An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

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equipment wholly unlike ours, hence could never be uttered perfectly by human throats…. The actual sound—as nearly as human organs could imitate it or human letters record it—may be taken as something like Khlûl′-hloo,with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The uis about like that in full;and the first syllable is not unlike klulin sound, hence the hrepresents the guttural thickness” (HPL to Duane W.Rimel, July 23, 1934; SL5.10–11). Various colleagues give very different, and clearly inaccurate, reports of HPL’s pronunciation of the word in their presence. In any case, it is not pronounced “Ka-thoo-loo,” as commonly assumed.

Farnsworth Wright of WTrejected “The Call of Cthulhu” in October 1926. In May 1927 it was rejected by the obscure pulp magazine Mystery Stories,edited by Robert Sampson. The next month Donald Wandrei, who was visiting Wright in Chicago while hitchhiking from St. Paul to Providence, urged Wright to reconsider the story (just as HPL had asked Wright to reconsider Wandrei’s “The Red Brain”), slyly suggesting that HPL was planning to submit it to other magazines and thereby begin developing other markets for his work In early July Wright asked to see the tale again and accepted it. It appeared in T.Everett Harré’s Beware After Dark!(1929), thereby constituting one of the earliest appearances of HPL’s stories in hardcover.

See Robert M.Price, “HPL and HPB: Lovecraft’s Use of Theosophy,” Crypt No. 5 (Roodmas 1982): 3– 9; Steven J.Mariconda, “On the Emergence of ‘Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 15 (Fall 1987): 54–58 (rpt. in Mariconda’s On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations[Necronomicon Press, 1995]); Peter Cannon, “The Late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston: Lovecraft’s Last Dilettante,” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 32, 39; Robert M.Price, “Correlated Contents,” CryptNo. 82 (Hallowmas 1992): 11–16; Stefan Dziemianowicz, “On ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 33 (Fall 1995): 30–35; Michael Garrett, “Death Takes a Dive: ‘The City in the Sea’ and Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 35 (Fall 1996): 22–24.

Campbell, George.

In “The Challenge from Beyond,” a geologist who encounters a curious crystalline cube while on vacation in the Canadian woods and becomes mentally drawn into it. He eventually realizes that the cube is a mind-exchange device launched by an interstellar civilization—“a mighty race of worm-like beings.”

Campbell, Paul J[onas] (1884–1945),

amateur journalist and editor of Invictusand The Liberal,for which HPL wrote “A Confession of Unfaith” (published in February 1922). He corresponded sporadically with HPL (c. 1915–37). HPL discusses him in the section “Campbell’s Plan” in the essay “Finale” ( Badger,June 1915). Canevin, Gerald.

In “The Trap,” a teacher at an academy in Connecticut whose pupil, Robert Grandison, becomes trapped in a magic mirror that Canevin had brought back with him from the Virgin Islands. Canevin is a frequently recurring character in Henry S.Whitehead’s tales, especially those set in the Virgin Islands. In his introduction to Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales(1944), R.H.

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Barlow notes: “The character ‘Gerald Canevin’ is Whitehead himself, a harking back to Caer n’-Avon. ‘I use the form “Canevin” because it is easily pronounced and is made up of “cane” and “vin,” that is, cane-wine—RUM, the typical product of the West Indies….’”

Carroll,———.

In At the Mountains of Madness,a graduate student and a member of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31. He accompanies Lake on his subexpedition and is killed by the Old Ones. Carter, Christopher.

In “The Silver Key,” Randolph Carter’s great-uncle, who raised Randolph on a farm near Arkham and Kingsport. He lives there with his wife Martha. Randolph returns to the farm when he finds the silver key and becomes a boy again. Christopher is mentioned in passing in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.”

Carter, Randolph W. (b. 1873).