The Trail of Cthulhu is a series of interconnected short stories by American writer August Derleth as part of the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction. The stories chronicle the struggles of Laban Shrewsbury and his companions against the Great Old Ones, particularly Cthulhu.

The stories were originally published in Weird Tales from 1944 to 1952, and were republished in collected form as The Trail of Cthulhu by Arkham House in 1962 [1] in an edition of 2,470 copies.

The stories, with their date of first publication, are:

The main character of The Trail of Cthulhu who is introduced in "The House on Curwen Street", Laban Shrewsbury is an anthropologist and professor of philosophy at Miskatonic University. Although he was born in Wisconsin, Shrewsbury spent most of his life in Arkham, Massachusetts. After publishing his first book, the controversial Investigation into the Myth-Patterns of the Latter-Day Primitives with Especial Reference to the R'lyeh Text, in 1915, Shrewsbury mysteriously disappeared. Shortly thereafter, a posthumous collection of his writings, titled Cthulhu Among the Victorians, saw publication.

Just as mysteriously, Shrewsbury reappeared 20 years later and immediately began work on his next book, Cthulhu in the Necronomicon. Before he could complete this work, however, his home in Arkham was destroyed by an inexplicable fire in 1938. Shrewsbury was presumed dead and his unfinished volume was published as a posthumous work.

Shrewsbury had actually escaped to Celaeno, fleeing certain Mythos horrors. Shrewsbury's manuscript, the Celaeno Fragments, remains under lock and key at Miskatonic's library.

Shrewsbury also appears in Phillip O. Marsh's 1994 novel The Worm Shall Ye Fight!.

Asked if Shrewsbury was a model for his character Titus Crow, Mythos author Brian Lumley replied: "No, for I was never too keen on him. I like to see a man (or character) build as he goes....Shrewsbury seemed to come life-size right from square one."