An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

See Robert M.Price, “Demythologizing Cthulhu,” LSNo. 8 (Spring 1984): 3–9, 24; Bert Atsma, “An Autopsy of the Old Ones,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 3–7; Ben P.Indick, “Lovecraft’s POElar Adventure,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 25–31; Peter Cannon, “ At the Mountains of Madness as a Sequel to Arthur Gordon Pym,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 33–34; Will Murray, “The Trouble with Shoggoths,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 35–38, 41; Jason C.Eckhardt, “Behind the Mountains of Madness,” LSNo. 14 (Spring 1987): 31–38; Marc A.Cerasini, “Thematic Links in Arthur Gordon Pym, At the Mountains of Madness,and Moby Dick,” CryptNo. 49 (Lammas 1987): 3– 20; S.T.Joshi, “Lovecraft’s Alien Civilisations: A Political Interpretation,” in Selected Papers on Lovecraft(Necronomicon Press, 1989); S.T.Joshi, “Textual Problems in At the Mountains of Madness” CryptNo. 75 (Michaelmas 1990): 16–21; Robert M.Price, “Patterns in the Snow: A New Reading of At the Mountains of Madness,” CryptNo. 81 (St. John’s Eve 1992): 48–51; Peter Cannon, Jason C.Eckhardt, Steven J.Mariconda, and Hubert Van Calenbergh, “On At the Mountains of Madness:A Panel Discussion,” LSNo. 34 (Spring 1996): 2–

< previous page page_12 next page > < previous page page_13 next page >

Page 13

10; David A.Oakes, “A Warning to the World: The Deliberative Argument of At the Mountains of Madness” LS No. 39 (Summer 1998): 21–25.

Atal.

Briefly noted as an innkeeper’s son in “The Cats of Ulthar,” Atal is, in “The Other Gods,” the priest who accompanies Barzai the Wise in his quest up Mt. Ngranek to find the gods of earth. He then becomes, in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,an ancient patriarch who advises Randolph Carter in his quest for the gods.

Atwood, Professor.

In At the Mountains of Madness,a professor of physics and a member of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31.

Aylesbury.

Fictitious town in Massachusetts, invented by HPL for “The Dunwich Horror” (1928), where it is presumably near Dunwich. The name is perhaps derived from Amesbury, a town in the far northeastern corner of the state, near Haverhill and Newburyport, and the late home of John Greenleaf Whittier. HPL passed through Amesbury on several occasions, including in August 1927. There is a real town in England called Aylesbury.

“Azathoth.”

Projected novel (480 words extant); written June 1922. First published in Leaves(1938); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in D. The surviving text notes that “When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men,” a man “travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled.” The man dwelt in a city “of high walls where sterile twilight reigned,” and as a reaction from this environment he began dreaming “the dreams that men have lost.”

HPL describes the work as a “weird Vathek-like novel” ( SL1.185), referring to the Arabian novel Vathek(1786) by William Beckford, which HPL first read in July 1921. HPL perhaps means that Azathothis an attempt both to capture Vathek’sair of dreamlike fantasy and to imitate its continuous flow of narrative and absence of chapter divisions (as with The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath). As early as October 1921 he had been thinking of writing “a weird Eastern tale in the 18th century manner” (HPL to Winifred Jackson, October 7, 1921; ms., JHL). After beginning the work, HPL commented: “The rest—for which this introduction prepares the reader, will be material of the Arabian Nightstype. I shall defer to no modern critical canon, but shall frankly slip back through the centuries and become a myth-maker with that childish sincerity which no one but the earlier Dunsany has tried to achieve nowadays. I shall go out of the world when I write, with a mind centred not in literary usage, but in the dreams I dreamed when I was six years old or less—the dreams which followed my first knowledge of Sinbad,of Agib,of Baba-Abdallah,and of SidiNonman” (HPL to Frank Belknap Long, June 9, 1922; AHT).

See Will Murray, “On ‘Azathoth,’” CryptNo. 53 (Candlemas 1988): 8–9; Donald R.Burleson, “On Lovecraft’s Fragment ‘Azathoth,’” LSNos. 22/23 (Fall 1990): 10–12, 23.

< previous page page_13 next page > < previous page page_14 next page >

Page 14

B

Babson, Eunice.