"A Note on the Cthulhu Mythos" is a short non-fiction essay by August Derleth, included as an appendix in his 1962 collection The Trail of Cthulhu.
Contents[]
In the essay, Derleth lays down his interpretation of the mythology created by his late friend H. P. Lovecraft, its basic themes and most important deities, and how the system has been developed gradually. Although he cautions that there is "no hard and fast line separating Lovecraft's Dunsanian tales from the stories which are definitely part of the Mythos", Derlerth defines the latter as consisting primarily of 13 Lovecraft stories: "The Nameless City", "The Festival", "The Call of Cthulhu" (in which he claims the Mythos gained "its first indication of shape"), "The Colour Out of Space", "The Dunwich Horror", The Whisperer in Darkness, "The Dreams in the Witch-House", "The Haunter of the Dark", The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and "The Thing on the Doorstep".
Controversially, Derleth ascribes to Lovecraft the idea that the Mythos revolves around an age-old conflict between the Elder Gods, which represent order, and the Great Old Ones, their enemies, which represent "the forces of evil". In truth, this concept is not explicitly present anywhere in Lovecraft's works, although it is present in Derleth's own Mythos stories, some of which were published while Lovecraft was still alive and the two authors corresponded frequently.
On a less controversial note, Derleth also defends Lovecraft from the attacks of Colin Wilson and other critics, and ensures that the author saw his work for what it was: fiction, intended "for his own entertainment" as well as his readers'. He also points out that Lovecraft himself "freely borrowed trivial but colorful details from other writers--Poe, Machen, Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers" and encouraged others to likewise partake from his own creations.