Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born August 20th, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island. He would die there in 1937... only 46 years old. In his short life, he wrote stories which would change science fiction and horror writing forever. Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King both regarded Lovecraft as a powerful influence on their own writing.

Lovecraft was born in Providence, RI on August 20th, 1890

Though Lovecraft never referred to it as such, the term Cthulhu Mythos has come to represent this body of work.

While a fan of all four authors, Lovecraft reserved a special place in his regard for fellow American author Edgar Allan Poe.

After Lovecraft's death, Derleth took some of Lovecraft's incomplete works, finished them off and published them. Derleth helped found Arkham House and played a key role in keeping Lovecraft's work in print until it was discovered by a broader audience.

Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (called "Under the Pyramids" in draft form) is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in February 1924.  The narrative tells a fictionalized account in the first-person perspective of an allegedly true experience of escape artist Harry Houdini and was credited solely to Houdini until the 1939 reprint.

The thinly veiled character, Robert Blake meets his fate in The Haunter of the Dark. This was Lovecraft's literary counterpunch for Bloch's The Shambler from the Stars, in which a character hinted to be Lovecraft comes to his end. Both stories appeared in Weird Tales, Lovecraft's a year after Bloch's.

The Alert was a heavily armored steam yacht which originated in Dunedin, New Zealand

According to Lovecraft's own chronology, Dagon came first in 1917. He admits to writing a great deal when he was much younger, but he destroyed all this work.

The "Necronomicon" has appeared just about everywhere in popular culture. In Lovecraft's Mythos, one of the few English language copies of the book was translated by John Dee, the real-life spy, mathematician, and alchemist of 17th century England.   Lovecraft put the "Necronimicon" in "A History of the Necronomicon", "The Dunwich Horror", and several other stories. The rhyming couplet "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die", which appears in "The Nameless City" and "The Call of Cthulhu", is quoted from the mythical book.