Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) is an American writer, editor, and journalist. He was born in the city of Providence and was the only child in a wealthy family. In early childhood, Howard lost his father: he fell ill and was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where he died five years later. Since then, the future writer lived with his mother in her parents' house. Howard learned to read and write early, memorizing the poems of the classics by the age of two, and began composing his own poems at the age of six. With the death of his grandfather, Lovecraft's life began to be marred by financial difficulties. His dreams of entering the university were not to be realized: due to a nervous disorder, he was unable to even finish school, which he was very ashamed of. He earned a living through his literary talent. Lovecraft wrote articles and reviews for newspapers and magazines, edited the works of his contemporaries, and periodically published his own writings, but this work was poorly paid, and Howard and his mother barely made ends meet. In 1919, the writer's mother ended up in the same psychiatric hospital where his father had been, and two years later, she died. For Lovecraft, this was a heavy loss. He fully immersed himself in work, and in 1924 he married the writer Sonia H. Green. The marriage brought bright colors to his life; the couple moved to New York, where the writer made acquaintances among literary figures and booksellers. However, soon the couple parted ways, and Lovecraft, no longer finding reasons to stay in New York, returned to Providence. Here he wrote his most famous stories and actively corresponded with many friends. Two of these friends, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, founded Arkham House publishing after the writer's death to publish Lovecraft's works in hardcovers, which had previously appeared only in various magazines. Thus, the legacy of the pioneer of horror literature was saved from oblivion.
Lovecraft's work, filled with supernatural motifs and the search for humanity's place in the Universe, elicited mixed reactions from his contemporaries. Lovecraft sought to create a new, unique literary direction that combined mysticism, fate, superstition, and fear of the unknown. In his stories, familiar reality is called into question, and its boundaries blur, lifting the veil on the primal horror of the world. Today, Howard Lovecraft is one of the most read authors. He influenced the formation of many generations of writers and contemporary mass culture. The collection "The Shadow of Cthulhu" features twenty-two of his stories steeped in mysticism and mysteries. They are accompanied by color illustrations that adorned the early magazine publications of these works in the early 20th century.
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