The following was taken from my now-defunct The Shadow over Usenet, a series of postings detailing the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This one deals with Lovecraft's short essay, "History of the Necronomicon".
Subject: TSOU -- History of the Necronomicon
From: harmsdm@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu (Daniel Harms)
Date: 1997/04/14
Message-ID: <5is5rd$kdg$1@news.vanderbilt.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.horror.cthulhu,alt.necronomicon
The Shadow over Usenet
"History of the Necronomicon"
[x-posted this week to alt.necronomicon]
Sources: _Miscellaneous Writings_, Arkham; _History of the Necronomicon_, Necronomicon. For those of you who can't find either, try a Web search; there are dozens of copies out there.
Synopsis: The history of the Necronomicon, with a timeline.
Comments: A fascinating essay for HPL fans, though most others might find it somewhat dull.
Lovecraft wrote up an initial version of the "history" in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith on Nov. 27, 1927 (SL II:201). He begins the letter as follows:
"I have had no chance to produce new material this autumn, but have been classifying notes & synopses in preparation for some monstrous tales later on. In particular I have drawn up some data on the celebrated & unmentionable _Necronomicon_...."The letter then goes on giving much of the same material as appear in the completed essay. The only fact which was omitted from the final version was a reference to the Necronomicon being placed on the Index Expurgatorius in 1232. Either HPL or Smith must have noticed that the Index did not exist until much later.
The final draft of the essay appears on the front and back of a letter from the Park Museum in Providence dated April 27, 1927 (and reprinted in Conover's _Lovecraft at Last_). In the upper right hand corner are the words "To the Curator of the Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, with the Concoctor's [?] Comments", an obvious reference to Smith. Since Willis Conover received the document nine years later, it is clear that Lovecraft kept it on one sheet of paper and sent it around to whomever asked for it. Also of note is the fact that the sentence mentioning the John Dee edition (created by Lovecraft's friend Frank Belknap Long) is penciled in between the lines, indicating that Lovecraft was trying to keep the story straight. (If you read anything in your version about a copy of the Arabic in San Francisco -- a reference to C. A. Smith's "The Return of the Sorcerer" -- be aware that this was a later inclusion and not in Lovecraft's original work.)
It would be interesting to take the whole essay and annotate it, but I'll just cover a few points from it.
"a mad poet of Sanna, in Yemen" -- Sanaa is the capital of Yemen
"He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th century biography)" -- Ibn Khallikan's _Biographical Dictionary_ does exist, though it does not mention Abdul Alhazred (I've already checked ;-) ).
"He claimed to have seen the fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars" -- Irem, or Iram, is a city mentioned in both the Koran and the Arabian Nights. The actual site of the city was discovered a few years ago, though it hardly lives up to a Lovecraft fan's expectations.
(1228) "Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages..." -- Olaus Wormius was an actual person -- but he was born about 400 years after this date. S. T. Joshi has revealed that this was probably due to a mis-reading of information from Hugh Blair's _A Critical Dissertatin on the Poems of Ossian_.
"A translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed..." Doctor John Dee was a scholar and wizard who lived for some time at the court of Elizabeth I. Most of his magic dealt with angels, and he would have been surprised to know that a translation of one of the blackest grimoires in all of literature had been attributed to him.
"the University of Buenos Aires" -- I've always considered this to be an unusual choice on Lovecraft's part. I'd be interested to know any theories as to why he chose it.
"It was from rumors of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R. W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel "THE KING IN YELLOW." -- _The King in Yellow_ by Robert W. Chambers is acknowledged as a classic in the horror field, largely due to Lovecraft's mention of him. Some have switched this around and claimed that the _Necronomicon_ was inspired by _The King in Yellow_, but HPL only read Chambers in 1926, well after he had invented the Necronomicon.
That's all I have for now.
1997 © Daniel Harms. All rights reserved.