Ibid (short story)

"Ibid"
Short story by H. P. Lovecraft
Text available at Wikisource
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Parody
Publication
Published in	O-Wash-Ta-Nong
Publication type	Periodical
Media type	Print (Magazine)
Publication date	January 1938

"Ibid" is a parody by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in 1927 or 1928, and first published in the January 1938, issue of O-Wash-Ta-Nong. ^{[1] [2]}

H. P. Lovecraft (right) in 1928, with writer Vrest Orton.

Summary

"Ibid" is a mock biography of the Roman scholar Ibidus (486–587), whose masterpiece was Op. Cit. , "wherein all the significant undercurrents of Graeco-Roman thought were crystallized once and for all". The piece traces the skull of Ibidus, once the possession of Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and other notables, to the United States, where it travels via Salem, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island to a prairie dog hole in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Satire

The story is prefaced with the epigraph "'...As Ibid says in his famous Lives of the Poets.'--From a student theme". But S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz report that the "target of the satire in 'Ibid' is not so much the follies of students as the pomposity of academic scholarship." ^[1]

Notes

1. Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 122. ISBN   978-0974878911.
2. Loucks, Donovan K. "Ibid". The H.P. Lovecraft Archive. Retrieved September 1, 2021.

References

• H. P. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings.
• S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia.

External links

• Works related to Ibid at Wikisource
• Ibid title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database