L — authorial invention

Necronomicon

Literary invention
Autore fittizio citato nel gennaio 1921 · titolo nel settembre 1922, edito febbraio 1924

Necronomicon — the most famous forbidden book in literature, equipped with a complete and entirely invented bibliographical line of descent: an Arabic original around 730, a Greek translation of 950, a Latin translation of 1228, placement on the Index, Gothic and Spanish editions, surviving copies at Harvard's Widener, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the British Museum and the non-existent Miskatonic University.

In an old library hall, a folio volume with shelfmark labels lies chained and closed with a padlock on the lectern, beneath a lit lamp; in the foreground the catalogue register lies open with the librarian's annotations.

First appearance: Attributed to Abdul Alhazred. False bibliographical history in History of the Necronomicon, written 1927, published posthumously 1938.
What is told: The most famous forbidden book in literature, equipped with a complete and entirely invented bibliographical line of descent: an Arabic original around 730, a Greek translation of 950, a Latin translation of 1228, placement on the Index, Gothic and Spanish editions, surviving copies at Harvard's Widener, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the British Museum and the non-existent Miskatonic University.
In the corpus: The apparatus of verisimilitude is deliberate and is the real content of the text. Lovecraft stated that he found inventing mythical books more entertaining than using genuine occult literature.
Publication data: The name of the fictitious author appears in The Nameless City, written in January 1921; the title of the book in The Hound, written in September 1922 and published in «Weird Tales» in February 1924.
Caution: «Abdul Alhazred» is not correct Arabic: it juxtaposes two incompatible definite forms. It is the invention of an anglophone boy, not a transliteration. The so-called Simon Necronomicon of 1977 is a Sumero-Akkadian pastiche with Crowleyan grafts, judged a well-constructed forgery by the historian of magic Owen Davies.

Reality checkestablished

What has been established today.

The Necronomicon is entirely invented and its bibliographical line of descent is a forgery built at the desk: Lovecraft wrote its mock history, «History of the Necronomicon», in 1927, published posthumously in 1938. The author was perfectly aware of the effect, and in 1936 wrote that if the legend went on growing people would end up believing in it and would accuse him of falsification. The mechanism was triggered at once: in that same year, 1936, Donald Wollheim published in the Branford Review a fictitious notice of a supposed new translation, and ever since then librarians and booksellers have regularly received requests for a book that has never existed.

H. P. Lovecraft, «History of the Necronomicon», written 1927, published 1938; letters of Lovecraft, 1936; apocryphal review by Donald Wollheim, Branford Review, 1936

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Necronomicon

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