Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890 - and it was there that he spent most of his life and wrote his most influential works. A master of the ambiance of macabre and sublime darkness, he began writing horror stories at age 8; however, his first commercial success did not come until he was in his 30s.
Although he is today widely considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Lovecraft saw little if any of that success during his lifetime. His writing never provided him enough income to cover his living expenses, and he lived chiefly on a dwindling inheritance, in progressively more and more straitened circumstances, until his early death, from cancer, on the Ides of March, 1937.
