Pseudobiblia is a storytelling device that places an imaginary book at the center of a story. It can take multiple forms, as when a story is presented through the dairies or travel logs of a deceased author, providing an appeal to authority — like in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — or when an imaginary book is important in the world of the story, often containing citations and historical facts to make it more believable to the reader.
While most imaginary-fictive books tend to be limited to the original book or the original book series where they were created, one magical grimoire — the Necronomicon from the stories of Lovecraft — is prevalent in books far beyond its source.
The Necronomicon was first coined by H. P. Lovecraft in his 1924 Weird Tales story “The Hound,” in which he writes:
We read much in Alhazred’s Necronomicon about its [the jade amulet’s] properties, and about the relation of ghosts’ souls to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by what we read.
The Necronomicon, or The Book of the Dead, is an example of a grimoire. Grimoire is a general term for a book of magic, often with a darker connotation. The Necronomicon is a unique book about magical spells and the elder gods that is particularly associated with stories that relate to the Cthulhu mythos, like those of Clarke Ashton Smith and August Derleth.
The Necronomicon is often rumored to actually have existed (or perhaps still exist) in the papal library, and it is often requested at various libraries, despite no evidence of it ever existing until the creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. However, H. P. Lovecraft did write a fictional history of the Necronomicon in 1927. This fictional history was soon taken too seriously, as, in the 1930s, hoax books claiming to be the Necronomicon, like the early Simon Necronomicon compiled by Peter Levenda, started sprouting up.
Lovecraft was often asked about the veracity of the Necronomicon, and always answered that it was completely his invention, such as in a letter to Willis Conover, where he writes:
Now about the “terrible and forbidden books” — I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself. . . . As for seriously-written books on dark, occult, and supernatural themes — in all truth, they don’t amount to much. That is why it’s more fun to invent mythical works like the Necronomicon…
Many other authors throughout the years — including Clarke Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Clive Barker, and T. S. Joshi (the Lovecraft Scholar) — have used The Necronomicon as an imaginary-fictive plot device for creating modern fiction. It has also appeared in television and movies.
Although this imaginary-fictive book was originally created in the early 1920s, it has been adopted by authors and fans of horror, fantasy, and fiction, particularly people interested in the Cthulhu Mythos, ever since. The Necronomicon has become a fictive foundation book for a large segment of the horror and supernatural fiction world since Lovecraft first penned the name.
Steven Woolfolk is the owner of Xenophile Bibliopole & Armorer, Chronopolis, a rare books specialty bookstore in Richland, online at Xenophilebooks.com.
