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
The Alchimist, which we propose to our readers today, was written in 1908, when Lovecraft was 17, and first published in the November 1916 issue of the
United Amateur. It was Lovecraft’s first published work.
The story is a first person account narrated by Count Antoine de C. Hundreds of years ago, Antoine’s noble ancestor was responsible for the death of a dark wizard, Michel Mauvais. The wizard’s son, Charles le Sorcier, swore revenge on not only him but all his descendants, cursing them to die upon reaching the age of 32.