Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island. There he would live all of his life -- apart from two years in New York and various antiquarian sojourns, mainly within New England. His love of his native city and the region was profound and it provided the locale for most of his fiction.
He began reading at the age of four with such classics as the Brothers Grimm and Jules Verne. This was soon supplemented by Greek and Roman myth, and he also read widely in 18th-century Georgian verse, which provided a model for much of his own poetry. At the age of seven or eight he discovered Poe, who inspired his first juvenile fiction; of the discovery he would later write "it was my downfall," indicating that he would never again see the beauty of the world without an awareness of death.
In a couple more years, before age ten, Lovecraft discovered science. He fell in love with astronomy, which gave him, very early on, the cosmic perspective so important to his later works. Over the next ten years he wrote columns on astronomy for local papers as well as composing several volumes on astronomy and chemistry.
He was plagued by ill health all of his life; in the form of headaches, nervousness, and general fatigue it interferred with his school attendence, and a nervous breakdown prevented him from finishing high school and thus going on to college. This did not, however, prevent him from obtaining a superb self-education, thanks at first to his grandfather Whipple Phillips' extensive library; he was extremely erudite and constantly amazed his well-educated friends with his wide reading and sterling memory.
In the spring of 1937, the Gentleman from Providence was diagnosed with cancer. After five days in the hospital, Lovecraft died on March 19, 1937 -- not yet 47 years of age -- of cancer of the intestine and inflammation of the kidneys, from which he had suffered for a year -- he had called it "the grippe" and refused to see a doctor. He was buried in his family plot in Swan Point Cemetary, but it was not until forty years later that a stone was erected to mark the spot -- a labor of love on the part of his fans, organized by scholar Dirk Mosig. It reads, aptly, "I am Providence."
