“The Celt’s far vision of weird and hidden things”? H. P. Lovecraft, William Sharp and the Celts

This article studies the racialised construction of Celtic-speaking peoples in racial pseudo-science and literature in the period up to the early twentieth century, and how this construction was deployed by H.P. Lovecraft as part of his literary project. It is shown that stereotypes about “Celts” and their supposed essential sensitivity to the spiritual and supernatural were key to how writers from the Celtic Revival constructed their ideal of Celtic culture in literature, and how Lovecraft drew upon this this in his development of the Weird in both his supernatural horror fiction and his critical work and correspondence with Robert E. Howard.