H.P. Lovecraft was an American author in the early 1900s who was a pioneer in the strange horror and science fiction genre. He was born in Providence and died in Providence, Rhode Island. Being born in the year 1890 he died at the young age of 46 in the year 1937 of intestinal cancer. Though his contribution to American liturature was great, he made little money from them during his lifetime.
The years prior to his death he faced financial difficulties. His writings, more than 60 in total, would receive much greater attention after his death than during his lifetime. Since then his writings have been a major influence to todays fantasy and horror writers.
My theological beliefs are likely to startle one who has imagined me as an orthodox adherent of the Anglican Church. My father was of that faith, and was married by its rites, yet, having been educated in my mother's distinctively Yankee family, I was early placed in the Baptist sunday school. There, however, I soon became exasperated by the literal Puritanical doctrines, and constantly shocked my preceptors by expressing scepticism of much that was taught me. It became evident that my young mind was not of a religious cast, for the much exhorted "simple faith" in miracles and the like came not to me. I was not long forced to attend the Sunday school, but read much in the Bible from sheer interest. The more I read the Scriptures, the more foreign they seemed to me. I was infinitely fonder on the Graeco-Roman mythology, and when I was eight astounded the family by declaring myself a Roman pagan. Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other. I had really adopted a sort of Pantheism, with the Roman gods as personified attributes of deity. . . . My present opinions waver betwixt Pantheism and rationalism. I am a sort of agnostic, neither affirming nor denying anything.