An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Various points in the account carry the implication that the narrator is not actually dreaming or hallucinating but envisioning the far future of the world—a point clumsily made by his conceiving of Rudyard Kipling as an “ancient” author. It is manifest that the entire tale was written by HPL; as with “The Green Meadow,” Jackson’s only contribution must have been the dream whose imagery probably laid the foundations for the opening segments.

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Alfred Galpin (“Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur,November 1921) wrote charitably of the tale: “The narrative power, vivid imagination and poetic merit of this story are such as to elevate it above certain minor but aggravating faults of organisation and composition.”

“Crime of the Century, The.”

Essay (970 words); probably written in early 1915. First published in the Conservative(April 1915); rpt Trail(January 1916) and MW.

HPL asserts that the British and the Germans are committing a kind of racial suicide, since they are “blood brothers” belonging to the same Teutonic race—a race that is “the summit of evolution” and destined to rule all other races in the world.

Crofts, Anna Helen.

Amateur writer and collaborator with HPL. Crofts lived in North Adams, Mass., in the far northwestern corner of the state. She collaborated with HPL on the story “Poetry and the Gods” ( United Amateur, September 1920), published as by “Anna Helen Crofts and Henry Paget-Lowe.” Nothing further is known of Crofts; she appeared sporadically in the amateur press, and may have been introduced to HPL by Winifred Jackson. The degree of her involvement in “Poetry and the Gods” is also unknown: HPL never mentions the tale in any extant correspondence.

Cthulhu Mythos.

Term devised by August Derleth to denote the pseudomythology underlying some of HPL’s tales, chiefly the “cosmic” stories of his last decade of writing.

It is difficult to know how seriously HPL himself regarded his invented pantheon or his invented New England topography (which has also been regarded by later critics as an important component of the Mythos). That pantheon developed from his very earliest work—“Dagon” (1917)—to his last, and it was in a state of constant flux, as HPL never felt bound to present a rigidly consistent theogony from one tale to the next. His own references to his pseudomythology are vague and inconsistent, suggesting that, even though he employed it often enough, it was merely for coloration, not the primary theme of his fiction. One of HPL’s first comments on the matter is briefly stated in a letter to James. F.Morton (April 1, 1927; AHT), when he remarks that he has written an “atmospheric episode of the Arkham cycle” (i.e., “The Colour out of Space”). He next noted that “The Dunwich Horror” (1928) “belongs to the Arkham cycle” ( SL2.246). In 1934 he told a correspondent, “I’m not working on the actual text of any story just now, but am planning a novelette of the Arkham cycle [never written]—about what happened when somebody inherited a queer old house on the top of Frenchman’s Hill & obeyed an irresistible urge to dig in a certain queer, abandoned graveyard on Hangman’s Hill at the other edge of the town. This story will probably not involve the actual supernatural—being more of the ‘Colour out of Space’ type . . . . . greatly-stretched ‘scientifiction’” (HPL to F.Lee Baldwin, March 27, 1934; ms. JHL). He never elucidates this expression “Arkham cycle,” which appears to suggest that his invented topography (Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, Dunwich) is a central component of certain loosely linked tales.

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