2013/01/01 by Steffen Hantke · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Gothic Literature and Media Analysis #Crime and Detective Fiction Studies #Modern American Literature Studies
paper · doi:10.1057/9781137320964_9
openalex publication_date 2013/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Howard Philips Lovecraft is either one of three people. He is, first and foremost the product of a community of readers and fans, starting perhaps most auspiciously with August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, who created Arkham House in 1939 as a publishing venture specifically to keep Lovecraft’s work in print. Second, there is the H. P. Lovecraft who is the subject of academic inquiry. Much like Poe or Twain or Faulkner, Lovecraft even has his very own academic journal, Lovecraft Studies (founded in 1980, and followed, more recently, by the Lovecraft Annual [since 2007]), devoted exclusively to the author and his work. Beyond that, a casual search in the bibliography of the Modern Language Association conducted in January of 2012 reveals a staggering 463 entries under his name as keyword, with an even more impressive 1096 hits total. While the relative degree of Lovecraft’s academic canonicity is a matter of disagreement, left to debate among the contributors to the Lovecraft Annual or the members of the MLA, the fact that Lovecraft has long since been retrieved from the obscurity of his pulp origins and elevated to the status of a unique American original voice akin to Edgar Allen Poe is increasingly apparent. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.