H.P. Lovecraft is a modern master of horror and gothic fiction, influencing a generation of writers and creating dark worlds that still haunt the speculative fiction of today. Lovecraft's father died in a mental institution when Lovecraft was only two years of age and he spent very little time at school, due to illnesses. In his early years though he corresponded with amateur writers and editors, wrote essays, poetry and reviews for amateur magazines. In the 1920s he began to sell to the popular pulp magazines of the day, particularly Weird Tales and Astonishing Tales. Steven J. Mariconda(Introduction) has been a keen literary analyst of H.

P. Lovecraft for four decades. He has contributed to numerous reference works including Icons of Horror and the Supernatural(2006), Horror Literature Through History(2017), Chelsea House's Twentieth Century American Literature(1986), and Gale's Short Story Criticism(1994). His essays were collected inH. P. Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality(2013). Since 2017, his column 'How to Read Lovecraft' has appeared in Lovecraft Annual.