Lovecraft Country

English

Alternative forms
  • Lovecraft country

Etymology

From Lovecraft + country. Coined by Keith Herber, later used and popularized by the role-playing games publisher Chaosium.

Proper noun

Lovecraft Country

  1. (horror fiction) The fictionalized universe populated by the supernatural beings of H.P. Lovecraft's horror fiction and that of other authors inspired by Lovecraft's works, especially the fictionalized version of New England.[1]
    • 2009, Keith Herber, Miskatonic River Press, "New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley", →ISBN
      An anthology of six scenarios designed for use with the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Set in Lovecraft Country, a fictional area of New England created by horror author H.P. Lovecraft.
    • 2013, Charles L. Crow, A Companion to American Gothic, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN:
      Ramsay Campbell, who created a version of Lovecraft country in and around Liverpool, and Southern Gothic writer Fred Chappell.
    • 2014, Paul Roland, The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft, Plexus Publishing, →ISBN:
      It also established Miskatonic University and Arkham as key locations in Lovecraft Country
    • 2016, W. Scott Poole, In the Mountains of Madness:
      Very early, he started to create Lovecraft country; a geography of terror that came to include “witch-haunted Arkham” and “shadowed Innsmouth," places he describes in such minute detail that ingénues in Lovecraft lore, for almost a century now, have often assumed these places could be located on maps of Massachuesetts and set out in search of them.
    • 2018, H.P. Lovecraft, Leverett Butts, H.P. Lovecraft, page 1:
      Lovecraft's writing has inspired games as well: a popular role-playing game, The Call of Cthulhu, is set within Lovecraft country, the blend of fictional and real locales, mostly in New England, in which he set his tales.
    • 2019, Graham Plowman, "Horror in Lovecraft Country", ASIN B07X5VPYC6
      Horror in Lovecraft Country: 2 Hours of Music for Lovecraftian Gaming
    • 2020, Golden Goblin Press, "Children of Lovecraft Country", →ISBN
      Children of Lovecraft Country: Six Stories of Growing Up in Arkham, Kingsport, Dunwich, and Innsmouth.

See also

Noun

Lovecraft Country (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Eerie small town and countryside settings resembling the locales found in H.P. Lovecraft's fictional universe.
    • 1975 Autumn, Frederick Busi, “Alain Resnais' Stavisky: The Beginning of the End”, in The Massachusetts Review, volume 16, number 4:
      When Resnais was on a lecture tour of America in 1972, he was enchanted to find himself deep in Lovecraft country, in gloomy Massachusetts.
    • 1998, Scott Aniolowski, editor, Return to Lovecraft Country, →ISBN:
      And especially my wife Patricia, who spent weeks tramping with me through Lovecraft country
    • 2018, A Mahnke, The World of Lore, Volume 3: Dreadful Places:
      Mahnke lives with his family in the historic North Shore area of Boston, the very heart of Lovecraft Country and the epicenter of the Salem witch trials.

Coordinate terms

(eerie locales):

References
  1. Karl Quinn (2020 August 13) “Lovecraft Country is Green Book meets The Twilight Zone, and it's inspired”, in Sydney Morning Herald‎: “Many of Lovecraft's stories were set in a fictionalised version of his native New England, referred to by scholars as Lovecraft Country.”

Further reading
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