Necronomicon

The most famous book that does not exist. A grimoire of pre-human history and summoning rites, surviving in a handful of guarded copies, quoted just often enough to convince generations of readers it was real.

Lovecraft understood something most inventors of fictional books miss: a book becomes real through citation, not through description. He never wrote the Necronomicon. He wrote a bibliography for it — a translation history, a list of holding libraries, a suppression by papal bull, a compact and boring account of provenance of exactly the kind a real medieval text accretes. Boring provenance is the most convincing thing in the world.

Then he gave it away. He wanted Howard and Smith and Bloch citing it in their own stories, in different magazines, because a book that only one author mentions is a prop, and a book that six authors mention independently is a rumour. Librarians have been fielding requests for it ever since, and Lovecraft himself had to write letters explaining that no, there was no copy, he had made it up.

The entry for Reading Availability on this page is where it gets interesting, and it is the reason this catalogue uses one honest axis instead of a badge. You can buy a book called Necronomicon today. Several. They are in print, they have ISBNs, and they contain not one word of Lovecraft’s invention — they are separate books that borrowed a famous title. So: the Necronomicon has escaped into reality, and you still cannot read it. Both things are true, and a catalogue that flattens them into “real-world editions exist” has told you a fact and lost the truth.

On the readability rating. The Dunwich Horror gives us the longest sustained passage, perhaps a few hundred words. Everything else is the couplet and allusion.

In-world history

Written in Damascus around 730 by Alhazred, who was reportedly devoured in daylight by an invisible thing in the streets of Damascus. Translated into Greek in 950, burned by the Patriarch Michael in 1050, rendered into Latin by Olaus Wormius in 1228 and suppressed by Gregory IX in 1232. Surviving copies are kept under lock at Miskatonic University in Arkham, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the British Museum, Harvard's Widener Library and the University of Buenos Aires.

Why it matters

Lovecraft's most successful invention, and arguably more influential than any story he wrote. He circulated it deliberately among friends, encouraging Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and others to cite it in their own work so that the corroborating references would accumulate across authors and magazines. It worked.

Appearances

The Hound (1924) — H. P. Lovecraft First appearance of the title
The Nameless City (1921) — H. P. Lovecraft Alhazred and his couplet appear here first, before the book is named
The Dunwich Horror (1929) — H. P. Lovecraft A passage is quoted at length from the Miskatonic University copy
At the Mountains of Madness (1936) — H. P. Lovecraft
The Black Stone (1931) — Robert E. Howard Cited alongside Howard's own additions to the shared library

Editions in our world

The "Simon" Necronomicon (Schlangekraft, 1977) A genuine printed book, sold continuously since 1977, containing no text by Lovecraft. It is an original Sumerian-flavoured invention wearing the title.
The Necronomicon, ed. George Hay (Neville Spearman, 1978) Presented as a decryption of an Elizabethan cipher manuscript; framed by Colin Wilson, who later described the project as a hoax.

Connected volumes

Related to Unaussprechlichen Kulten · The Cthulhu Mythos
Related to Secrets of the Darkest Art · The Wizarding World
Parodied by The Necrotelicomnicon · Discworld

Catalogue record

Category: Grimoire
World: The Cthulhu Mythos
Language: Arabic; Greek translation by Theodorus Philetas; Latin by Olaus Wormius
First appearance: "The Hound", Weird Tales, 1924
Readability: Quoted

From the book