Ex Carta

This example includes Lovecraft's map of Arkham (p278). 

Lovecraft drew his map of Arkham in 1934, since he was developing an idea for a further ‘novelette’ set in the city, a project which never came to fruition. The original is kept as part of the H. P. Lovecraft Collection at Brown University, Providence (that institution itself being an inspiration for Arkham’s Miskatonic University). It is rather hastily scrawled and slapdash, and clearly for Lovecraft’s own benefit in planning his story, rather than for public display. 

Nevertheless, it reveals Arkham to be laid out on a grid plan (at least the area covered in the map), as were other early colonial American settlements, from the modest New Haven Colony to major cities like Philadelphia. This is in contrast to the more organic layout of Boston, frequently cited as a key inspiration for Arkham, though parts of Lovecraft’s home city of Providence had more organised grid-like schemes developed over the course of the nineteenth century. ‘Cleaned up’ versions of the map include noted illustrator Gahan Wilson’s version appearing in the fanzine The Arkham Collector in 1970 and reprinted in The 

 of Fantasy (Ballantine Books, 1979). 

Gahan also added evocative ‘to’ arrows indicating which streets lead to other sinister Lovecraftian locales such as Innsmouth and Kingsport. This iteration was then adapted for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game rulebook published in 1981, which also retains the detail added by Wilson on the campus (‘quadrangle’) of the Miskatonic University. A further developed, detailed colour map of Arkham features in the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu rulebook published in 2015 (Chaosium Inc.). It is on the page facing the map of ‘Lovecraft Country’ based on the New England seaboard, which situates Arkham about five miles northeast of Salem, another of its real-world inspirations.

Lovecraft’s hand-drawn map of Arkham, included in Marginalia, offers a glimpse into the physical layout of his sinister and storied fictional city. Though rough and utilitarian, it laid the groundwork for decades of more polished iterations and remains a touchstone for visualising ‘Lovecraft Country’.

Marginalia was published in 1944, by Arkham House, the publishing house set up by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei in 1939 and dedicated to ensuring that Lovecraft’s writing didn’t languish in the crumbling pages of the pulp magazines in which it first appeared. This copy includes a card identifying it as being Wandrei’s own copy from his personal library. Wandrei (1908–1987) was a science fiction and fantasy author in his own right and as well as co-editing Marginalia, he co-wrote the foreword with Derleth and contributed an essay.

It featured the second appearance in print – on page 278 – of Lovecraft’s own drawing of his fictional city of Arkham (it had previously appeared in early weird fiction fanzine The Acolyte in 1942). Arkham, Massachusetts, was first mentioned by Lovecraft in his short story ‘The Picture in the House’, published in The National Amateur in 1921 and then Weird Tales in 1923.

Over the course of subsequent tales, the city became a quintessential Lovecraftian environment: ‘witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham, whose huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly muttering Miskatonic’ (‘The Thing on the Doorstep’, 1933). Arkham had its own Ivy League college, Miskatonic University, named after the river the city was founded upon. Its faculty included scholars such as the ‘unpleasantly erudite folklorist’ Wilmarth, its library housed the notorious, cursed tome Necronomicon, and it was the institution that launched the fateful Miskatonic University Expedition to Antarctica (At the Mountains of Madness, 1936).

Others of the ‘Lovecraft circle’ of writers for Weird Tales, whose exchanges developed into the ‘Cthulhu mythos’ shared world, soon co-opted Arkham for their own tales, such as ‘The Creeper in the Crypt’ by Robert Bloch (Weird Tales, 1937). The name of the city is now widely known due to its being adopted in the Batman comics in the 1970s for the notorious Arkham Asylum, where many of Bruce Wayne’s vanquished foes become patients.

Lovecraft's map of Arkham 

Lovecraft's ground floor plan for 'Grandpa Theobald's Study' (1924)

Lovecraft's wall plan for 'Grandpa Theobald's Study,' the overpage of the ground floor plan

Drawing by Lovecraft to illustrate his letter on the antiquities of Charleston

Cover for Lovecraft's Marginalia

Lovecraft drew his map of Arkham in 1934, since he was developing an idea for a further ‘novelette’ set in the city, a project which never came to fruition. The original is kept as part of the H. P. Lovecraft Collection at Brown University, Providence (that institution itself being an inspiration for Arkham’s Miskatonic University). It is rather hastily scrawled and slapdash, and clearly for Lovecraft’s own benefit in planning his story, rather than for public display.

Nevertheless, it reveals Arkham to be laid out on a grid plan (at least the area covered in the map), as were other early colonial American settlements, from the modest New Haven Colony to major cities like Philadelphia. This is in contrast to the more organic layout of Boston, frequently cited as a key inspiration for Arkham, though parts of Lovecraft’s home city of Providence had more organised grid-like schemes developed over the course of the nineteenth century. ‘Cleaned up’ versions of the map include noted illustrator Gahan Wilson’s version appearing in the fanzine The Arkham Collector in 1970 and reprinted in The Atlas of Fantasy (Ballantine Books, 1979).

Gahan also added evocative ‘to’ arrows indicating which streets lead to other sinister Lovecraftian locales such as Innsmouth and Kingsport. This iteration was then adapted for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game rulebook published in 1981, which also retains the detail added by Wilson on the campus (‘quadrangle’) of the Miskatonic University. A further developed, detailed colour map of Arkham features in the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu rulebook published in 2015 (Chaosium Inc.). It is on the page facing the map of ‘Lovecraft Country’ based on the New England seaboard, which situates Arkham about five miles northeast of Salem, another of its real-world inspirations.