Blackwood, AlgernonBlackwood is quoted as preface for "The Call of Cthulhu."
English author Algernon Blackwood (1867-1951) was educated at Wellington College and Edinburgh University. He lived at varous times in England, Canada, and the United States. While in the U.S. he worked as a reporter for the New York Times. He was friends with W. B. Yeats and Arthur Machen and a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. His interest in the occult is reflected in his fiction. BBC radio listeners will remember him as the "Ghost Man," reading ghost stories in his later years. U.S. readers would have found him reprinted in the pages of Weird Tales.
He wrote more than 150 stories, many dealing with 'psychic' horror, some featuring a 'psychic detective.' He is probably best remembered for his terrifying story "The Willows." His work with the Golden Dawn reveals a desire to explain strange phenomenon he had to call fictional. Lovecraft called him "the one absolute and unquestioned masters of weird atmosphere.
[The Call of Cthulhu - H.P.L.]