Orne Library

Miskatonic University Library

The Miskatonic University's Orne Library is famous for its collection of rare occult books, including several authentic tomes such as the Necronomicon, and Book of Eibon. It also has several of the more rare and less famous fragmented and untranslated writings.

The library is headed by the prestigious Dr. Henry Armitage who himself is a great researcher of the occult and linguistics. From experience he has learned to keep much of the collection under lock and key. A guard dog is also kept chained up outside the building.

Rare Occult Book Collection

MU Library, Ground Floor

MU Library, Upstairs

Confirmed acquisitions: The Orne Library has copies of:

• The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’ Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. (History of the Necronomicon and The Dunwich Horror)
• A collection of journals, and old badly kept books from the belongings of Wilbur Whateley. (The Dunwich Horror)
• The Book of Eibon (The Dreams in the Witch House, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shadow out of Time)
• Unaussprechlichen Kulten of Friedrich von Junzt (The Dreams in the Witch House, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shadow out of Time)
• The Daemonolatreia of Remigius
• The Pnakotic Manuscripts
• The Golden Bough, full 12 volumes of the third edition set (CoC RPG scenario "Halloween At St. Odilio's")
• The Kranorian Annals, Fact or Fallacy? by Garson Casterwell (CoC RPG scenario ("Fear in a Bottle")

Rumored but unconfirmed acquisitions (mentioned by Lovecraft, not necessarily in connection with the library):

• The Picatrix
• Joseph Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus (The Festival)
• The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
• By way of Joseph Curwen (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward):
  • Hermes Trismegistus' Hermetic Corpus in Mesnard's edition
  • The Turba Philosophorum
  • Geber's Liber Investigationis
  • Artephius's Key of Wisdom
  • The cabbalistic Zohar
  • Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus
  • Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetsner's edition
  • Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus
  • Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae
  • Trithemius's De Lapide Philosophico
  • A fine volume of the forbidden Necronomicon conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam
  • Magnalia Christi Americana by Cotton Mather
  • Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather

Anthropodermic Book Collection

The Orne Library is well known for its collection of anthropodermic books (books bound in human skin). The library acquired the books in the 1920s as gifts from two alumni, at least one an avid book collector. The books were not originally bound in human skin, but were instead rebound for private collectors in the 19th century. The library has three such human-skin books:

• De Humanis Corporis Fabrica (Andreas Vesalius, 1543)
• Danse Macabre (two copies), featuring wood-cut illustrations by Hans Holbein the Younger

Crytopgraphy Collection

Various books on cryptography mentioned in The Dunwich Horror (these are real books, Lovecraft copied the list verbatim from his Encyclopaedia Britannica):

• Trithemius’ Poligraphia
• Giambattista Porta’s De Furtivis Literarum Notis
• De Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres
• Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta
• Klüber’s Kryptographik
• Other Non-Occult Books by Davys, Thicknesse, Blair, and von Marten in the subject of cryptography ("Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises").

Links

• External Description