H. P. Lovecraft Accomplishments

Great un-named beasts and creatures older than the universe that make skin crawl and give readers nightmares are only a few of the things encountered while reading H.P. Lovecraft’s great stories. H.P. Lovecraft was a man of many faces with many critics reporting his work, yet during his life he could never have fathomed the impact his writings have had on literature and culture. Although Lovecraft never experienced fame in his lifetime, he has become a critically acclaimed writer that has had a lasting impact that will continue to affect the world of cosmic horror for a long time to come.

Much of Lovecraft’s odd behavior and writing style could be explained by his background and life. HP Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence,

However with the great span of his writings throughout many genres it is difficult to criticize all of it and most critics focus on later, more mature, works. For many, Lovecraft was a horror writer. Such as Fritz Leiber Jr. wrote in 1949 that “Lovecraft was the Copernicus of the horror story” with shifting the focus from the supernatural to space and creating a new form of horror (Bryfonski 267). Lovecraft was essentially taking the science fiction that people knew as well as the horror they knew and combined them to create a new form of genre. Leiber is correct in his thoughts that a new form of horror was being created in Lovecraft’s works. Lovecraft took the classic horror tropes and implanted them in new worlds making a classic genre into something fresh that is exciting and horrifying. Many critics agree that while Lovecraft might have weaknesses his stories still stand up amongst some of the best American authors. E.F. Bleiler says it best in his review when he writes “Lovecraft’s weakest moments tend to be those in which he describes a monster visually,” yet he later compares Lovecraft to Poe and Hawthorne, calling him one of the last Romance writers (Bryfonski 273). All writers have weaknesses, what matters is a writer's ability to make up for those weaknesses in other ways, which Lovecraft achieves. Critics realize that Lovecraft perhaps was not the most advanced or technical writer but what

Perhaps the most noticeable one is that although Lovecraft did not create the genre of cosmic horror he did recreate it by viewing it as more scientific and removing the Victorian morals (Nevins). Cosmic horror was well underground and featured many of the same archetypes, yet what Lovecraft did was give it a new breath of life by making it more modern. Lovecraft had an interest in science and an obsession with horror, he mixed the two together in a way that had yet to be done, revolutionizing the genre and setting a precedent for cosmic horror yet to