The Call of Cthulu by H.P. Lovecraft
A master of fantastical horror stories, H.P. Lovecraft was born Howard Phillips Lovecraft in 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. Lovecraft had an unusual childhood marked by tragedy. His traveling salesman father developed a type of mental disorder caused by untreated syphilis when he was around the age of three. In 1893, his father became a patient at the Butler Hospital in Providence and there he remained until his death in 1898.
A sickly child, Lovecraft spent many of his school years at home. He became an avid reader, devouring works on a variety of texts. Lovecraft loved the works of Edgar Allan Poe and developed a special interest in astronomy. As a teenager, he did attend Hope High School, but he suffered a nervous breakdown before he could earn his diploma. Lovecraft became a reclusive figure for several years, choosing to stay up late studying and reading and writing and then sleeping late into the day. During this time, he managed to publish some articles on astronomy in several newspapers.
One of his most famous works, “The Call of Cthulu” was written in the summer of 1926 and revolves around a monstrous deity of immense power. In the text, narrator Francis Wayland Thurston recounts his discovery of notes left behind by his granduncle who was a prominent Professor of Semitic languages at Brown University who died suddenly of mysterious causes. The first chapter concerns a small bas-relief sculpture found among the papers, which the narrator describes “…Pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature…. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings,” as shown in the picture above.
The sculpture is the work of Henry Anthony Wilcox, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design who based the work on his delirious dreams of “great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror”. Wilcox frequently refers to Cthulhu and R'lyeh. The full text can be found here, a biography on H.P. Lovecraft here, and more creepy stories here.
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