I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft

by S.T. Joshi

Lovecraft frequently emphasised the quasi-rural nature of his birthplace, situated as it was at what was then the very edge of the developed part of town: . . . I was born in the year 1890 in a small town, & in a section of that town which during my childhood lay not more than four blocks (N. & E.) from the actually primal & open New England countryside, with rolling meadows, stone walls, cart-paths, brooks, deep woods, mystic ravines, lofty river-bluffs, planted fields, white antient farmhouses, barns, & byres, gnarled hillside orchards, great lone elms, & all the authentick marks of a rural milieu unchanged since the 17th & 18th centuries. . . . My house, tho’ an urban one on a paved street, had spacious grounds & stood next to an open field with a stone wall . . . where great elms grew & my grandfather had corn & potatoes planted, & a cow pastured under the gardener’s care.[67]