Arkham is a fictional city situated in Massachusetts, United States. An integral part of the Lovecraft Country setting created by H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham is featured in many of his stories and those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers. Arkham House, a publishing company started by two of Lovecraft's correspondents, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, takes its name from this city as a tribute. Arkham Asylum, a fictional mental hospital in DC Comics' Batman mythos, is also named after Lovecraft's Arkham.

In Lovecraft's stories

Arkham is the home of Miskatonic University, which features prominently in many of Lovecraft's works. The institution finances the expeditions in the novellas, At the Mountains of Madness (1936) and The Shadow Out of Time (1936). Walter Gilman, of "The Dreams in the Witch House" (1933), attends classes at the university. Other notable institutions in Arkham are the Arkham Historical Society and the Arkham Sanitarium. It is said in "Herbert West—Reanimator" that the town was devastated by a typhoid outbreak in 1905. Arkham's main newspaper is the Arkham Advertiser, which has a circulation that reaches as far as Dunwich. In the 1880s, its newspaper is called the Arkham Gazette. Arkham's most notable characteristics are its gambrel roofs and the dark legends that have surrounded the city for centuries.

Location

The precise location of Arkham is unspecified, although it may be surmised from Lovecraft's stories to be some distance to the north of Boston, probably in Essex County, Massachusetts. Will Murray places Arkham in central Massachusetts and suggests it is based on the village of Oakham. Robert D. Marten rejects this and equates Arkham with Salem, with its name coming from Arkwright, Rhode Island (now part of Fiskville). August Derleth describes Arkham as "Lovecraft's own well-known, widely used place-name for legend-haunted Salem, Massachusetts", and Lovecraft himself, in a letter to F. Lee Baldwin dated April 29, 1934, wrote that "[my] mental picture of Arkham is of a town something like Salem in atmosphere [and] style of houses, but more hilly [and] with a college (which Salem [lacks]) ... I place the town [and] the imaginary Miskatonic [River] somewhere north of Salem—perhaps near Manchester." Arkham Sanitarium appears in the short story "The Thing on the Doorstep" and may have been inspired by the Danvers State Insane Asylum, aka Danvers State Hospital, located in Danvers, Massachusetts. (Danvers State Hospital itself appears in Lovecraft's stories "Pickman's Model" and The Shadow over Innsmouth.)

Miskatonic University

Miskatonic University is a fictional university located in Arkham. It is named after the Miskatonic River (also fictional). After first appearing in H. P. Lovecraft's 1922 story "Herbert West–Reanimator", the school appeared in numerous Cthulhu Mythos stories by Lovecraft and other writers. The story "The Dunwich Horror" implies that Miskatonic University is a highly prestigious university, on par with Harvard University, and that Harvard and Miskatonic are the two most popular schools for the children of the Massachusetts "Old Gentry". Lovecraft concocted the word Miskatonic from a mixture of root words from the Algonquian languages. Place-names based on the Algonquian languages are common throughout New England. Anthony Pearsall believes that Lovecraft based the name on the Housatonic River which extends from the Long Island Sound through the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts and western Connecticut. Miskatonic University is modeled on the northeastern Ivy League universities of Lovecraft's day, perhaps Brown University of his hometown Providence, which Lovecraft himself wished to attend. In Lovecraft's stories, the university's student body is implied to be all-male like northeastern universities of Lovecraft's time. The only female student mentioned is Asenath Waite, of Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1937). Miskatonic University is famous for its collection of occult books. The library holds one of the few genuine copies of the Necronomicon. Other tomes include Unaussprechlichen Kulten and the fragmentary Book of Eibon. Notable faculty members mentioned in Lovecraft's stories included doctors Henry Armitage and Francis Morgan, who appeared in The Dunwich Horror, and Professor William Dyer, who appeared in At the Mountains of Madness. Later authors would people the university with their own characters.

Appearances

Lovecraft's fiction

Note: dates are the year written. Arkham first appeared in Lovecraft's short story "The Picture in the House" (1920)—the story is also the first to mention "Miskatonic". It appears in other stories by Lovecraft, including:

Other appearances

Novels

Primary sources

Secondary sources

Books

Web sites