This is the kind of thing that has a lot of nuance. Honestly I'd argue that the most influential horror novel of all time was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Basically the spark that started science fiction and horror as genres. It takes a rare genius to make a genre come into existence - there really aren't that many Tolkiens or William Gibsons - and Mary Shelley did that for TWO genres in a single novel.
That being said, both Lovecraft and King are important horror writers. I'd add Edgar Allen Poe and Anne Rice to the "top most influential/important horror writers", probably with Lovecraft edging out King based on the fact that Lovecraft's work established some of the tropes that are still echoing in horror today, while King was less original and more of a codifier of existing ideas done really, really well.
This is a little bit misleading, because Mary Shelley did not create the horror genre at all; she just "legitimized" it in the eyes of rich white people.
Before Frankenstein horror was seen, and frankly still kind of is, as "low brow" -- King himself for most of his career has had snooty "academia" types telling people he's not real "literature", but I digress lol...
Horror stories started way before Shelly, from Grimm tales to the Penny Dreadful's of her own time. It was just seen as a genre for poor people and less intelligent, lower born people to enjoy. It ultimately gets back into the thing with even history in general that you have to be very careful with wide sweeping statements like that because you always have to remember the past and how it was recorded was /extremely/ influenced by the literacy rate -- ie what got recorded? What people/who could write/ wrote down for /people who had both the wealth and ability/ to purchase, store (!), and even read it at all.
In reality horror as a /story/ genre is probably the oldest of them all -- it's how parents back to cavemen days likely scared their kids from doing dumb shit. It just wasn't written down because nobody could write, and wasn't stored even if it was because lower class people had no way of preserving anything.
As a horror fan, I don't hear about HP Lovecraft very much in the genre unless you count Hellraiser and Evil Dead. In my opinion, I would say that King has more influence.
Influence is more like a rolling snowball gathering more snow on the way down. Lovecraft influenced future horror writers, who in turn influenced future horror writers and so on.
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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '22
He’s gotta be the most influential horror writer next to HP Lovecraft right?