The Lurker at the Threshold

The Lurker at the Threshold is a Cthulhu Mythos novel, credited on its publication by Arkham House in 1945 to H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, although almost all of it was written by Derleth, incorporating "notes and fragments" written by Lovecraft.
==Synopsis==
The Lurker at the Threshold is divided into three sections. "Billington's Wood" focuses on Ambrose Dewart, an English man who reclaims an ancestral property near Arkham, Massachusetts, and learns the disquieting history of his ancestors Richard and Alijah Billington. Disregarding the latter's posthumous warning, he removes a stone from a round tower on the Billington property, and thus unleashes eldritch forces.
The second section, "Manuscript by Stephen Bates," is presented as an account by Dewart's cousin, who comes to realize that Dewart is under a malignant influence.
The conclusion, "Narrative of Winfield Phillips," describes the actions of Miskatonic University librarian Seneca Lapham to deal with the evil unleashed by Dewart--written from the perspective of Lapham's assistant.
==Characters==
Richard Billington: The first Billington to lay claim to Billington's Woods. According to the fictional book Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Daemons in No Humane Shape, in the early years of the Plymouth Colony, during the governorship of William Bradford (1621-1657), Billington sets up "a great Ring of Stones" where he said "Prayers to ye Devil" and "sung certain Rites of Magick abominable by Scripture". After a series of mysterious deaths are linked to him, he disappears, and is said by the Wampanaug Indians to have been "eat up by what he had call'd out of ye Sky." 
Misquamacus: An "antient Wonder-Worker" of the Wampanaug nation. According to the fictional book Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Daemons in No Humane Shape, Misquamacus teaches "Sorceries" to Richard Billington and imprisons Ossadagowah, a spawn of Tsathoggua, in a ring of stones. He is later raised from the dead in the early 19th century by Alijah Billington to be a servant and the guardian of his son Laban; in this form he is called Quamis and is described as a Narragansett Indian. He is finally shot by Seneca Lapham with a silver bullet and turns into dust.
Alijah Phineas Billington: He inherits Richard Billington's estate in the late 18th century. His wife is Lavinia Billington; they have a son Laban. Alijah enters into a rivalry with Rev. Ward Phillips, who had accused Billington and his forebear of practicing sorcery. The feud culminates with the disappearance of John Druven, one of Phillips' supporters. Afterwards, Billington leaves for England with his son Laban and his servant Quamis, remaining there until his death. Seneca Lapham recalls him as "a man well ahead of his time, [and] more intelligent than most men of his generation." Lapham observes: "He practiced rites and ceremonies which undoubtedly harked back to the beginnings of mankind, but he knew how to escape the consequences." He is described as resembling his great-great-grandson Ambrose Dewart, with "the same square-jawed features, the same steady eyes, the same Roman nose." They differ in that Billington's nose has a wen on the left side, and his eyebrows are "considerably bushier."
Jonathan Bishop: A resident of Dunwich whom Alijah Billington initiated into sorcery and necromancy. He was taken by something he unintentionally called up. His granddaughter says he "was smart, all right, but not smart enough," showing that "a little knowledge is dangerous."
Rev. Ward Phillips: Pastor of the Second Church (later First Baptist Church) of Arkham. In 1805, he becomes the librarian at Miskatonic University. He is chiefly known for his book Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-England Canaan. When Richard Billington finds out that the book accuses his ancestor of practicing sorcery, he starts a feud with Phillips which lasts several months. Shortly after one of Phillips' supporters, John Druven, disappears, Phillips seemingly has a change of heart and begins buying and burning every copy of his book that he can lay his hands on.
John Druven: An occasional correspondent for the Arkham Gazette and a friend of Ward Phillips. He disappears after accepting an invitation from Alijah Billington to investigate strange noises emanating from Billington's Woods.
Ambrose Dewart: Born c. 1874, he is a descendant of Laban Billington who comes to Arkham from England in 1921 to reclaim his family's property, which had been abandoned for roughly a century. He is described as "a hawk-faced man of medium height, chiefly distinguished for a flare of red hair which gave him a tonsured appearance, keen of eye and tight of lip, exceedingly correct and possessed of a dry sort of humor... a man of some fifty years of age, brown-skinned, who had lost his only son in the great war." Locals blame him for a subsequent series of unexplainable disappearances in the area. After he is possessed by Richard Billington, he is shot and killed by Seneca Lapham using a silver bullet.
Stephen Bates: A cousin of Ambrose Dewart's who lives in Boston (at 17 Randle Place). He and Dewart are both great-great-grandsons of Alijah Billington; it's unclear whether Bates is descended from Laban or from some other unmentioned child of Alijah. He is "a scholar, and an authority on early Massachsetts history" who "had delved into many out-of-the-way corners." He visits Dewart when he asks for help, and later turns to Seneca Lapham when he realizes Dewart is in more trouble than the he can handle. He is described as "about forty-seven years of age" in 1924, "well-preserved, and beginning to grey a little." He disappears after Richard Billington (in the form of Dewart) sends Yog-Sothoth after him.
Armitage Harper: A retired Miskatonic librarian who offers counsel to Stephen Bates. He is described as "a distinguished old gentleman, by no means betraying his seventy-odd years in the trim cut of his iron-grey moustache and Van Dyke and the alertness of his dark eyes." He directs Bates to seek the help of Lapham.
Seneca Lapham: A professor of Anthropology at Miskatonic University and a graduate of the same institution (class of 1879). He investigates the death of Ambrose Dewart and procures several of his books for the library. He also appears in Lin Carter's "The Horror in the Gallery".
Winfield Phillips: Lapham's assistant and the narrator of the third section of the novel. He is a descendant of Rev. Phillips.
=='Posthumous Collaboration'==
In 1944, Derleth wrote to a friend, the minor Weird Tales writer Malcolm Ferguson,Dark Worlds, "Weird Wednesdays: Malcolm M. Ferguson (1919-2011)," by G. W. Thomas, November 13, 2019. about a new project: "Incidentally, I’m at work on a Lovecraft-Derleth novel, The Lurker at the Threshold, built out of notes, fragments, partial outline left by HPL in his papers."A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos: Origins of the Cthulhu Mythos, by John D. Haefele (Cimmerian Press, 2012). This was announced in an undated Arkham House promotional publication, Books from Arkham House, around 1945: "When H. P. Lovecraft died in 1937, he left behind certain notes and fragments, among them portions of an unfinished novel, which August Derleth took up, wove together, and completed as The Lurker at the Threshold."
When Lurker was published in 1945, however, the jacket copy implied that Lovecraft had written a rather more substantial portion of the book:Lovecraft wrote three short novels during his lifetime…and left notes and plans for several more among his papers at the time of his untimely death. Among these were the pages of The Lurker at the Threshold, enough of which had been done to indicate the direction of the plot.The Lurker at the Threshold, by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (Arkham House, 1945).If readers got a misimpression of how much of Lurker was actually Lovecraft's, Derleth tried to correct that. In an item called "On The Lurker at the Threshold" that appeared in the 1948 Arkham Sampler, another promotional publication, he wrote:The total wordage thus written by the late H. P. Lovecraft was thus in the vicinity of 1000, certainly not over 1200. The possibility exists that the two sets of notes were for different stories; yet they appealed to me as manifestly related and as possible to connect, and out of them I constructed and wrote The Lurker at the Threshold, which had nowhere been laid out, planned, or plotted by Lovecraft, but was evoked from his fragments and notes.And in a piece called "Myths About Lovecraft" that appeared in the May 1949 issue of fanzine The Lovecraft Collector, Derleth wrote: Actually, Lovecraft left no unfinished manuscripts. He left certain fragmentary ideas, but these were comparatively few in number. He left certain fragmentary writings — pages or paragraphs of stories which he hoped to write. The most complete of these was incorporated in The Lurker at the Threshold.The Lovecraft Collector, "Myths About Lovecraft," by August Derleth, May 1949.Lurker was reprinted numerous times by various publishers. Although during their overall lifetimes, Derleth was overall a much more successful writer than Lovecraft, in the weird fiction market Lovecraft's name was far more saleable, resulting in editions where "by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth" became "by H. P. Lovecraft with August Derleth," with Derleth's byline often in much smaller type--or omitted altogether (e.g. Carroll & Graf, 1988).
=='The Round Tower'==
Lovecraftian scholar and Mythos writer Robert M. Price called The Lurker at the Threshold "perhaps the greatest sequel to 'The Dunwich Horror,'" but argued that "the third section, the 'Narrative of Winfield Phillips,' does not fit the other two at all":
Plot threads are severed, intriguing characters of whom we cannot believe we have heard the last are rudely dropped, Yog-Sothoth replaces Ossadogowah, and indeed the entire premise of the first tow stories is discarded.... The abrupt genre jump is accompanied by Derleth's inexplicable abandonment of any suggestive restraint; all is cold, explicit, and cut and dried.The Dunwich Cycle: Where the Old Gods Wait, by Robert M. Price, ed. (Chaosium, 1995).
Price engaged in his own "posthumous collaboration" with Derleth, writing the short story "The Round Tower" to serve as a replacement conclusion to The Lurker at the Threshold. 
==Gallery==
Lurker Arkham House 1945.jpg|Arkham House, 1945
Lurker Museum 1948.jpg|Museum Press, 1948
Lurker Gollancze 1968.jpg|Gollancz, 1968
Lurker Panther 1970.jpg|Panther, 1970
Lurker Panther 1973.jpg|Panther, 1973
Lurker Ballantine 1976.jpg|Ballantine, 1976
Lurker Carroll Graf 1988.jpg|Carroll & Graf, 1988
Lurker Carroll Graf 2003.jpg|Carroll & Graf, 2003
==References==
Category:August Derleth works
Category:H. P. Lovecraft works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Novels