Free Collected Fiction Volume 2 (1926-1930): A Variorum Edition by H. P. Lovecraft

Introduction

    The stories in this volume constitute, on the whole, a body of work that first appeared in pulp magazines without initial publication in amateur journals. As a result, Lovecraft did not have much of an opportunity to revise these texts, as he had done for many of the stories that had first appeared in amateur periodicals. Two exceptions to this rule are “Pickman’s Model” (which was slightly revised for its second appearance in Weird Tales ) and “The Colour out of Space” (which was revised for a proposed book publication by F. Lee Baldwin that never eventuated).
    Lovecraft’s two short novels, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, lay unpublished at the time of his death. He made no effort to prepare these texts for publication, although R. H. Barlow prepared partial typescripts of them (both of which contain slight revisions and corrections by Lovecraft). It would, however, be inaccurate to say that these stories are mere first drafts; the extent to which Lovecraft revised them in the course of composition bespeaks considerable care in matters of structure and style. Dream-Quest is slightly less revised than Ward, true to its nature as a “practice” novel ( SL 2.95).
    The two humorous squibs, “History of the ‘Necronomicon’” and “Ibid,” also remained unpublished until after Lovecraft’s death, as did the fragment “The Descendant.” “Ibid” is the only work in this volume for which a manuscript has not come to light. It was presumably sent to Maurice W. Moe, and its whereabouts among Moe’s effects are unknown. For “The Colour out of Space,” we do not have Lovecraft’s original A.Ms. or T.Ms., but a T.Ms. presumably prepared by Baldwin, revised by the author.
    Of the texts in this volume, “The Call of Cthulhu” and the two short novels were very poorly printed by Arkham House, because it unwisely chose (in the case of “The Call of Cthulhu”) to follow the poor Weird Tales text, and (in the case of the novels) because whoever transcribed the texts exhibited a poor ability to read Lovecraft’s handwriting. Such major stories as “The Colour out of Space,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” were well printed by Arkham House because it followed Lovecraft’s T.Ms.
    The dream-account later titled “The Very Old Folk” was written in late 1927, embodied in a letter to Donald Wandrei. It appears in the Appendix to Volume 3.
    Abbreviations used in the notes are as follows:

    A.Ms. autograph manuscript
    JHL John Hay Library, Brown University (Providence, RI)
    om. omitted
    SL Selected Letters (1965–76; 5 vols.)
    T.Ms. typed manuscript
    —S. T. JOSHI

Collected Fiction: 1926–1930