Lovecraft in History--the First Decade

Here is a timeline of H.P. Lovecraft’s earlier work—his first decade.  Publication dates of his various works of fiction are juxtaposed with the work of some of his contemporaries, as well as some important historical or cultural events from the same time period.  The listings are hardly exhaustive—so much was happening in the country at this point in history.  We can only speculate about the factors which may have influenced Lovecraft as he was beginning his career.

Year	H.P. Lovecraft	Contemporaries	Current Events
1916	The Alchemist	Tales of Wonder By Lord Dunsany	World War I in progress, stainless steel invented, end of Progressive Era
1917	A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson	The Son of Tarzan By Edgar Rice Burroughs	Woodrow Wilson’s second term, Women’s Suffrage, zipper is patented
1918	The Beast in the Cave The Poe-ets Nightmare	The Moon Pool By Abraham Merritt The Decline of the West By Oswald Spengler	Influenza epidemic, World War I ends, first fortune cookies
1919	Memory Despair The Picture in the House Beyond the Wall of Sleep Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme The White Ship The House The Nightmare Lake Dagon	Unseen—Unfeared By Francis Stevens In the Penal Colony By Franz Kafka	RCA is founded, pop up toasters invented, soldiers return from the Great War
1920	Poetry and the Gods Nyarlathotep Polaris The Street The Statement of Randolph Carter The Doom That Came to Sarnath The Cats of Ulthar	Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ( film) The Golem (film) Swanee Sung by Al Jolsen	Babe Ruth sold to the Yankees, Prohibition, labor unions struggle
1921	Ex Oblivione Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family To A Dreamer The Nameless City The Crawling Chaos The Terrible Old Man The Tree	Tarzan the Terrible By Edgar Rice Burroughs	Emergence of Hitler and Mussolini, Ku Klux Klan active, first robot, lie detector is invented, first religious service broadcast by radio
1922	The Tomb Celephaïs Herbert West—Reanimator The Music of Eric Zahn	Negotium Perambulans By E.F. Benson Nosferatu (film) The Wasteland By T.S. Eliot Ulysses By James Joyce	USSR forms, insulin developed
1923	Hypnos What the Moon Brings The Horror at Martin’s Beach The Invisible Monster The Lurking Fear	First issue of Weird Tales The Thing From Outside By George Allen England The Hunchback of Notre Dame (film) R.U.R. By Karol Capek	First traffic signals, primitive TV (cathode ray invented), frozen food appears
1924	The Hound The Rats in the Walls Under the Pyramids (aka Imprisoned with the Pharaohs)	The Amulet of Hell By Robert Leonard Russell Rhapsody in Blue By George Gershwin	Dinosaur bones found in Gobi Desert, Calvin Coolidge is president, Will Rogers, spiral notebooks, loudspeakers
1925	The Festival The Temple The Unnamable In the Vault	Lukundoo By Edward Lucas White A Warning to the Curious By M.R. James The Lost World (film) The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald	Surrealism in Art,  Realism, Art Deco
1926	Hallowe’en in a Suburb The Moon Bog He Festival (aka Yule Horror) The Outsider	Winnie the Pooh By A.A. Milne	Liquid fueled rockets