Mythos

The preface to the Lovecraftian anthology I just bought, The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales has perhaps the best summary of said Mythos, much better than anything I could have written at this stage in my investigation. It’s written by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi:

“Looking over the entire corpus of Lovecraft’s work, we can identify four basic features of those stories that we now call ‘tales of the Cthulhu Mythos’ –

1. The use of ‘gods’ or extraterrestrial entities – Cthulhu, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath – along with their devotees and worshippers;

2. An ever-growing library of books, manuscripts, and other documents that purpose to provide information on the ‘gods’ and other facets of the Mythos;

3. A constellation of imaginary cities in New England – Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, Kingsport – that serve as the focal point of many of the tales, even if they later venture into very different locales;

4. A ‘cosmic’ perspective that renders human beings, and indeed all earth life, insignificant and transitory in the immense spatial and temporal gulfs of the universe.”

* * * * *

Rainbows and puppy dogs this ain’t.

Anyway, Complete Cthulhu contains the following stories (with original dates of publication in parentheses) –

1. Dagon (1923)
2. Nyarlathotep (1920)
3. The Nameless City (1921)
4. Azathoth (1938)
5. The Hound (1924)
6. The Festival (1925)
7. The Call of Cthulhu (1928)
8. The Colour out of Space (1927)
9. History of the Necronomicon (1938)
10. The Curse of Yig (1929)
11. The Dunwich Horror (1929)
12. The Whisperer in the Darkness (1931)
13. The Mound (1940)
14. At the Mountains of Madness (1936)
15. The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936)
16. The Dreams in the Witch House (1933)
17. The Man of Stone (1932)
18. The Horror in the Museum (1933)
19. The Thing on the Doorstep (1937)
20. Out of the Aeons (1935)
21. The Tree on the Hill (1940)
22. The Shadow out of Time (1936)
23. The Haunter of the Dark (1936)

Happy – or should I say, dreadful and unimaginably abominable – readings!