An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Many features in the story betray borrowings from Dunsany, but all in externals. HPL thought he had come by the name Sarnath independently, but maintained that he later found it in a story by Dunsany; this is not, however, the case. Sarnath is also a real city in India (purportedly the place where Buddha first taught), but HPL may not have known this. The green idol Bokrug is reminis

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cent of the green jade gods of Dunsany’s play The Gods of the Mountain(in Five Plays,1914). Mention of a throne “wrought of one piece of ivory, though no man lives who knows whence so vast a piece could have come” echoes a celebrated passage (noted by HPL in “Supernatural Horror in Literature”) in “Idle Days on the Yann” (in A Dreamer’s Tales,1910) of an ivory gate “carved out of one solid piece!” The style of the tale is also superficially Dunsanian.

Douglas, Capt. J.B.

In At the Mountains of Madness,the captain of the brig Arkham,one of the supply ships for the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31.

Dow, Johnny.

In “The Horror in the Burying-Ground,” a friend of Tom Sprague who goes mad after witnessing the apparent deaths of Sprague and his enemy, Henry Thorndike.

Dowdell, William J. (1898–1953).

Amateur writer in Cleveland. Dowdell edited several amateur journals, including Dowdell’s Bearcat, which printed several works by HPL, including the essay “The Dignity of Journalism” (July 1915) and the poems “To Samuel Loveman, Esquire…” (December 1915) and “An American to Mother England” (November 1916). HPL criticized Dowdell’s Cleveland Sun(coedited with Anthony F.Moitoret and Edwin D.Harkins) for its excessive imitation of cheap newspaper standards, especially its inclusion of “The Best Sport Page in Amateurdom” (see “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur, September 1916). In 1919 Dowdell led a campaign criticizing HPL’s purportedly high-handed centralization of authority in the UAPA (see “For Official Editor—Anne Tillery Renshaw,” Conservative, July 1919); in 1922 HPL lost his battle, being ousted as Official Editor of the UAPA. At this time Dowdell was himself President of the NAPA, but resigned late in the year (HPL later remarked that Dowdell “ran off with a chorus girl”: HPL to Lillian D.Clark, July 27, 1925; ms., JHL); the NAPA’s Executive Judges appointed HPL interim President for 1922–23. No more is heard of Dowdell either in amateur circles or in professional journalism.

Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The.

Short novel (43,100 words); written October 1926–January 22, 1927. First published in BWS;rpt. Arkham Sampler(Winter 1948–Autumn 1948); corrected text in MM

Randolph Carter engages in a quest through dreamland in search of the “sunset city” of his dreams, which he can no longer attain. The city is described as follows: “All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles.” He believes that his only recourse is to plead his case before the “hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath.” No one in dreamland knows where Kadath is, and the journey appears to be fraught with dangers, but Carter undertakes the quest nonetheless.

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