Robert Bloch (1917–1994) was an American writer. At ten he picked Weird Tales off a railway newsstand, and as a teenager he wrote a fan letter to Lovecraft and became his protégé; Lovecraft was the first to seriously encourage his talent. Much of his early work imitated Lovecraft, and it was Bloch who invented the oft-cited Mythos grimoires De Vermis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules.
The two killed each other in fiction. In “The Shambler from the Stars” (1935) Bloch killed off a Lovecraft-inspired figure — holding a signed certificate from Lovecraft granting permission. The next year Lovecraft killed Robert Blake, a thinly disguised Bloch, in “The Haunter of the Dark,” and dedicated the story to him; Blake was even given Bloch’s real Milwaukee address.
After Lovecraft’s death in 1937, Bloch moved away from Mythos imitation toward psychological horror and crime. He published Psycho in 1959, the basis for Hitchcock’s 1960 film, and won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award.