting my bachelor’s degree.
It’s been a long while since I read any Lovecraft, so not only was this bio a great look at his life, but it also encouraged me to dust off my Lovecraft collection and go nose-deep into his works.
January 22, 2026
'His uniquely nightmarish vision of a fragile humanity lost in the incalculable vortices of space and time, expressed in prose that is rich, dense, and evocative, seems to resonate over the generations. While so many writers of the past have dated themselves by focusing on transient social concerns, Lovecraft conveyed the existential angst of human beings who find themselves simultaneously attracted and terrified by the vastness of the cosmos.'
All in all, here's a solid, short biography of a man who quietly revolutionised horror/ weird fiction; an author who, in any any case and as far I am personally concerned, remains probably one the greatest American prose writers alongside Edgar Poe.
On the one hand, this short biography (and oh boy! It is short!) is straightforwardly organised, as each chapter focuses indeed on clearly divided parts of Lovecraft's life. This makes for an easy, chronological approach showing him morphing not only as a person but, also and as a result, as an author. The fact that the writing style is very engaging makes it even more of a fascinating page-turner. On the other hand it is, also, a welcome debunking of a few silly, persistent myths. For instance, Lovecraft was certainly not the deep recluse who we may think he was (it was somehow true but to a certain extent only...) and the Cthulhu Mythos as we came to know it was certainly not how he understood and so designed it originally (ours has more to do with the work of August Derleth who, in many respects, would betray Lovecraft's vision...).
Having said that, and for all my liking otherwise, I had my few disappointments.
There are, of course, a few divergence in taste. S.T. Joshi doesn't shy away from being very critical of some of Lovecraft's work whereas, personally, I admire them all. I therefore found myself cringing more than once at his blunt opinions of some of his short stories, as some of them remain, despite their predictability, unoriginality and/ or overdone tone, quite high in my personal esteem.
More troubling perhaps was, however, his seemingly shrugging off of Lovecraft's racism; besides not dealing whatsoever with some of his other very bigoted views Now, he doesn't deny it; he doesn't dilute it; and he certainly doesn't excuse it. Nevertheless, he seems to don't make it a central piece in assessing Lovecraft's work whereas, re-reading Lovecraft these days, I personally am deeply struck by how his stories reflect somehow the worst fears then 'en vogue' among a certain intelligentsia (racism and the fear of miscegenation of course, but also eugenics and the so-called 'degeneracy theory'...).
In the end, I still highly recommend it for a quick but insightful overview. Regarding my personal reservations, I am aware that, not only other biographers have taken a different approach by, on the contrary, insisting on Lovecraft's racist views but, also, that S.T. Joshi wrote extensively to counter-balance them. My next step, then, will be to familiarise myself of such other biographers besides tackling the author's massive Lovecraft and a World in Transition: Collected Essays on H. P. Lovecraft.
All in all, here's a solid, short biography of a man who quietly revolutionised horror/ weird fiction; an author who, in any any case and as far I am personally concerned, remains probably one the greatest American prose writers alongside Edgar Poe.
On the one hand, this short biography (and oh boy! It is short!) is straightforwardly organised, as each chapter focuses indeed on clearly divided parts of Lovecraft's life. This makes for an easy, chronological approach showing him morphing not only as a person but, also and as a result, as an author. The fact that the writing style is very engaging makes it even more of a fascinating page-turner. On the other hand it is, also, a welcome debunking of a few silly, persistent myths. For instance, Lovecraft was certainly not the deep recluse who we may think he was (it was somehow true but to a certain extent only...) and the Cthulhu Mythos as we came to know it was certainly not how he understood and so designed it originally (ours has more to do with the work of August Derleth who, in many respects, would betray Lovecraft's vision...).
Having said that, and for all my liking otherwise, I had my few disappointments.
There are, of course, a few divergence in taste. S.T. Joshi doesn't shy away from being very critical of some of Lovecraft's work whereas, personally, I admire them all. I therefore found myself cringing more than once at his blunt opinions of some of his short stories, as some of them remain, despite their predictability, unoriginality and/ or overdone tone, quite high in my personal esteem.
More troubling perhaps was, however, his seemingly shrugging off of Lovecraft's racism; besides not dealing whatsoever with some of his other very bigoted views Now, he doesn't deny it; he doesn't dilute it; and he certainly doesn't excuse it. Nevertheless, he seems to don't make it a central piece in assessing Lovecraft's work whereas, re-reading Lovecraft these days, I personally am deeply struck by how his stories reflect somehow the worst fears then 'en vogue' among a certain intelligentsia (racism and the fear of miscegenation of course, but also eugenics and the so-called 'degeneracy theory'...).
In the end, I still highly recommend it for a quick but insightful overview. Regarding my personal reservations, I am aware that, not only other biographers have taken a different approach by, on the contrary, insisting on Lovecraft's racist views but, also, that S.T. Joshi wrote extensively to counter-balance them. My next step, then, will be to familiarise myself of such other biographers besides tackling the author's massive Lovecraft and a World in Transition: Collected Essays on H. P. Lovecraft.
June 7, 2019
S. T. Joshi ha publicado a lo largo de los años varias biografías de Lovecraft: "H.P. Lovecraft: A Life" tenía 700 páginas, y "I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft" eran dos volúmenes llegando a las 1170 páginas. Para mucha gente, probablemente, se trate de obras que acaban explayándose en demasiado detalle accesorio, mas dirigidas a gente que busca mucho detalle y no una simple biografía sencilla.
"A Short Biography" es exactamente lo que parece. Joshi ha consensado la vida de Lovecraft en poco mas de 100 páginas, narrando perfectamente todos los hechos importantes de su vida, los momentos en que escribió cada relato y donde se publicaron, y algunas de sus anécdotas mas llamativas. Es una lectura tremendamente amena, de la que uno sale con un conocimiento global de la vida de Lovecraft bastante adecuado.
No puede evitar Joshi, como siempre le pasa, hacer valoraciones personales de buena parte de los relatos (no coincido con algunas de sus apreciaciones), y teorizar con algunos de los sucesos (aunque siendo justos, parece probable que sucediesen como él afirma). Y con esta longitud era inevitable que algun pasaje se quedase algo corto: el capítulo dedicado al legado de Lovecraft es casi una enumeración de ediciones, ver a Joshi destacando su propio papel se hace un poco raro, y hecho de menos algún detalle adicional sobre el siempre fascinante Barlow). Yo habría incluido también, al final, un apéndice enumerando la obras completas de Lovecraft.
Pero el resultado es tremendamente efectivo. La idea es hacer una biografía corta y asequible, pero fidedigna y bien documentada. Y lo consigue de sobra.
"A Short Biography" es exactamente lo que parece. Joshi ha consensado la vida de Lovecraft en poco mas de 100 páginas, narrando perfectamente todos los hechos importantes de su vida, los momentos en que escribió cada relato y donde se publicaron, y algunas de sus anécdotas mas llamativas. Es una lectura tremendamente amena, de la que uno sale con un conocimiento global de la vida de Lovecraft bastante adecuado.
No puede evitar Joshi, como siempre le pasa, hacer valoraciones personales de buena parte de los relatos (no coincido con algunas de sus apreciaciones), y teorizar con algunos de los sucesos (aunque siendo justos, parece probable que sucediesen como él afirma). Y con esta longitud era inevitable que algun pasaje se quedase algo corto: el capítulo dedicado al legado de Lovecraft es casi una enumeración de ediciones, ver a Joshi destacando su propio papel se hace un poco raro, y hecho de menos algún detalle adicional sobre el siempre fascinante Barlow). Yo habría incluido también, al final, un apéndice enumerando la obras completas de Lovecraft.
Pero el resultado es tremendamente efectivo. La idea es hacer una biografía corta y asequible, pero fidedigna y bien documentada. Y lo consigue de sobra.
January 4, 2023
This book offered a very insightful look into the life and works of Lovecraft. I have more questions, however, and may need to dig a little deeper. But that's the great thing about an intro—I can decide that his life and work are worth a second and third consideration. There are a lot of historical references that make me ponder the rise of the "horror" genre. I'm also wondering about his faith, or lack of faith, journey and how that influenced him and his writings. Lots to reflect upon, which makes it a worthy read, in my estimation.
February 12, 2020
Short but informative. A good way to start to understand Lovecraft as an individual and as a writer.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews