American writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) is a brilliant master of black fiction, horror, and the literature of “unquiet presence.” Unrecognized during his lifetime, he is now considered a classic of this genre. His success was, so to speak, inevitable, since plot ingenuity and a sense of the total horror of human existence are combined with excellent scientific erudition. This is a gloomy and merciless writer, the inventor of a new map of hell, a magical geographer of otherworldly space. American criticism considers him a follower of Edgar Poe. Let the reader judge how fair this is.