Orne 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.
Collections
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)
- Various books on cryptography (these are real books, Lovecraft copied the list verbatim from his Encyclopaedia Britannica):
- Trithemius’ Poligraphia (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror)
- Giambattista Porta’s De Furtivis Literarum Notis (The Dunwich Horror)
- De Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres (The Dunwich Horror)
- Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta (The Dunwich Horror)
- Klüber’s Kryptographik (The Dunwich Horror)
- Other books by Davys, Thicknesse, Blair, and von Marten in the subject of cryptography ("Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises").
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
