First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem of the same name, he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers and in the tabletop roleplaying games making use of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The twenty-first sonnet of Lovecraft's poem-cycle " Fungi from Yuggoth " ( 1929 / 30 ) is essentially a retelling of the original prose poem.

* In H. P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness, a character refers to the poem.

Lovecraft's famous early poem " Nemesis "( 1917 ) was also influenced by a combination of " Ulalume " and Algernon Swinburne's " Hertha ".

The phrase " mad Arab ", sometimes with both words capitalized in Lovecraft's stories, is used so commonly before Alhazred's name that it almost constitutes a title.

An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the cosmic horrors that apparently exist in the universe, with Lovecraft constantly referring to the " Great Old Ones ": a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and who have since fallen into a deathlike sleep.

Lovecraft's viewpoint made no allowance for religious belief which could not be supported scientifically, with the incomprehensible, cosmic forces of his tales having as little regard for humanity as humans have for insects.

Although not formalised and acknowledged as a mythos per se, Lovecraft did correspond with contemporary writers ( Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, and Fritz Lieber – a group referred to as the " Lovecraft Circle ") – and shared story elements: Robert E. Howard's character Friedrich Von Junzt reads Lovecraft's Necronomicon in the short story " The Children of the Night " ( 1931 ), and in turn Lovecraft mentions Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten in the stories " Out of the Aeons " ( 1935 ) and " The Shadow Out of Time " ( 1936 ).

") He was a member of the Lovecraft circle, ( Smith's literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937 ).

Furthermore, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany with their pantheon of mighty gods existing in dreamlike outer realms, moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of imitative fantasies in a ' Dreamlands ' setting.

Lovecraft's style has often been criticised by unsympathetic critics, yet scholars such as S. T. Joshi have shown that Lovecraft consciously utilised a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own-these include conscious archaism, prose-poetic techniques combined with essay-form techniques, alliteration, anaphora, crescendo, transferred epithet, metaphor, symbolism and colloquialism.

This group of writers became known as the " Lovecraft Circle ", since they all freely borrowed elements of Lovecraft's stories – the mysterious books with disturbing names, the pantheon of ancient alien entities, such as Cthulhu and Azathoth, and eldritch places, such as the New England town of Arkham and its Miskatonic University – for use in their own works with Lovecraft's encouragement.

Other notable works with Lovecraft as a character include Richard Lupoff's Lovecraft's Book ( 1985 ), H. P.

In 2005 the prestigious Library of America canonized Lovecraft with a volume of his stories edited by Peter Straub, and Random House's Modern Library line have issued the " definitive edition " of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness ( also including " Supernatural Horror in Literature ").

Lovecraft's essay " Supernatural Horror in Literature ", first published in 1927, is a historical survey of horror literature available with endnotes as The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, with the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writing.

Regardless of the legal disagreements surrounding Lovecraft's works, Lovecraft himself was extremely generous with his own works and actively encouraged others to borrow ideas from his stories, particularly with regard to his Cthulhu mythos.

* Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos ( ISBN 0-586-04166-4 ), written by Lin Carter in 1972, is a survey of Lovecraft's work ( along with that of other members of the Lovecraft Circle ) with considerable information on his life.

* Other significant Lovecraft-related works are An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia by Joshi and David S. Schulz ; Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue ( a meticulous listing of many of the books in Lovecraft's now scattered library ), by Joshi ; Lovecraft at Last, an account by Willis Conover of his teenage correspondence with Lovecraft ; Joshi's A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft.

* Some of Lovecraft's writings are annotated with footnotes or endnotes.

Lovecraft's short story " The Rats in the Walls " makes reference to Trimalchio, reading, " There was a vision of a Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter.

Despite similarities in theme and name, Nyarlathotep does not feature at all in Lovecraft's story " The Crawling Chaos ", ( 1920 / 21 ) an apocalyptic narrative written in collaboration with Winifred V. Jackson ( aka Elizabeth Berkeley ).

The Mi-Go are one of the main enemies of humanity in the role-playing game CthulhuTech, which combines Lovecraft's fiction with tropes and themes from mecha anime.

Critic William Fulwiler argues that Edgar Rice Burroughs ' At the Earth's Core was one of Lovecraft's primary inspirations for " The Nameless City ", citing " the reptile race, the tunnel to the interior of the earth, and the ' hidden world of eternal day '" as elements common to both tales.

( Arkham House's volumes of Lovecraft's letters are highly abridged ; unabridged volumes of Lovecraft's letters to individual correspondents are progressively being issued by Hippocampus Press ).

The Pnakotic Manuscripts are noteworthy for being the first of Lovecraft's fictional arcane books.

Despite being spoken of on only a few occasions in Lovecraft's work, Yig is one of the Ancient Ones included in the Arkham Horror board game, appearing alongside Great Old Ones such as Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep.

Lovecraft's stories as being the creators of their servitor race, the shoggoths.

In addition to being his personal favorite of all of his short stories, critics have considered " The Colour Out of Space " to be one of Lovecraft's best works, as well as the first to establish his trademark blending of science fiction and horror.

Rites follows the New Adventure All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane in identifying the Great Intelligence with H. P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth, a being from the universe before this one.

The being was created by British author Ramsey Campbell, who was inspired by a similar creature in H. P. Lovecraft's commonplace book.

Unlike Lovecraft's deities, Y ' golonac is clearly capable of understanding humans, to the point of being able to conduct a conversation in English through his human host.

While many of Lovecraft's fictional stories were set in rural north-eastern Massachusetts, in real life a large region of rural south-eastern Massachusetts-dubbed the " Bridgewater Triangle "-is famed for being one of the most active areas of reported paranormal sightings in the United States, including a diverse array of phenomena ranging from UFO sightings, to ghosts.

The game is based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, author of The Call of Cthulhu and progenitor of the Cthulhu Mythos, and in particular being an reimagined adaptation of Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Abdul is a common Arabic name component ( but never a name by itself ; additionally the ending-ul and the beginning Al-are redundant ), but Alhazred may allude to Hazard, a pun on the book's destructive and dangerous nature, or a reference to Lovecraft's ancestors by that name.

These supplements were overseen by Keith Herber and provided backgrounds and adventures set in Lovecraft's fictional towns of Arkham, Kingsport, Innsmouth, Dunwich, and their environs.

The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu — a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus of Lovecraft's famous short story The Call of Cthulhu ( first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928 )— to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors.

The first stage, termed the " Cthulhu Mythos proper " by Price, was formulated during Lovecraft's lifetime and was subject to his guidance.

The second stage was guided by August Derleth who, in addition to publishing Lovecraft's stories after his death, attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos.

There have been attempts at categorizing this fictional group of beings, and Phillip A. Schreffler argues that by carefully scrutinizing Lovecraft's writings a workable framework emerges that outlines the entire " pantheon " – from the unreachable " Outer Ones " ( e. g. Azathoth, who apparently occupies the centre of the universe ) and " Great Old Ones " ( e. g. Cthulhu, imprisoned on Earth in the sunken city of R ' lyeh ) to the lesser castes ( the lowly slave shoggoths and the Mi-go ).

The view that there was no rigid structure is reinforced by S. T. Joshi, who stated " Lovecraft's imaginary cosmogony was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator's developing personality and altering interests ... here was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated ... he essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude.

He had been severely affected by several tragedies occurring in a short period of time: Robert E. Howard's death by suicide ( 1936 ), Lovecraft's death from cancer ( 1937 ) and the deaths of his parents, which left him exhausted.

Lovecraft's works are ruled by several distinct pantheons of deities ( actually aliens who are worshipped by humans as deities ) who are either indifferent or actively hostile to humanity.

For instance, in Lovecraft's " At the Mountains of Madness " it is proposed that humankind was actually created as a slave race by the Old Ones.

Some of Lovecraft's work was inspired by nightmares of his own.

The term " Cthulhu Mythos " was coined by Lovecraft's correspondent and fellow author, August Derleth, after Lovecraft's death ; Lovecraft jocularly referred to his artificial mythology as " Yog-Sothothery ".

Among the books found in his library ( as evidenced in Lovecraft's Library by S. T. Joshi ) was " The Seven Who Were Hanged " by Leonid Andreyev and " A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder " by James De Mille.

Lovecraft's fiction has been grouped into three categories by some critics.

Many later figures were influenced by Lovecraft's works, including author and artist Clive Barker, prolific horror writer Stephen King, comics writers Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Mike Mignola, film directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, and Guillermo Del Toro, horror manga artist Junji Ito, and artist H. R. Giger.

The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir of his 1912 will: Lovecraft's aunt, Annie Gamwell.