AUTHOR OF THE STRANGE
Robert M. Price is a critic, editor, anthologist and fiction writer whose work has played a substantial role in Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos scholarship. For the restored LORE archive he is particularly important because multiple surviving features preserve his criticism and his Moldy Manuscripts series.
Price’s career crosses several fields. He is also a biblical scholar and theologian, and that background often informs his approach to myth, religion and textual relationships. Within Lovecraft studies, however, his most visible work includes editing Crypt of Cthulhu, writing criticism and assembling themed Cthulhu Mythos anthologies.
Robert M. Price and Lovecraft scholarship
Price’s criticism frequently asks where Lovecraft’s ideas came from and how Mythos motifs changed as writers borrowed from one another. That makes influence, textual genealogy and comparative reading recurring concerns. His anthology introductions likewise helped readers trace individual entities, themes and story cycles through Lovecraft and later Mythos fiction.
This approach fits naturally beside LORE’s Lovecraft hub and its broader coverage of weird fiction.
Crypt of Cthulhu and the preservation of criticism
Crypt of Cthulhu became an important specialist venue for Lovecraftian criticism and discussion. Its relevance to LORE is unusually direct: Price’s later Moldy Manuscripts feature explicitly revisited older material that newer readers might never have encountered. In other words, LORE’s 2011 archive was already performing recovery work long before the present restoration project began.
An archive inside an archive: Price used LORE to revive older criticism; the modern LORE recovery project is now restoring those revival pages in turn. That layered history makes his contributions unusually valuable for reconstructing how Lovecraft scholarship circulated before today’s searchable web.
Robert M. Price in the LORE archive
Several recovered pages already form a substantial Price cluster. Begin with MOLDY MANUSCRIPTS vol. 01, where Price explains the purpose of the series. Continue to vol. 02, centered on Poe-related material, and The Criticism of Azathoth.
The restored Lovecraft and Ligeia also provides a concrete example of Price’s interest in literary influence, examining the extent to which Poe’s tale may have shaped Lovecraft’s imagination.
Editor, anthologist and fiction writer
Price has edited numerous collections of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, often organizing them around a particular entity, motif or literary lineage. This editorial work helped make older and obscure stories accessible while framing them as parts of an evolving tradition rather than isolated imitations.
He has also written horror and heroic-fantasy fiction. For LORE, however, his enduring importance lies in the combination of critic, collector and editor: roles that connect individual stories to the larger history of the Mythos.
Further reading
A useful external starting point is Price’s essay collection H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos as documented by the H. P. Lovecraft Archive. Continue through LORE’s authors hub or the H. P. Lovecraft research hub.