Literature about Lovecraft

[GolemsVoice]

Greetings, fellow playgrounders.
For my final year at school, I have to write an essay for my German class (Facharbeit, for those of you who are familiar with the German school system). The topic I picked for me was a comparison between Lovecraft's works and the "Schwarze Romantik", a sub-stream of the german "Romantik" epoque. (If any of you knows the exact English translations for those terms, feel free to tell me). The final part will be a comparison of Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann" and E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Ritter Gluck".
Now, the main question is, can anyone recommend me good works about Lovecraft's life, his work, or his thoughts? The language is not important, as long as I can understand it (that would be English and German).
So far, I've found "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" by Michel Houllebecq, which seems to be very good and comprehensive, but I need more.
If anyone can share important views of Lovecraft's work, wth citeable sources, I'd also be glad.

[Timarvay]

Lovecraft wrote a lot of letters. See if you can find copies of them, they might help.

A quick googling came up with this:http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/letters/

Looks like you can find out more via the top bar of the site, too.

[Hairb]

The library at my university has a few different books about Lovecraft, so it would seem that there is a good deal of scholarship on him. You could search the catalogue here (http://www.library.uq.edu.au/) to get you started. Good luck, it sounds like a fun assignment.

[GolemsVoice]

Well, the biggest problem is that most of the literature about him is stored somewhere that is NOT Germany, so gettingt that might be somewhat expensive, which I'm, of course, trying to avoid.
But I will look into it, thanks!

[Catskin]

Sounds like a great topic.

"Schwarze Romantik" is called "gothic romance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_novel)" in English.

The site Timarvey linked to has several interesting looking studies that might help (that are free and easily accessible). Here (http://www.hplovecraft.com/study/articles/).

[WalkingTarget]

S. T. Joshi's biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft:_A_Life) was well done, I think. I'm not sure if you'd be able to find a copy in Germany, though. Good luck! :smallsmile:

Edit - Come to think of it, some more of Joshi's stuff might be applicable. The Weird Tale (http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Tale-S-T-Joshi/dp/0809531224/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219102529&sr=8-1) for example. It's not all Lovecraft, but there might be some more in there that could be useful.