Necronomicon

This article is about a fictional book. For other uses, see Necronomicon (disambiguation).

Statue of H. P. Lovecraft, the author who created the Necronomicon as a fictional grimoire and featured it in many of his stories

The Necronomicon, also referred to as the Book of the Dead, or under a purported original Arabic title of Kitab al-Azif, is a fictional grimoire (textbook of magic) appearing in stories by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound",[1] written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in Lovecraft's "The Nameless City".[2] Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them.

Other authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited the Necronomicon in their works. Lovecraft approved of other writers building on his work, believing such common allusions built up "a background of evil verisimilitude". Many readers have believed it to be a real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it; pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogues, and a student smuggled a card for it into the card catalog of the Yale University Library.[3]

Capitalizing on the notoriety of the fictional volume, real-life publishers have printed many books entitled Necronomicon since Lovecraft's death.

  1. ^ "The Hound", by H. P. Lovecraft Published February 1924 in "Weird Tales". YankeeClassic.com. Retrieved on January 31, 2009
  2. ^ Though it has been argued that an unnamed copy of the Necronomicon appears in the 1919 story "The Statement of Randolph Carter", S. T. Joshi points out that the text in question was "written in characters whose like (narrator Randolph Carter) never saw elsewhere"—which would not describe any known edition of the Necronomicon, including the one in Arabic, a language Carter was familiar with. S. T. Joshi, "Afterword", History of the Necronomicon, Necronomicon Press.
  3. ^ Sprague de Camp, L. (1976). Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House. pp. 100–01. ISBN 0-87054-076-9.