H. P. Lovecraft, by some estimates, is the greatest writer of horror fiction since Edgar Allan Poe. His influence on modern horror art has been enormous, despite his pulp fiction origins. The homage that modern horror writers (and filmmakers) continue to pay him emanated largely from the distinctly modern sensibility he brought to his fiction.

Howard Philips Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island, the only child of Winfield Scott and Susan Philips Lovecraft. In 1893, Lovecraft's father was declared insane and committed to Butler's Hospital in Providence, where he died five years later. Lovecraft and his mother moved in with his maternal grandparents, where Lovecraft attended various Providence public schools. After his grandfather's death in 1904, the family's financial status underwent an immediate decline, and Lovecraft had a nervous breakdown in 1908, just prior to his high school graduation. Over the next...