The fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts appears in more than a dozen stories by H. P. Lovecraft, beginning with “The Picture in the House,” published in 1921. The city’s (Ivy League?) institution, Miskatonic University, sponsors ill-fated expeditions in At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, both published in 1936.
Given the centrality of Arkham to Lovecraft’s New England setting, what S. T. Joshi calls the Miskatonic region, after its river and university, there is no wonder that Lovecraft mapped out the city in great detail.
The street plan below was drawn by the author in 1934. He wrote to Donald Wandrei in March of that year, “One thing I did lately was to construct a Map of Arkham, so that allusions in any future tale I may write may be consistent.”
The map is in the collection of Brown University Library.
Nick Louras 