Page "Cthulhu Mythos" Paragraph 1

The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu — a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus of Lovecraft's famous short story The Call of Cthulhu ( first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928 )— to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors.

Writer Richard L. Tierney later applied the term " Derleth Mythos " to distinguish between Lovecraft's works and Derleth's later stories.