Short stories
The Call of Cthulhu
H.P. Lovecraft · 1928
Synopsis
A man inherits the papers of his great-uncle, professor emeritus of Semitic languages at Brown University, who died suddenly in Providence. Among them he finds a clay bas-relief that a young sculptor says he modelled in a dream, press cuttings about episodes of delirium that occurred at the same moment around the world in the spring of 1925, and the account of a New Orleans police inspector about a cult surprised in the swamps. Pursuing the inquiry himself, he reads in an Australian newspaper the story of a surviving Norwegian sailor, and sets off for Sydney and then Oslo.
Context
The text was written in the summer of 1926 and rejected by the magazine that usually published its author; it appeared only in February 1928, after Donald Wandrei had led the editor to believe that the writer was going to take his texts elsewhere. Lovecraft considered it a mediocre story. After his death, Wandrei and August Derleth founded a publishing house in 1939 to save his stories from the magazines in which they had appeared.
Who it is for
A short story, built like a case file, which can be read separately from its author's other narratives.
Prizes and reception
The story founded a universe that other authors have continued, and its title was taken up in 1981 by a role-playing game.