Arkham is the home of Miskatonic University, which features prominently in many of Lovecraft's works. The institution finances the expeditions in the novellas,
At the Mountains of Madness (1936) and
The Shadow Out of Time (1936).
Walter Gilman, of "
The Dreams in the Witch House" (1933), attends classes at the university. Other notable institutions in Arkham are the Arkham Historical Society and the Arkham
Sanitarium. It is said in "
Herbert West—Reanimator" that the town was devastated by a typhoid outbreak in 1905.
was modeled on the real Crowninshield-Bentley House'' in
Salem, Massachusetts. Arkham's main newspaper is the
Arkham Advertiser, which has a circulation that reaches as far as
Dunwich. In the 1880s, its newspaper is called the
Arkham Gazette. Arkham's most notable characteristics are its
gambrel roofs and the dark legends that have surrounded the city for centuries.
Location The precise location of Arkham is unspecified, although it may be surmised from Lovecraft's stories to be some distance to the north of
Boston, probably in
Essex County, Massachusetts.
Will Murray places Arkham in central Massachusetts and suggests it is based on the village of
Oakham. Robert D. Marten rejects this and equates Arkham with
Salem, with its name coming from
Arkwright, Rhode Island (now part of
Fiskville).
August Derleth describes Arkham as "Lovecraft's own well-known, widely used place-name for legend-haunted Salem, Massachusetts", and Lovecraft himself, in a letter to F. Lee Baldwin dated April 29, 1934, wrote that "[my] mental picture of Arkham is of a town something like Salem in atmosphere [and] style of houses, but more hilly [and] with a college (which Salem [lacks]) ... I place the town [and] the imaginary Miskatonic [River] somewhere north of Salem—perhaps near Manchester." Arkham Sanitarium appears in the short story "
The Thing on the Doorstep" and may have been inspired by the Danvers State Insane Asylum, (
Danvers State Hospital) in
Danvers, Massachusetts. Danvers State Hospital itself appears in Lovecraft's stories "
Pickman's Model" and
The Shadow over Innsmouth.
Miskatonic University Miskatonic University is a
fictional university located in Arkham, near the banks of the (fictional) Miskatonic River. Lovecraft concocted the word
Miskatonic as a mixture of root words from the
Algonquian languages, the source of many place-names throughout
New England. Anthony Pearsall believes the name is based on the
Housatonic River, which flows from the
Berkshires of
Western Massachusetts and western
Connecticut to
Long Island Sound. After first appearing in
H. P. Lovecraft's 1922 story "
Herbert West–Reanimator", the school was mentioned in numerous
Cthulhu Mythos stories by Lovecraft and other writers. The story "
The Dunwich Horror" implies that Miskatonic University is an elite university on par with
Harvard, and that Harvard and Miskatonic are the two most popular schools for the Massachusetts "Old Gentry". It is modeled on the northeastern
Ivy League universities of Lovecraft's day, perhaps
Brown University in his hometown
Providence, which Lovecraft himself wished to attend. Miskatonic's student body is implied to be all-male like northeastern universities of Lovecraft's time. The only female student mentioned is
Asenath Waite in "
The Thing on the Doorstep" (1937). The university library is famous for its collection of
occult books, including one of the handful of genuine copies of the
Necronomicon. Other tomes include
Unaussprechlichen Kulten and the fragmentary
Book of Eibon. Notable faculty members mentioned in Lovecraft's stories included doctors
Henry Armitage and
Francis Morgan in
The Dunwich Horror, and
Professor William Dyer in
At the Mountains of Madness. Later authors would people the university with their own characters. ==Appearances==