Table of Contents: “Collected Fiction Volume 4: Revisions and Collaborations"

I do not know how this post finds you, fellow traveler, but as of this writing it finds my hometown in the grip of a miserably cold season. The temperature is below freezing, as it has been for some time, and as it will remain for some time. Truth be told, if not for the fact that I would have forfeited my wages, I would not have willingly risen from bed these past few days. As it stands, I am half-frozen but awake nonetheless, and so it falls that you shall have another post to enjoy.

We have come, at last, to the final volume in Joshi’s new collection, at least in terms of detailing the contents of each one. As I have mentioned before, this volume deals entirely with works that are not considered 100% original works of H.P. Lovecraft. Rather, they are stories which he collaborated on, edited, revised, or ghost-wrote for other – and usually more commercially successful – authors at the time.

This entire subject has fascinated me ever since I first learned about this chapter of Lovecraft’s life. I’ve spoken of it before, but in short Lovecraft reached a point where it was more profitable for him to work on stories for others than it was to write his own tales. The exact circumstances are worthy of at least one stand-alone post; to put it briefly, he was such a misanthrope that he actively alienated himself from the only publishers who had ever bought his stories. The end result was that he could earn more revising a story for someone else, or even writing the entire story himself and letting them publish it under their name. He would then receive a percentage of whatever they got paid.

Probably the most interesting thing about this whole subject is that, especially compared to Lovecraft, most of those writers are at best obscure these days. I suppose that’s not surprising if you really think about it; these other writers obviously recognized Lovecraft as a superior talent, and so it stands to reason that he would have weathered the intervening decades better than they. After you consider that paradox for a bit, the next bit of puzzlement – or perhaps obsession, if you’re not careful – becomes trying to figure out just how much Lovecraft there is in each of these stories.

That’s a subject Bryant has dipped his feet into, and found the waters to be a bit deep for his tastes, at least at the time. If I understand it correctly, S.T. Joshi himself has endeavored in this new volume to shed some light on the subject, using new resources available to him. If anyone could determine just by reading a piece whether or not Lovecraft himself wrote it entirely or only edited it, I think it would probably be S.T. Joshi, so I’m excited about the prospect. I haven’t actually read any of the stories contained in this volume (!) and so this will be an entirely new experience for me. Speaking of the stories, let’s take a look at the table of contents, plus some additions of my own.

The Green Meadow

Poetry and the Gods

The Crawling Chaos

The Horror at Martin's Beach

Two Black Bottles

The Last Test

The Curse of Yig

The Electric Executioner

The Mound

Medusa's Coil

The Trap

The Man of Stone

Winged Death

The Horror in the Museum

Out of the Aeons

The Horror in the Burying-Ground

The Slaying of the Monster

The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast

The Tree on the Hill

The Battle that Ended the Century

The Disinterment

Till A’the Seas

Collapsing Cosmoses

The Challenge from Beyond

The Diary of Alonzo Typer

In the Walls of Eryx

The Night Ocean

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I’m going to hit pause right here, even though there are still two stories left in this volume, because they are different enough from the rest that Joshi himself separates them. Already we have a list of twenty-seven titles*, more than have been in any volume of this new set since the first. This book runs over 700 pages, which puts it at around 200 longer than the previous three in the collection. That alone should serve to reinforce just how prolific this portion of Lovecraft’s career was, even in comparison to the works released under his own name. Since I haven’t read any of them yet, let’s take a look at the ones I’ve at least heard of.

*For brevity’s sake, I have opted not to include the information pertaining to the collaborators / credited authors in this post. I will of course include that information when I reach this volume in my reading and begin a more in-depth analysis.

The Mound

This one stands out in my mind as one Bryant has mentioned before, usually to the effect that he believes I’ll enjoy it. While I might be misremembering, I also want to say that he and others have pointed to it as one of the stories which was probably written entirely by Lovecraft. 

The Crawling Chaos / Medusa's Coil / The Horror in the Museum

These three stand out by virtue of having been selected as the title of three other collections of Lovecraft’s collaborations and revisions. The first two were used by Arcane Wisdom for their two-volume set, and the third by Del Rey for their volume. I can only assume this indicates that these stories are of particular interest.

The Horror at Martin's Beach

I’m singling this one out because the collaborator was Sonia Greene, who for two years was Sonia Lovecraft. Their marriage is a fascinating subject, and I may have to avail myself of some of the books available on the topic. 

Poetry and the Gods / In the Walls of Eryx

All I know about these two titles is that they jump off the page in my mind more readily than others, which means I’ve probably read / heard about them previously.

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Now let’s have a look at the final two stories collected in this volume, and talk about what makes them different: Joshi, along with other Lovecraft scholars and amateur investigators, doesn’t think Lovecraft was very much involved in their composition.

“Four O’clock” by Sonia Greene

Based on the evidence available, it looks like the concept for “Four O’clock” came from Lovecraft while he and Greene were married, but he did not collaborate or revise it. It was included in the collection Something About Cats and Other Pieces, which was the fourth volume of “Lovecraft” stories released by Arkham House under August Derleth. As I have already mentioned – and will undoubtedly mention again, in this very post even – Derleth wasn’t always the most honest about where some of these stories originated.

“The Sorcery of Aphlar” by Duane W. Rimel

From what I’ve seen in just briefly perusing the web, the biggest contribution Lovecraft made here was suggesting Rimel change the original name, “The Sorcery of Alfred.” Beyond that, all anyone is willing to grant is that he might have made a few notes or suggestions.

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Thus we reach the end of the contents page of our fourth and final volume in the new set put together by S.T. Joshi, and in a way reach the end of the first phase of this project. I have now enumerated both my own collection of works either by or related to Lovecraft, plus provided these codices of his extant works and my experiences with them. Barring any unforeseen obstacles, my next post(s) will be of a more analytical variety, beginning with “The Beast in the Cave” and proceeding from there.

Before I leave you this time, though, I’d like to share some curiosities I encountered while originally putting together my own list of Lovecraft’s works. The first three are stories that popped up in several places, but so far as I know, only one is included in any of the collections I own. The last item is something I came across only in this writing, and will need to try and track down by the time I reach my reading of this volume.

“Bothon” by Henry S. Whitehead / August Derleth

This title pops up in various places, but from what I can gather, Lovecraft might have suggested the idea to Whitehead, and maybe a brief synopsis at best. Curiously, I even read comments on forums from a few people who don’t even think Whitehead wrote it. Their belief is that even Whitehead never did more than a synopsis, and this was another Derleth “collaboration.”

“The Thing in the Moonlight” by J. Chapman Miske

According to the Internet, Lovecraft once wrote a letter to Donald Wandrei describing a particular dream, and this story is the result of Miske taking that and expanding upon it. This one is actually in one of the Del Rey collections I own (The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft) and has a footnote that I will summarize: According to Joshi, the “story” is just a bit from the letter, with a paragraph added by Miske before and after. I’ve never read the letter or the story, but I will eventually get around to both and report back.

“Satan's Servants” by Robert Bloch

This is another “collaboration” Derleth included in Something About Cats and Other Pieces, which is probably why I’ve seen it connected to Lovecraft’s name. All indications, however, are that this is 100% Robert Bloch’s story.

"Ashes"/"The Ghost-Eater"/"The Loved Dead"/"Deaf, Dumb, and Blind" by C.M. Eddy, Jr.

These four stories are a fun mystery to have uncovered while writing this post, and I will definitely find them and read them in time. Apparently, all four were originally slated to be included in the two-volume set by Arcane Wisdom which I own, to the point they’re listed in official pre-release marketing materials from the publisher. Just before printing, though, Eddy’s family approached the publisher with a copyright claim and kept the stories from being included.

Now, I personally believe that Arcane Wisdom had probably done their due diligence before deciding to include these works, so I imagine they were a bit blindsided. Of course, I could be completely wrong, and this is a case of a publisher trying to keep from paying an author’s estate due royalties. Whatever the case, what isn’t disputable is that Eddy’s grandson supposedly was / is working on releasing a stand-alone collection of his grandfather’s stories in order to bring them to modern audiences.*

The last tidbit I encountered was that in addition to the copyright issue, at least some members of the Eddy family don’t believe those stories were collaborations. This caused at least a few raised eyebrows among the more learned members of the forums I was perusing, as apparently there is at least strong anecdotal evidence of Eddy’s wife talking about Lovecraft’s work with her husband. Either way, I was amused an excited to uncover a whole chapter of the Lovecraft collaboration saga I has previously not known about.

*Personally, I think letting those four stories be included in a collection under the name of the world’s most recognizable author of weird fiction – a collection already being paid for by an established publisher – would be the way to go. Again, though, I don’t know the whole story.
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So there we have it, (potentially) all of Lovecraft’s extant fiction, acknowledged revisions / collaborations, and possible revisions / collaborations accounted for. The truth is, we may never know the full extent of Lovecraft’s work, even if S.T. Joshi were to personally train a dozen new Lovecraft aficionados and task them with continuing his work. We’re approaching the century mark for when most of these stories were published, and the simple truth of the matter is that sometimes things slip through the cracks. Don’t believe me? Just dive into the literal mountains worth of research into what Shakespeare may or may not have actually written, or the differences between the various folios. If you want a more current example, and one that follows the horror thread, pick up one of the several volumes available which cover the lost / forgotten / maybe-never-existed Steven King works out there.

For instance, King himself has said in multiple interviews that he submitted stories to several different men’s magazines (“skin rags” per Uncle Steve) over the course of the years. Well, we know about his early stories in Cavalier, and once he was a bit more famous Playboy picked up a tale or two. He’s talking about stories no one else seems to have on record, though, and he at least claims not to remember when he wrote them or what they were called. He wrote under at least one now-famous penname for years; what if those stories were submitted under others? For the completionists out there, how do you reconcile that information, knowing that you might never read those stories, or that even if you found one, it might be nigh-impossible to verify?

Speaking of such things, I would not have been able to get into Lovecraft the way I have without the resources of www.hplovecraft.com such as this wonderful bibliography:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/chrono.aspx

Are there things on that list which I haven’t mentioned in a post yet? Boy howdy, you better believe it. Am I going to address them in this particular writing? Not a chance in R'lyeh. Right there at the top, though, are a half-dozen non-extant works just taunting me. Who knows, maybe this blog will turn into something more, and I’ll end up in some dusty Rhode Island attic, gingerly picking up century-old pieces of parchment. If so, know that I sincerely hope you’re all still along for the ride.