The earliest source of Lovecraft's writings would be H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) and his existence and the publication of his writings is established and not in dispute. He has direct eyewitness accounts and we have no reason to disbelieve them. We do not have the earliest sources for any Biblical text, just copies of copies of copies and many of those have differences among the text that make it difficult to figure out what the real message was. Lovecraft's work is pristine and cannot possibly be errant.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
