Robert Harrison Blake - Origin

Origin

Lovecraft based Robert Blake on one of his correspondents, the teenage Robert Bloch who had just begun his career as a writer of horror and science fiction. In the story, Lovecraft even had Blake residing at Bloch's real-life address at the time: 620 E. Knapp Street, Milwaukee.

The development of the Robert Blake character has a notable backstory. The character first appeared as the unnamed narrator of Bloch's "The Shambler from the Stars" (1935). Before he wrote the tale, Bloch thought it would be amusing to kill off a character based on Lovecraft. Lovecraft consented to the idea and gave his permission in the form of a satirical letter, signed by Lovecraft himself and "attested" by several of his creations: Abdul Alhazred, Gespard du Nord, Frederich von Juntz, and the "Tcho-Tcho Lama of Leng" (possibly referring to the High Priest Not to Be Described). The body of the letter appears as follows:

This is to certify that Robert Bloch, Esq., of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.—reincarnation of Meinheer Ludvig Prinn, author of De Vermis Mysteriis—is fully authorised to portray, murder, annihilate, disintegrate, transfigure, metamorphose, or otherwise manhandle the undersigned in the tale entitled The Shambler from the Stars.

In Bloch's story, the Lovecraft-based character becomes the ill-fated victim of an invisible, vampiric monster summoned from the depths of outer space. Lovecraft was delighted by the story and returned the favor by killing off Robert Bloch, aka Robert Blake, in "The Haunter of the Dark". Years later, Bloch wrote a sequel to "The Haunter of the Dark" entitled "The Shadow from the Steeple" (1950) in which Robert Blake's death is investigated by his friend Edmund Fiske.