H.P. Lovecraft: Collected Fiction - A Variorum Edition

H.P. Lovecraft: Collected Fiction - A Variorum Edition

H.P. Lovecraft: Collected Fiction - A Variorum Edition

Details

Publisher: Hippocampus Press

Copyright: 2015 Hippocampus Press, S.T. Joshi

ISBN: 978-1-61498-108-4

Page Count: 1600

Author(s): H.P. Lovecraft (author), S.T. Joshi (editor)

Artist(s): Fergal Fitzpatrick (dustjacket illustrations)

Fiction: (see Contents, below)

Non-Fiction: introductions and extensive footnotes by S.T. Joshi

Summary

In the 1980s, S. T. Joshi prepared revised editions of H. P. Lovecraft's stories for Arkham House. Basing his work on consultation of manuscripts, early publications, and other sources, Joshi corrected thousands of errors in the existing texts of Lovecraft's fiction, allowing readers to appreciate the stories as Lovecraft originally wrote them.

In the thirty years that have followed, Joshi has continued to do research on the textual accuracy of Lovecraft's stories, and this comprehensive new edition is the result. For the first time, students and scholars of Lovecraft can see at a glance all the textual variants in all relevant appearances of a story manuscript, first publication in magazines, and first book publications. The result is an illuminating record of the textual history of the tales, along with how Lovecraft significantly revised his stories after initial publication.

Along the way, Joshi has made small but significant revisions to his earlier corrected texts. He has determined, for example, that Lovecraft slightly revised some stories when a reprint of them was scheduled in Weird Tales, and he has altered some readings in light of a better understanding of Lovecraft's customary linguistic usages.

The result is the definitive text of Lovecraft's fiction an edition that supersedes all those that preceded it and should endure as the standard text of Lovecraft's stories for many years.

Volume 1: In this first volume, Lovecraft's earliest stories are printed in chronological order by date of writing. Included are such early triumphs as 'Dagon' and 'The Outsider,' along with the many tales Lovecraft wrote under the inspiration of Lord Dunsany. The celebrated 'Herbert West Reanimator' and 'The Rats in the Walls' show Lovecraft experimenting with longer narratives a tendency that will culminate in the novelettes and novellas of his final decade of writing.

Volume 2: In this second volume, the tales that Lovecraft wrote immediately after returning to his native Providence, R.I., from two years of 'exile' in New York are presented. The landmark tale 'The Call of Cthulhu' was only the tip of the iceberg of a flood of stories he wrote in 1926-27, which include the two short novels The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. 'The Colour out of Space' is a pioneering tale that initiates Lovecraft's distinctive melding of horror and science fiction, while 'The Dunwich Horror' and 'The Whisperer in Darkness' are rich novellas simultaneously evoking terrors from outer space and the brooding darkness of the New England backwoods.

Volume 3: In this third volume, the tales of Lovecraft's final years are presented. The Antarctic novella At the Mountains of Madness is perhaps Lovecraft's most finished work, a superb fusion of weirdness and science fiction that he referred to as 'cosmicism.' 'The Shadow over Innsmouth' is a chilling evocation of the terrors inherent in a lonely New England backwater, while 'The Thing on the Doorstep' and 'The Haunter of the Dark' feature physical horrors with cosmic implications. 'The Shadow out of Time' is the culmination of Lovecraft's portrayal of the vast vistas of space and time his signature contribution to literature.

Volume 4: This final collection includes all known revisions and collaborations undertaken by Lovecraft on behalf of his friends and clients. As with previous volumes in this series, the texts preserved herein scrupulously follow archival manuscripts, typescripts, or original publications, and constitute the definitive edition of these stories. Since Lovecraft's customary procedure as a revisionist was to discard his client's draft and entirely rewrite the story in his own words, much of the fiction in this collection represents original work by Lovecraft, including such notable contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos as 'The Electric Executioner', 'Out of the Aeons', and 'The Diary of Alonzo Typer'. Supreme among the revisions in this volume is the brilliant novella 'The Mound', which embodies Lovecraft's satirical commentary on the Machine Age "decadence" of his era. As a bonus, this fourth volume contains the index to all four volumes.

Contents

Volume I (1905-1925):

• (Introduction by S.T. Joshi, copyright 2015)
• "The Beast in the Cave (fiction)"
• "The Alchemist (fiction)"
• "The Tomb (fiction)"
• "Dagon (fiction)"
• "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (fiction)"
• "Polaris (fiction)"
• "Beyond the Wall of Sleep (fiction)"
• "Memory (fiction)"
• "Old Bugs (fiction)"
• "The Transition of Juan Romero (fiction)"
• "The White Ship (fiction)"
• "The Street (fiction)"
• "The Doom that Came to Sarnath (fiction)"
• "The Statement of Randolph Carter (fiction)"
• "The Terrible Old Man (fiction)"
• "The Tree (fiction)"
• "The Cats of Ulthar (fiction)"
• "The Temple (fiction)"
• "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (fiction)"
• "Celephais (fiction)"
• "From Beyond (fiction)"
• "Nyarlathotep (fiction)"
• "The Picture in the House (fiction)"
• "Ex Oblivione (fiction)"
• "Sweet Ermengarde (fiction)"
• "The Nameless City (fiction)"
• "The Quest of Iranon (fiction)"
• "The Moon-Bog (fiction)"
• "The Outsider (fiction)"
• "The Other Gods (fiction)"
• "The Music of Erich Zann (fiction)"
• "Herbert West - Reanimator (fiction)"
• "Hypnos (fiction)"
• "What the Moon Brings (fiction)"
• "Azathoth (fiction)"
• "The Hound (fiction)"
• "The Lurking Fear (fiction)"
• "The Rats in the Walls (fiction)"
• "The Unnameable (fiction)"
• "The Festival (fiction)"
• "Under the Pyramids (fiction)"
• "The Shunned House (fiction)"
• "The Horror at Red Hook (fiction)"
• "He (fiction)"
• "In the Vault (fiction)"

Volume II (1926-1930)

• (Introduction by S.T. Joshi, copyright 2015)
• "Cool Air (fiction)"
• "The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)"
• "Pickman's Model (fiction)"
• "The Silver Key (fiction)"
• "The Strange High House in the Mist (fiction)"
• "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)"
• "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (fiction)"
• "The Colour Out of Space (fiction)"
• "The Descendant (fragment)"
• "The History of the Necronomicon (essay)"
• "Ibid (fiction)"
• "The Dunwich Horror (fiction)"
• "The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)"

Volume III (1931-1936)

• (Introduction by S.T. Joshi, copyright 2015)
• "At the Mountains of Madness (fiction)"
• "The Shadow Over Innsmouth (fiction)"
• "The Dreams in the Witch-House (fiction)"
• "Through the Gates of the Silver Key (fiction)"
• "The Thing on the Doorstep (fiction)"
• "The Book (fragment)"
• "The Shadow Out of Time (fiction)"
• "The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)"
• Appendix:
  • Juvenalia
    • "The Little Glass Bottle (fiction)"
    • "The Secret Cave (fiction)"
    • "The Mystery of the Graveyard (fiction)"
    • "The Mysterious Ship (fiction)" (short and long versions)
  • "The Evil Clergyman (fragment)"
  • "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (discarded draft)
  • "Cigarette Characterizations (fragment)"
  • "The Very Old Folk (fragment)"
  • "Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Daemons in no Humane Shape (fragment)"

Volume IV: (Introduction by S.T. Joshi)

• "The Green Meadow (fiction)" (Winifred V. Jackson)
• "Poetry and the Gods (fiction)" (Anna Helen Crofts)
• "The Crawling Chaos (fiction)" (with Winifred Virginia Jackson)
• "The Horror at Martin's Beach (fiction)" (with Sonia H. Greene)
• "Two Black Bottles (fiction)" (with Wilfred Blanch Talman)
• "The Last Test (fiction)" (with Adolphe de Castro)
• "The Curse of Yig (fiction)" (with Zealia Bishop)
• "The Electric Executioner (fiction)" (with Adolphe de Castro)
• "The Mound (fiction)" (with Zealia Bishop)
• "Medusa's Coil (fiction)" (with Zealia Bishop)
• "The Trap (fiction)" (with Henry S. Whitehead)
• "The Man of Stone (fiction)" (with Hazel Healde)
• "Winged Death (fiction)" (with Hazel Healde)
• "The Horror in the Museum (fiction)" (with Hazel Healde)
• "Out of the Aeons (fiction)" (with Hazel Healde)
• "The Horror in the Burying-Ground (fiction)" (with Hazel Healde)
• "The Slaying of the Monster (fiction)" (with R.H. Barlow)
• "The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast (fiction)" (with R.H. Barlow)
• "The Tree on the Hill (fiction)" (with Duane W. Rimel)
• "The Battle That Ended the Century (fiction)" (with R.H. Barlow)
• "The Disinterment (fiction)" (with Duane W. Rimel)
• "Till A' the Seas (fiction)" (with R.H. Barlow)
• "Collapsing Cosmoses (fiction)" (with R.H. Barlow)
• "The Challenge from Beyond (fiction)" (with various)
• "The Diary of Alonzo Typer (fiction)" (with William Lumley)
• "In the Walls of Eryx (fiction)" (with Kenneth Sterling)
• "The Night Ocean (fiction)" (with R.H. Barlow)
• Appendix:
  • "Four O'Clock (fiction)" (by Sonia H. Greene)
  • "A Sacrifice to Science (fiction)" (by Gustav Adolphe Danziger)
  • "The Automatic Executioner (fiction)" (by Gustav Adolphe Danziger)
  • "[Fragment]" (by J. Vernon Shea)
  • "The Sorcery of Aphlar (fiction)" (by Duane W. Rimel)

Comments / Trivia

Any factual trivia or comments go here.

• The text here is heavily footnoted and corrected, the vast majority of which restore Lovecraft's original, idiosyncratic spellings and punctuation after generations of minor errors in transcriptions of Lovecraft's handwriting, "corrections" by well-meaning editors, and that sort of thing. The "Variorum" refers to these detailed footnotes produced by S.T. Joshi's detailed research, comparing different published versions of the stories and noting the ways that the text vary from each other and from Lovecraft's original manuscripts.
• This volume collects all of the completed, "solo" fiction by Lovecraft in one volume; not included are:
  • the stories believed lost and non-extant: "The Noble Eavesdropper (fiction)", "The Haunted House (fiction)", "John, the Detective (fiction)", "The Secret of the Grave (fiction)", "The Picture (fiction)", "The Mystery of Murdon Grange (fiction)", and "Life and Death (fiction)".)
  • the two excellent (non-fiction) essays, "Supernatural Horror in Fiction (essay)" and "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction (essay)"
  • the poem "Fungi from Yuggoth (poem)"
  • the fragments known as "The Crawling Chaos (fiction)", "The Thing in the Moonlight (fiction)", "The Round Tower (fiction)", and "The Rose Window (fiction)", the Samuel Loveman dream fragment version of "The Statement of Randolph Carter (fiction)", or Lovecraft's portion of "The Challenge From Beyond (fiction)".
  • the August Derleth "Posthumous Collaborations" "The Lurker at the Threshold (fiction)", "The Survivor (fiction)", "The Lamp of Al-Hazred (fiction)" (generally loosely based on paraphrases of plot ideas from Lovecraft letters, or built around the fragments mentioned above)
  • the revision, collaboration, and ghost-written tales professionally written/rewritten partly, mostly, or entirely by Lovecraft (except for "Under the Pyramids", which is included)

Links

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