Lovecraft: A Biography

This was the first major full-length biography of H. P. Loevcraft, generally regarded as the greatest horror fiction writer of his time and well as one of the first serious writers about horror fiction with his Supernatural Horror in Literature. De Camp, whose own fantasy/sf writing is generally lighter (and to me, more enjoyable) than Lovecraft's, and who belonged to the immediately following group of writers, wrote a competent and reasonably sympathetic life, though understandably unsympathetic to Lovecraft's nativist contempt for immigrants and a bit condescending about Lovecraft's less than successful marriage.

This biography is only so-so. When I read it there wasn't a lot of biographical information about Lovecraft (this was well pre-internet, even pre-PC), so there was nothing to compare it to. De Camp, for whatever reasons, had a lot of goofy notions about Lovecraft's personal life that he drew not from knowledge, but by interpreting a lot of Lovecraft's writing and a lot of hearsay. He also seemed to have some kind of ax to grind. I always thought most of de Camp's fictional output was only so-so anyway.

There are lot better biographies out there now so I would steer clear of this one.

The is a reasonably balanced biography of H. P. Lovecraft. de Camp's preface explains much about how and why he chose to write the book, and it's clear that although de Camp doesn't quite understand some aspects of Lovecraft's life, in many ways he came to respect Lovecraft as a person, even while decrying several of his choices in life.

This book contains alot of interesting facts derived from Lovecraft's correspondence with a variety of individuals including family and literary peers. It is also rather disorganized and repetitive. A writer with more enthusiasm for his subject would produce a much better biography.

A thorough biography of Lovecraft, which is /wonderful,/ but critically speaking I don't think de Camp gets him and I'm finding de Camp's snobbishness annoying.

OK, it's flawed, but it was pretty good for the time, and the first serious bio of Lovecraft I read.