An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

The writing of the story came at a time when HPL’s spirits were at a low ebb because of the nearly simultaneous rejection, in the summer of 1931, of At the Mountains of Madnessby WTand of a collection of his stories by Putnam’s. He reports that his revisiting, in the fall of 1931, of the decaying seaport of Newburyport, Mass, (which he had first seen in 1923), led him to conduct a sort of “laboratory experimentation” ( SL3.435) to see which style or manner was best suited to the theme. Four drafts (whether complete or not is not clear) were written and discarded (HPL to Donald Wandrei, [November 27, 1931]; ms., JHL), and finally HPL simply wrote the story in his accustomed manner. He was, however, profoundly dissatisfied with it. A week after finishing it, he wrote to Derleth: “I don’t think the experimenting came to very much. The result, 68 pages long, has all the defects I deplore—especially in point of style, where hackneyed phrases & rhythms have crept in despite all precautions. Use of any other style was like working in a foreign language—hence I was left high & dry. …No—I don’t intend to offer ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ for publication, for it would stand no chance of acceptance” (HPL to August Derleth, December 10, 1931; ms., SHSW). Will Murray has conjectured that the story may have been written at least in part with Strange Tales in mind. Strange Talespaid better than WT,but it sought stories with more of an “action” slant; hence the inclusion of Olmstead’s pursuit by the Innsmouth entities. Although HPL prepared a typescript of the story and circulated it among his colleagues, he did not submit it to Strange Tales or anywhere else. August Derleth submitted the story without HPL’s knowledge to WTin early 1933; but Farnsworth Wright rejected it: “I have read Lovecraft’s story, THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH, and must confess that it fascinates me. But I don’t know just what I can do with it. It is hard to break a story of this kind into two parts, and it is too long to run complete in one part” (Farnsworth

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Wright to August Derleth, January 17, 1933; ms., SHSW). HPL eventually found out about this surreptitious submission, for by 1934 he is speaking of its rejection by Wright (HPL to F.Lee Baldwin, August 21, 1934; ms., JHL).

At length HPL agreed to let William L.Crawford publish the story as a book (although previously Crawford had conceived of various other plans for the tale—submitting it to Astounding Stories; publishing it in one of his semi-professional magazines, Unusual Storiesor Marvel Tales;publishing it as a book together with At the Mountains of Madness). The book was published in November 1936 (although the copyright page gives the date of publication as April) and contained so many errors that an errata sheet had to be prepared. Numerous extant copies bear corrections in pencil by HPL. It features four interior illustrations and a dust jacket illustration by Frank Utpatel. About 400 copies were printed; 200 of these were bound, the others later being destroyed. It is the only book of HPL’s fiction published and distributed in his lifetime.

The story proves to be a cautionary tale on the ill effects of miscegenation, or the sexual union of different races, and as such can be considered a vast expansion and subtilization of the plot of “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” (1920).

The name Innsmouth had been coined for “Celephaïs” (1920), then clearly located in England. HPL revived the name for two sonnets (“The Port” and “The Bells”) of Fungi from Yuggoth(1929–30), where the setting is not entirely clear, although a New England locale is likely.