Which Lovecraft is actually public domain?

Usually answered with a flat yes. The flat yes is right in the UK and the EU and wrong in the United States, and the difference decides what you can safely publish.

A university reading room at night, tall shelves of old bound volumes receding into darkness, one green-shaded lamp lit. — Most of what people call the Mythos was written by other people, later.

H. P. Lovecraft died in 1937. Whether that settles the question depends entirely on where you are, because the two systems that matter measure from different events — one from the author’s death, the other from the date a work was published.

Not legal advice. This is a working summary of the rules as we apply them to our own copy, published because the question is asked constantly and answered carelessly. If something you are making depends on the answer, get it checked.

Outside the United States

In the UK, the EU and most countries signed up to the Berne Convention, copyright runs for the life of the author plus 70 years. Lovecraft died in 1937, so his work has been out of copyright there since 1 January 2008 — all of it, early and late, regardless of when any individual story appeared.

This is the simple case, and it is the one people are usually thinking of when they say Lovecraft is public domain.

In the United States

The US measures from publication, not death: 95 years for a published work of this period. In 2026 that means everything first published up to and including 1930 is in the public domain there. Works from 1931 follow on 1 January 2027, and so on, one year at a time.

Because the internet is reachable from the United States, this is usually the binding constraint even for a project run from Europe. The working rule we use for our own copy is simply: rely on material first published in 1930 or earlier.

Clear in the United States today

Fifteen of the best-known stories, with the year each first appeared. This is not the complete bibliography — it is the part most people actually want.

Dagon1919

Nyarlathotep1920

The Nameless City1921

The Picture in the House1921

Herbert West — Reanimator1922

The Music of Erich Zann1922

The Rats in the Walls1924

The Hound1924

The Festival1925

The Outsider1926

The Colour Out of Space1927

Pickman's Model1927

The Horror at Red Hook1927

The Silver Key1929

The Dunwich Horror1929

The 1928 story in which Cthulhu first appears is in this period too, and much of what people mean by “the Mythos” — Arkham, the Miskatonic valley, the Necronomicon, Dunwich, Kingsport — comes from stories published in the 1920s and is clear on the same rule.

Still in copyright in the United States

These are the ones that catch people out, and several of them are among the most famous things he wrote.

The Whisperer in Darkness1931

The Strange High House in the Mist1931

The Dreams in the Witch House1933

At the Mountains of Madness1936

The Shadow over Innsmouth1936

The Shadow Out of Time1936

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward1941

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath1943

The three traps

Written ≠ publishedThe US clock starts at publication. Several stories were written in the 1920s and not published until the 1940s, and the composition date does not help you at all. Where an element also appears in an earlier published story, that earlier appearance is what you can rely on.

Other authorsA great deal of “the Mythos” is not Lovecraft’s. August Derleth wrote much of the later apparatus after Lovecraft’s death — including the elemental scheme the gods are often sorted into — and he died in 1971. Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard contributed entities whose terms run separately. Fame is a signal that somebody kept publishing a thing, which is the opposite of the signal you want.

Trade marks are not copyrightThe two are entirely separate systems and expiry of one does nothing to the other. A long-running tabletop game takes its title from the 1928 story; that title is a registered trade mark for roleplaying games, and it stays one no matter how public the underlying story becomes. The same goes for logos, cover designs and product names. You can write about the fiction freely; you cannot dress your product as somebody else’s.

The wider weird tradition

Lovecraft is not the only door, and some of what is behind the others is older and therefore safer. Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow (1895) — Carcosa, Hastur, the Yellow Sign — is comfortably out of copyright and is not Lovecraft’s at all. So is the work of Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, M. R. James and William Hope Hodgson, all of whom he read and none of whom needs a footnote.

Where to start reading

If you have never read any: The Colour Out of Space (1927) is the best of them and the least like the reputation. The Rats in the Walls (1924) is the most purely frightening. The Festival (1925) is the shortest way into the New England that everything else is set in. All three are free to read, legally, anywhere.

It is also worth saying plainly, since this page recommends his work: Lovecraft’s fiction carries racial attitudes that were ugly in his own time and are part of the text rather than incidental to it. Reading him without noticing that is a choice, and not one this page is making for you.

How we use this

Midnight Mythos is an independent Lovecraftian game, and everything its own copy relies on is entered in a provenance register with a first-publication date against it before it ships. Its rules are a separate question entirely — those are used under an open licence, not taken from the public domain, and the distinction matters enough that we keep the two in different documents. The attribution is on the licence page.

If you would rather play in this world than read about it, solo roleplaying explains how that works without a group.