Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American writer, poet, literary critic and essayist, recognized as one of the greatest writers of horror literature together with Edgar Allan Poe and considered by many to be one of the precursors of Anglo-American science fiction. His works, a contamination between horror, soft science fiction, dark fantasy and low fantasy, have often been described, even by himself, with the term weird fiction (where weird stands for ‘strange’), being recognized among the main origins of the modern literary genre of the new weird.
Lovecraft’s short story
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, which we propose to our readers today, was written and first published in the September 1917 under the pseudonym Humphrey Littlewit, Esq. It was Lovecraft’s second published work, following
The Alchemist. It is focused on the figure of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), often called ‘Dr. Johnson’, the great English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer.
The story is a spoof of Lovecraft’s antiquarian affectations. Littlewit, the narrator, is born August 20, 1690 – 200 years to the day before Lovecraft’s birthdate – making him nearly 228 years old as he writes a memoir.