E X T E N S I O N H. P. LOVECRAFT S INFLUENCE AND FORTUNE During his lifetime, H.P. Lovecraft did not become very famous. Of course, the regular readers of pulp magazines like Weird Tales knew him and often wrote to him with their compliments or criticism. From 1916, Lovecraft also carried on a regular correspondence with contemporary writers.They soon became his best friends: for some of them he was a source of inspiration and with some he collaborated, though not all of them ever met him in person. Among the friends were the Californian poet Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961); August W. Derleth (1909-1971), later co-founder of the editing house Arkham House, intended to preserve Lovecraft s work; Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) the creator of Conan the Barbarian; Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932), author of fantasy tales, some of which were written with Lovecraft; J. Vernon Shea (19121981) whose article, published in 1965 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , revived1 Lovecraftian criticism in the U.S.A., following the success Lovecraft was enjoying in Europe at the time; Seabury Quinn (1889-1969), the author of Jules de Grandin, a detective of the occult very popular in Weird Tales ; Robert Bloch (1917-1994), author of the novel Psycho among others, who was always grateful to Lovecraft for his encouragement and help. These writers became known as the Lovecraft circle because they drew2 and some of them developed elements of horror, the supernatural, the extra-terrestrial and the mythos, typical of Lovecraft s stories. Lovecraft s influence can also be found in fantasy and horror writers such as the Argentinian short-story writer and essayist Jorge Louis Borges 1. revived: brought back. 2. drew (draw-drew-drawn): took out. 66