On the pronunciation of CthulhuHPL gives somewhat different accounts in various letters; his most exhaustive discussion occurs in 1934: “…the word is supposed to represent a fumbling human attempt to catch the phonetics of an absolutely non-humanword. The name of the hellish entity was invented by beings whose vocal organs were not like man’s, hence it has no relation to the human speech equipment. The syllables were determined by a physiological
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equipment wholly unlike ours, hence could never be uttered perfectly by human throats…. The actual sound—as nearly as human organs could imitate it or human letters record it—may be taken as something like Khlûl′-hloo,with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The uis about like that in full;and the first syllable is not unlike klulin sound, hence the hrepresents the guttural thickness” (HPL to Duane W.Rimel, July 23, 1934; SL5.10–11). Various colleagues give very different, and clearly inaccurate, reports of HPL’s pronunciation of the word in their presence. In any case, it is not pronounced “Ka-thoo-loo,” as commonly assumed.
Farnsworth Wright of WTrejected “The Call of Cthulhu” in October 1926. In May 1927 it was rejected by the obscure pulp magazine Mystery Stories,edited by Robert Sampson. The next month Donald Wandrei, who was visiting Wright in Chicago while hitchhiking from St. Paul to Providence, urged Wright to reconsider the story (just as HPL had asked Wright to reconsider Wandrei’s “The Red Brain”), slyly suggesting that HPL was planning to submit it to other magazines and thereby begin developing other markets for his work In early July Wright asked to see the tale again and accepted it. It appeared in T.Everett Harré’s Beware After Dark!(1929), thereby constituting one of the earliest appearances of HPL’s stories in hardcover.
See Robert M.Price, “HPL and HPB: Lovecraft’s Use of Theosophy,” Crypt No. 5 (Roodmas 1982): 3– 9; Steven J.Mariconda, “On the Emergence of ‘Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 15 (Fall 1987): 54–58 (rpt. in Mariconda’s On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations[Necronomicon Press, 1995]); Peter Cannon, “The Late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston: Lovecraft’s Last Dilettante,” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 32, 39; Robert M.Price, “Correlated Contents,” CryptNo. 82 (Hallowmas 1992): 11–16; Stefan Dziemianowicz, “On ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 33 (Fall 1995): 30–35; Michael Garrett, “Death Takes a Dive: ‘The City in the Sea’ and Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 35 (Fall 1996): 22–24.
Campbell, George.
In “The Challenge from Beyond,” a geologist who encounters a curious crystalline cube while on vacation in the Canadian woods and becomes mentally drawn into it. He eventually realizes that the cube is a mind-exchange device launched by an interstellar civilization—“a mighty race of worm-like beings.”
Campbell, Paul J[onas] (1884–1945),
amateur journalist and editor of Invictusand The Liberal,for which HPL wrote “A Confession of Unfaith” (published in February 1922). He corresponded sporadically with HPL (c. 1915–37). HPL discusses him in the section “Campbell’s Plan” in the essay “Finale” ( Badger,June 1915). Canevin, Gerald.
In “The Trap,” a teacher at an academy in Connecticut whose pupil, Robert Grandison, becomes trapped in a magic mirror that Canevin had brought back with him from the Virgin Islands. Canevin is a frequently recurring character in Henry S.Whitehead’s tales, especially those set in the Virgin Islands. In his introduction to Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales(1944), R.H.
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Barlow notes: “The character ‘Gerald Canevin’ is Whitehead himself, a harking back to Caer n’-Avon. ‘I use the form “Canevin” because it is easily pronounced and is made up of “cane” and “vin,” that is, cane-wine—RUM, the typical product of the West Indies….’”
Carroll,———.
In At the Mountains of Madness,a graduate student and a member of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31. He accompanies Lake on his subexpedition and is killed by the Old Ones. Carter, Christopher.
In “The Silver Key,” Randolph Carter’s great-uncle, who raised Randolph on a farm near Arkham and Kingsport. He lives there with his wife Martha. Randolph returns to the farm when he finds the silver key and becomes a boy again. Christopher is mentioned in passing in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.”
Carter, Randolph W. (b. 1873).
HPL introduced the recurring character Randolph Carter in “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” in which Carter is modeled after HPL from an actual dream. In “The Unnamable,” Carter, who narrates the story, is briefly identified (by last name only) as a writer of weird fiction, like HPL. The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadathis a picaresque narrative of Carter’s adventures in his search for the sunset city of his dreams. In “The Silver Key” (written before Dream-Quest), Carter, a disillusioned man past middle age, is not so much a character as a fictional exponent of HPL’s philosophical outlook. As an elderly man, Carter finds he has “lost the key to the gate of dreams.” In a dream, his deceased grandfather (unnamed) tells him of an ancestral “silver key,” which Carter finds in the attic upon waking. Having found the key, Carter then disappears. In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” Carter is presumed dead, and others step in to settle his estate. The Swami Chandraputra tells of what happened to Carter following his disappearance. The Swami is revealed to be Carter himself, but residing in the body of Zkauba the Wizard from the planet Yaddith.
The W. in Carter’s name appears only in the “stationery” that HPL and R.H. Barlow designed for HPL in June 1935. Although HPL clearly identified with Carter on many different levels, Carter is not as autobiographical a character as many others in HPL’s fiction; he is, instead, a construct representing various of HPL’s philosophical and aesthetic views.
Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The.
Short novel (51,500 words); written late January–March 1, 1927. First published (abridged) in WT (May and July 1941); first collected in BWS;corrected text in MM;annotated version in TD. Joseph Curwen, a learned scholar and man of affairs, leaves Salem for Providence in 1692, eventually building a succession of elegant homes in the oldest residential section of the city. Curwen attracts attention because he does not seem to age much, even after the passing of fifty or more years. He also acquires very peculiar substances from all around the world for apparent chemical—that is, alchemical—experiments; his haunting of graveyards does not help his reputation. When Dr. John Merritt visits Curwen, he is both impressed and disturbed by the