Wilmarth is the main character in Fritz Leiber's "To Arkham and the Stars", written and presumably set in 1966, when the now-septuagenarian professor is chair of Miskatonic's Literature Department. Leiber describes him as "slender silver-haired", with a "mocking sardonic note which has caused some to call him 'unpleasantly' rather than simply 'very' erudite." He acknowledges keeping "in rather closer touch with the Plutonians or Yuggothians than perhaps even old Dyer guesses." Wilmarth remarks in the story, "[After you've spent an adult lifetime at Miskatonic, you discover you've developed a rather different understanding from the herd's of the distinction between the imaginary and the real."