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  Remembering H. P. Lovecraft, author of horror tales on his birthday. H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) was an American writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction whose reputation grew dramatically after his death. Working largely outside the literary mainstream and publishing much of his fiction in pulp magazines, he developed a distinctive form of cosmic horror in which humanity confronts ancient forces and a universe vast, indifferent, and largely unknowable. His best-known story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” became central to what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos—a loosely connected fictional universe of forbidden knowledge, ancient beings, strange cults, and cosmic dread. Lovecraft's mythology continued to expand after his death as other writers adopted and reinterpreted its characters, creatures, and ideas. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life there and made New England an essential part of his fictional landscape. Despite the lasting power of that ...
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  Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period, best known for "Typee" (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel "Moby-Dick" (1851). Fun Fact: Much of Melville’s later work, which is now considered his most highly regarded fiction, was neither critically nor commercially successful during his lifetime. For instance, between 1863 and 1887, an average of only 23 copies of "Moby-Dick" were sold annually. Today, "Moby-Dick" sells more copies each year than were sold in the entire nineteenth century and is recognized as a classic. Interestingly, its influence extends into the modern world of coffee and capitalism: the founders of the Starbucks chain took the name from a character in Melville’s novel. During the last thirty years of his life, his work was nearly forgotten. Melville's writing draws from his experiences a...
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TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: January 26 A. E. van Vogt A. E. van Vogt claimed that many of his ideas came directly from his dreams. Throughout much of his writing life, he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during sleep so he could record them—a practice that helped fuel the vivid, disorienting logic of his fiction. In his early work, van Vogt displayed a startling, almost dreamlike imagination. His stories were marked by abrupt shifts in perspective, dense imagery, and narrative leaps that set him apart from the rockets-and-ray-guns science fiction of the period. At a time when the genre was struggling for literary credibility, his work hinted at something deeper and more psychological. Encouraged by editor John W. Campbell, van Vogt brought ideas from psychology and language theory into traditional science-fiction themes—alien contact, interstellar war, time travel, immortality, and the superhuman. He became particularly fascinated by systems of knowledge, introducing readers to ...
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 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: January 15 Birth of Moliere [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] One of his characters has become shorthand for a certain kind of person. Just as Dickens gave the world Scrooge for all tight-fisted misers and Shakespeare gave us Romeo as the name for all romantic male lovers, so Molière has given us Tartuffe, a person defined by the OED as a ‘hypocritical pretender to religion, or, by extension, to excellence of any kind’ (first cited in 1688).   “Building Your Great Collection One Fine Book at a Time” BlindHorseBooks.com  
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