Word.ws English Dictionary

Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country proper noun: the fictionalized universe populated by the supernatural beings of H.P. Lovecraft's horror fiction and that of other authors inspired by Lovecraft's works, especially the fictionalized version of New England.

Proper noun

Lovecraft Country

  1. (horror fiction) The fictionalized universe populated by the supernatural beings of H.P. Lovecraft's horror fiction and that of other authors inspired by Lovecraft's works, especially the fictionalized version of New England.
    • An anthology of six scenarios designed for use with the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Set in Lovecraft Country, a fictional area of New England created by horror author H.P. Lovecraft.2009, Keith Herber, Miskatonic River Press, "New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley", →ISBN
    • Ramsay Campbell, who created a version of Lovecraft country in and around Liverpool, and Southern Gothic writer Fred Chappell.2013, Charles L. Crow, A Companion to American Gothic, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN

Noun

Lovecraft Country (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Eerie small town and countryside settings resembling the locales found in H.P. Lovecraft's fictional universe.
    • When Resnais was on a lecture tour of America in 1972, he was enchanted to find himself deep in Lovecraft country, in gloomy Massachusetts.1975 Autumn, Frederick Busi, “Alain Resnais' Stavisky: The Beginning of the End”, in The Massachusetts Review, volume 16, number 4
    • And especially my wife Patricia, who spent weeks tramping with me through Lovecraft country1998, Scott Aniolowski, editor, Return to Lovecraft Country, →ISBN

Examples of Lovecraft Country in a sentence

  • It also established Miskatonic University and Arkham as key locations in Lovecraft Country2014, Paul Roland, The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft, Plexus Publishing, →ISBN:
  • Horror in Lovecraft Country: 2 Hours of Music for Lovecraftian Gaming2019, Graham Plowman, "Horror in Lovecraft Country", ASIN B07X5VPYC6
  • Mahnke lives with his family in the historic North Shore area of Boston, the very heart of Lovecraft Country and the epicenter of the Salem witch trials.2018, A Mahnke, The World of Lore, Volume 3: Dreadful Places:

Forms of Lovecraft Country

alternative formLovecraft country

Origin of Lovecraft Country

From Lovecraft + country. Coined by Keith Herber, later used and popularized by the role-playing games publisher Chaosium.

Questions about Lovecraft Country

What does Lovecraft Country mean?
Lovecraft Country means the fictionalized universe populated by the supernatural beings of H.P. Lovecraft's horror fiction and that of other authors inspired by Lovecraft's works, especially the fictionalized version of New England.
How do you use Lovecraft Country in a sentence?
It also established Miskatonic University and Arkham as key locations in Lovecraft Country
What part of speech is Lovecraft Country?
Lovecraft Country can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near Lovecraft Country in the dictionary

  1. lovebugs
  2. Lovech
  3. lovechild
  4. lovechildren
  5. Lovecraft
  6. Lovecraft Country
  7. Lovecraftesque
  8. Lovecraftian
  9. Lovecraftiana
  10. Lovecraftians
  11. lovecrafty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Lovecraft Country (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Lovecraft Country.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lovecraft_country. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.