Rejected that year by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length,[1] it was originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories.

The story details the events of a disastrous expedition to Antarctica in September 1930, and what is found there by a group of explorers led by the narrator, Dr. William Dyer of Miskatonic University.

Lovecraft explicitly draws from Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and he may have used other stories for inspiration.

The story is narrated in a first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, aiming to prevent an important and much-publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica.

Throughout the course of his explanation, Dyer relates how he led a group of scholars from the university on a previous expedition to Antarctica, during which they discovered ancient ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains higher than the Himalayas.

A small advance group, led by Professor Lake, discovers the remains of fourteen prehistoric lifeforms previously unknown to science, and also unidentifiable as either plants or animals.

Dyer and Danforth fly an aeroplane across the "mountains", soon revealed to be the outer walls of a vast, abandoned stone city, alien to any human architecture.

Danforth continues to experience manic episodes, whispering of "bizarre conceptions" which Dyer attributes to his being one of the few to have completely read through Miskatonic's copy of the Necronomicon.

"The loathing and horror that extreme cold evoked in him was carried over into his writing," Carter wrote, "and the pages of Madness convey the blighting, blasting, stifling sensation caused by sub-zero temperatures in a way that even Poe could not suggest.

"[10] Joshi further cites Lovecraft's most obvious literary source for At the Mountains of Madness as Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, whose concluding section is set in Antarctica.

[13] In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, Lovecraft declared Metcalf Roof's story to be a "rotten," "cheap," and "puerile" version of an idea he had years earlier, and his dissatisfaction may have provoked him to write his own tale of "the awakening of entities from the dim reaches of Earth's history.

"[14] Edward Guimont has argued that At the Mountains of Madness was inspired by contemporary discourse around life on Mars, including Mars-set fictional works and the claims of Martian canals made by Percival Lowell (whom Lovecraft met in 1907).

[15] Guimont has also proposed other influences, including contemporary theories about the decline of the Norse Greenlanders and claims of survival of woolly mammoths in Alaska and particularly plot details being inspired by the 1930 discovery of the remains of Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition.

[17] The title is derived from a line in Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany's short story "The Hashish Man": "And we came at last to those ivory hills that are named the Mountains of Madness...".

[19] Lovecraft had also used that device in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1927) As for details of the Antarctic setting, the author's description of some of the scenery is in part inspired by the Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich and the illustrations of Gustave Doré, both of whom are referenced by the story's narrator multiple times.

[20] Lovecraft's own hand-corrected copies of Astounding Stories formed the basis for the first Arkham House edition, but this still contained over a thousand errors, and a fully restored text was not published until 1985.

"[22] Theodore Sturgeon described the novella as "perfect Lovecraft" and "a good deal more lucid than much of the master's work", as well as "first-water, true-blue science fiction.