Lovecraft: A Biography is a 1975 biography
of the writer H. P. Lovecraft by science-fiction
writer L. Sprague de Camp, first published
in hardcover by Doubleday in February 1975.
== Criticisms and de Camp's responses ==
The biography, a 
warts-and-all examination of the famous horror
and science-fiction writer, was the first
major independent biography of Lovecraft.
De Camp's approach has been called frank and
judicious by some, unflattering and unbalanced
by others. For instance, de Camp criticized
Lovecraft's resolutely non-commercial attitude
to his writing, whereas Lovecraft deliberately
maintained that the bulk of his writing was
for his own amusement only, and that of his
close friends.
De Camp himself considered some of the criticism
of his book as expressed in reviews of the
hardcover had merit, and accordingly altered
the text in the paperback edition to take
account of these criticisms. Altogether, de
Camp cut about 13,000-16,000 "repetitions,
digressions and speculative obiter dicta"
from the paperback edition. On the requirement
of the publisher he also "eliminated the notes
section, bibliography and index," an excision
he was reportedly unhappy about.
== Editions and translations ==
A later hardcover edition was issued by Barnes
& Noble in January 1996. The first paperback
edition, corrected and abridged by the author,
was published by Ballantine Books in August
1976. The first British edition was published
by New English Library in 1976. An E-book
edition of the Ballantine version of the work
was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint
on September 29, 2011 as part of a general
release of de Camp's works in electronic form.The
book has also been translated into German,
Russian, and several other languages.
== Awards ==
The book was nominated for the 1976 World
Fantasy Award, Special Award (Professional),
and placed fourth in the 1976 Locus Poll Award
for Best Associational Item.
== Relation to other works ==
De Camp's Lovecraft biography was preceded
by August Derleth's biography H.P.L.: A Memoir
(1945), and has now been very largely superseded
by S.T. Joshi's more comprehensive treatment
I Am Providence (Hippocampus Press, 2 vols,
2010) (first published in abridged form by
Necronomicon Press, 1996, as H. P. Lovecraft:
A Life), which draws on decades of scholarship
by Joshi and others.
== Notes ==
== External links ==
"Lovecraft A 
Biography by L. Sprague de Camp" - a book
review by John Goodrich
Review by Cliff Almas [1]
