H.P. Lovecraft, Cosmic Horror, & August Derleth-Part One

The phrase "cosmic horror" or "cosmic horrors" was in use as early as 1879, though not in the way scholars, fans, and readers of genre fiction use it today. That kind of meaning came later, perhaps around the turn of the nineteenth century, certainly by the pulp fiction era of the 1920s through the 1940s. I base all of this on an online search of newspaper articles from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The word cosmic is in "Supernatural Horror in Literature" by H.P. Lovecraft (1927; 1933-1935; 1939). The exact phrase "cosmic horror" appears five times in his essay. There are other "cosmic" phrases as well:

• "cosmic mystery"
• "cosmic fear"
• "cosmic terror"
• "cosmic tragedy"
• "cosmic setting"
• "cosmic unreality"
• "cosmic panic"
• "cosmic malignity"
• "cosmic adumbrations"
• "cosmic space"
• "cosmic alienage"
• "cosmic aberration"
• "cosmic fright"
• "the . . . cosmic"

It's clear that Lovecraft took what he thought of as a cosmic view of things and that he did it pretty early on in the history of pulp fiction. I guess that's why cosmic horror is now also called Lovecraftian horror and is so closely associated with him. I'm not sure how much cosmic horror as a sub-genre has changed in the one hundred and one years since Lovecraft first sat down to write. It seems like many authors still compose under a Lovecraftian spell.

"Supernatural Horror in Literature" was first reprinted in book form in The Outsider and Others (1939). Lovecraft's first book, published posthumously, was also the first volume issued by Arkham House, then owned and run by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Derleth was an acolyte of Lovecraft. As I have written before, Derleth seems to have loved what Lovecraft did so much that he wanted to make it his own, even if that meant altering it from its original form. Maybe a wise thing to do is to be suspect of everything that Derleth wrote about his master until you can confirm that his words were indeed Lovecraft's own.

It was August Derleth who coined the phrase "Cthulhu mythos." That phrase does not appear in Lovecraft's oeuvre as far as I know. Derleth, a devout Catholic, also tried to turn Lovecraft's material, amoral, indifferent, and even malignant cosmos (and its opposite, chaos) into a battleground between good and evil. At least that's how I understand it. I don't know the exact location of that idea. Maybe there isn't just one location. In any case, Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi put a torch to that and other ideas by and about Derleth in his review of A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos: Origins of the Cthulhu Mythos by John B. Haeffle (Odense, Denmark: H. Harksen Productions, 2012). You can read what Mr. Joshi wrote on his own website by clicking here.

One of Derleth's ideas came from a supposed quotation of Lovecraft's words in a letter from Lovecraft to Los Angeles-based musician, composer, and teacher Harold Farnese. Farnese had lost track of Lovecraft's letter to him, and so when Derleth wrote to Farnese after Lovecraft's death, Farnese attempted a paraphrase. That paraphrase, the infamous "black magic quotation" or BMQ, originated with Farnese. (The phrase "black magic quotation" and acronym BMQ are in Mr. Haeffle's book and Mr. Joshi's review.) Derleth wasn't responsible for it as far as anyone knows. But he propagated the "black magic quotation" to a point that we still have it today. Some people may even still believe it. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the "black magic quotation" should never have been put into print unless it had come with a disclaimer. Harold Farnese was after all legitimately a correspondent of Lovecraft, and we should know something about him, including that the BMQ was in his words and not in Lovecraft's. Anyway, if Mr. Joshi is correct in his analysis, then Derleth's propagation of the "black magic quotation" seems to have a been a sin of commission instead of omission, for it would seem to have served his purposes by way of his passing it off as a direct quotation from Lovecraft. It would seem to impute a moral dimension--and to apply Derleth's interpretation--to Lovecraft's cosmic vision.

I have found another misquote of Lovecraft's words, made by Derleth. This one, about Clark Ashton Smith, may be unknown today, but we should know about it now if only because it helps to confirm a pattern. By the way, if you want to read what I wrote previously on Harold Farnese and the "black magic quotation," click here.

To be concluded . . .

Copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley