Lovecraft Country - Lovecraft's Fiction

Lovecraft's Fiction

Lovecraft first used a New England setting for the 1920 short story "The Terrible Old Man", set in Kingsport. In the story that first mentions both Arkham and the Miskatonic Valley, "The Picture in the House" (written later in 1920), Lovecraft wrote that "the true epicure of the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteem most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous."

In a 1930 letter to Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft attempted to explain his fascination with New England as a setting for weird fiction: "It is the night-black Massachusetts legendary which packs the really macabre 'kick'. Here is material for a really profound study in group neuroticism; for certainly, none can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination."

Lovecraft first mentioned Arkham's Miskatonic University in Herbert West–Reanimator, written in 1921-1922. He added Dunwich to his imaginary landscape in 1928's "The Dunwich Horror", and expanded it to include Innsmouth in 1931's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".

Other Lovecraft stories that make use of Lovecraft Country settings include "The Festival", "The Colour out of Space", "The Strange High House in the Mist", "The Dreams in the Witch House", and "The Thing on the Doorstep".