Collected Fiction Volume 1 (1905-1925): A Variorum Edition Read online

  Collected Fiction: 1905–1925

  H. P. LOVECRAFT

  Collected Fiction

  A VARIORUM EDITION

  VOLUME 1: 1905–1925

  Edited by S. T. Joshi

  Hippocampus Press

  —————————

  New York

  Copyright © 2015 by Hippocampus Press.

  Selection, editing, and editorial matter copyright © 2015 by S. T. Joshi.

  Lovecraft material used by permission of the Estate of H. P. Lovecraft; Lovecraft Properties, LLC.

  First Electronic Edition

  Published by Hippocampus Press

  P.O. Box 641, New York, NY 10156.

  http://www.hippocampuspress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means

  without the written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design and cover artwork by Fergal Fitzpatrick. For the cover of volume one, Mr. Fitzpatrick has used the strange and the fantastic as his conceptual departure.

  “I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups—(a) Love of the strange and the fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.”

  —H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner (7 March 1920)

  Cover design and cover artwork by Fergal Fitzpatrick.

  Portrait of H. P. Lovecraft, 1915.

  Photo of S. T. Joshi by Emily Marija Kurmis.

  Hippocampus Press logo designed by Anastasia Damianakos.

  MOBI ISBN: 978-1-61498-150-3

  EPUB ISBN: 978-1-61498-151-0

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Beast in the Cave

  The Alchemist

  The Tomb

  Dagon

  A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson

  Polaris

  Beyond the Wall of Sleep

  Memory

  Old Bugs

  The Transition of Juan Romero

  The White Ship

  The Street

  The Doom That Came to Sarnath

  The Statement of Randolph Carter

  The Terrible Old Man

  The Tree

  The Cats of Ulthar

  The Temple

  Facts concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family

  Celephaïs

  From Beyond

  Nyarlathotep

  The Picture in the House

  Ex Oblivione

  Sweet Ermengarde; or, The Heart of a Country Girl

  The Nameless City

  The Quest of Iranon

  The Moon-Bog

  The Outsider

  The Other Gods

  The Music of Erich Zann

  Herbert West—Reanimator

  Hypnos

  What the Moon Brings

  Azathoth

  The Hound

  The Lurking Fear

  The Rats in the Walls

  The Unnamable

  The Festival

  Under the Pyramids

  The Shunned House

  The Horror at Red Hook

  He

  In the Vault

  Introduction

  In the winter of 1976, shortly after I entered Brown University as an undergraduate, I began the task of examining the textual status of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories, comparing the Arkham House editions of the period (released in 1963–65) with the manuscripts and early printed appearances that were housed in the John Hay Library. The task of preparing corrected versions of the Lovecraft fiction took nearly the entirety of my stay at Brown as an undergraduate and graduate student (1976–82) and eventually led to the publication of these corrected texts in three volumes by Arkham House: The Dunwich Horror and Others (1984), At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1985), and Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1986). Later, I prepared corrected versions of Lovecraft’s revisions (The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, 1989) and included a small batch of his remaining fiction in Miscellaneous Writings (1995).

  The Arkham House editions ultimately led to the publication of three annotated editions by Penguin Classics (The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, 1999; The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, 2001; The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories, 2004), which in turn led to Peter Straub’s edition of Lovecraft’s Tales (2005) for the Library of America, which used my texts. Because of various legal concerns, I was unable to present the stories in chronological order in the Arkham House editions, but this defect was remedied in my edition of Lovecraft’s Complete Fiction (2008) for Barnes & Noble. Because of a proofreading snafu, the first printing of that edition was full of errors; but a corrected edition appeared in 2011 and to date constitutes the most accurate edition of Lovecraft’s collected fiction.

  I have, however, now undertaken a renewed investigation of the textual status of Lovecraft’s stories, re-examining my textual notes and refining my decisions as to the best textual sources for the stories as well as of Lovecraft’s preferences in regard to spelling, punctuation, and other details. I also wished to present these textual variants for interested readers, since there has on occasion been confusion as to the sources of the corrections I made in my previous editions. I have now presented these variegated results in this variorum edition, which lists all the textual variants in important publications of each Lovecraft story.

  The end result is a series of slight but on occasion significant revisions of my previous texts so that, in my judgment, the texts presented here are now more in line with Lovecraft’s habitual usages. As I was working on my initial corrected editions for Arkham House, I received valuable advice from the publisher’s managing editor, James Turner, whose meticulousness in matters of orthography, punctuation, and other matters was unparalleled; but I have now determined that some of the decisions we made in regard to these and other matters are erroneous and need to be revised. I have also determined that, in several texts, such as “Dagon” and “The Rats in the Walls,” Lovecraft made slight revisions of his stories when they first appeared in Weird Tales or were reprinted in that magazine.

  We are fortunate that so many of Lovecraft’s manuscripts are still extant. Even though Lovecraft himself stated that he would habitually destroy a manuscript or typescript when any printed version, however inadequate, was available, he in fact preserved many typescripts after they had appeared in print. He did not, it is true, preserve many of his original handwritten drafts, but the existence of a typescript prepared by himself (as opposed to some other hand) is a valuable clue to his textual preferences. In cases where autograph manuscripts are extant, I have at times printed in the textual notes passages that he excised in the course of composition. These excised passages provide important hints as to the direction and focus of the tales.

  Many of his early tales were first published in amateur journals. When these tales were republished in Weird Tales or other professional magazines (or even in fan magazines such as the Fantasy Fan), Lovecraft took occasion to revise the texts slightly. Several extant typescripts in fact embody these revisions; in other cases the revisions must be inferred from subsequent printed appearances.

  Lovecraft did not live to see a collection of his tales appear from a major publisher or even a small press; in his lifetime, the stillborn edition of The Shunned House (W. Paul Cook/The Recluse Press, 1928), R. H. Barlow’s edition of The Cats of Ulthar (Dragon-Fly Pre
ss, 1935), and William L. Crawford’s edition of The Shadow over Innsmouth (Visionary Press, 1936) constitute the only separate publications of his fiction. (Several of his tales did appear in anthologies during his lifetime, but these are usually of no textual significance.) When August Derleth and Donald Wandrei founded the firm of Arkham House, they were determined to preserve as much of Lovecraft’s work—fiction, essays, poetry, letters—within hard covers as they could; but they were not authorities in textual scholarship and customarily made poor decisions in selecting a “copy-text” (the best extant text of a given work, whether it be a manuscript or a printed source) for use in their early editions, The Outsider and Others (1939) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943). All apart from textual errors, these and subsequent Arkham House editions are marred by many typographical errors. Regrettably, these editions in turn served as the sources for the numerous paperback editions of Lovecraft’s work, beginning with the Bartholomew House edition of The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth and Other Stories of the Supernatural (1944) and proceeding on through the editions by Avon, Lancer, Beagle/Ballantine, and others.

  My editor’s notes to each story in this edition recount in brief compass the textual history of the tale, specify the manuscript and printed sources for it, and identify the copy-text I have chosen. I should here like to outline some broader orthographic and stylistic decisions I have made in the preparation of this edition. On occasion—especially in the absence of a manuscript—I have been compelled to emend the text slightly in accordance with my understanding of Lovecraft’s habitual stylistic preferences. I have been somewhat conservative in this procedure, making only such emendations as are virtually certain to have been made by Lovecraft himself as gauged by the sum total of his fictional output. My own decisions can be grouped under the following rubrics:

  British Spellings

  It is well known that Lovecraft preferred British spellings (words ending in -our [for -or], -ise [for -ize], -re [for -er, as in theatre or centre], -ce [for -se, as in pretence or defence]. and the like). He always used -ll- in such words as travelled and jewellery (for the American traveled and jewelry), and uniformly used such British variants as connexion (for connection), plough (for plow), and programme (for program). He is generally consistent in using ae in such usages as encyclopaedia, palaeontology, archaeology, and the like; less consistent with daemon and daemoniac, but I have systematised these usages. He is generally consistent in using oe in foetor and a few other words. I had previously altered Lovecraft’s centreing to centring, but centreing is listed as a legitimate variant in the Oxford English Dictionary, so I have restored it.

  The serial comma is more common in British usage than American, and Lovecraft generally adheres to it, although with numerous slips. I have systematised this usage. Lovecraft occasionally uses an before a word beginning in h, as many British writers up to the present day do; but the usage an hundred is far less common than a hundred, so I have uniformly printed the latter.

  The British shew for show is nearly universal in Lovecraft’s autograph manuscripts; but in later typescripts he begins to use show. My feeling is that, as he noticed that Weird Tales and other pulp magazines were uniformly changing shew to show, he decided to accommodate his publishers. I believe, however, his preference was always for shew, so I have printed it even when a manuscript or typescript reads show.

  There are some British spellings and usages that Lovecraft eschewed. Among these are: practice as a verb (for the British practise); toward (for towards [this variant appears occasionally in Lovecraft’s rendering of New England dialect]); story (for storey); inquiry (for enquiry); the period after such abbreviations as Mr. or Dr.; judgment (for judgement).

  Other Stylistic Usages

  One of the more significant changes I have made in this edition is my decision to render book titles in double quotation marks without italics. Lovecraft is quite consistent in this usage in his earlier tales, but in his later manuscripts he begins to use italics without quotation marks. As with shew/show, I believe this was a decision by Lovecraft to accommodate magazine publishers, who uniformly printed book titles in italics. But Lovecraft’s letters, from the beginning to the end of his life, print such titles in quotation marks without italics, and this usage was indeed common in his day (H. L. Mencken [1880–1956] followed the usage throughout his lifetime). It is therefore my belief that Lovecraft would have preferred using quotation marks for book titles.

  Lovecraft was not entirely consistent in omitting the hyphen in adverb-adjective compounds (e.g., queerly proportioned), but he more often omitted it than included it, so I have removed it throughout his texts. (This rule does not apply to well when used in conjunction with an adjective.)

  On occasion Lovecraft did make errors in spelling and other usages. Among the words he habitually misspelled were Portugese (for Portuguese) and accomodate (for accommodate). I have corrected Lovecraft’s errors in these cases, as all previous editors have done. I have, however, not corrected Lovecraft’s erroneous use of data in the singular; nor have I corrected his occasionally lax use of foreign terms (e.g., facade without the cedilla; melange without the acute accent over the first e; some errors in rendering German).

  In terms of individual usages, one can make note of the following: Lovecraft used eery (not eerie) uniformly; he much more often used for ever than forever; he generally lower-cased heaven and hell; he used the quasi-British pandaemoniac but also preferred the spelling pandemonium; he generally lower-cased colonial, although the form Colonial is found in many of his early texts; he used motor-car but also motor coach and motor truck; he generally used the hyphen for compounds in -like, with the exception of certain very common words (e.g., godlike, lifelike, warlike); he almost never used a hyphen in compounds with the prefix over-, but generally did use the hyphen in most compounds with the prefixes pre-, trans-, post-, half-, ultra-, extra-, sub-, and semi- (except for semicircle). He is rather inconsistent in capitalising Nature when the term is personified, but I have systematised this usage.

  With regard to usages pertaining to time and date, Lovecraft generally preferred 11 [not eleven] a.m./p.m. (these abbreviations never written in small capitals), but eleven [not 11] o’clock; February 7(th) but the seventh of February.

  This edition presents Lovecraft’s stories in chronological order by their presumed order of composition, not publication. In some cases, the exact date of composition is not known, but evidence from various sources—e.g., several chronologies of his stories prepared at various times by Lovecraft himself—can at least help to ascertain the proper sequence of his tales. No revisions or collaborations are included with the exception of “Under the Pyramids” (1924) and “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1932–33); the former because it is as close to original composition as any of his ghostwritten tales are, and the latter because it is a direct sequel to “The Silver Key” and also presents interesting textual variants both in the surviving manuscripts and in the printed texts.

  I have presented textual collations from all relevant texts of a given story published in Lovecraft’s lifetime. In most cases, this excludes several printings such as anthology appearances or reprints in Weird Tales. For the Arkham House editions, I have not felt it necessary in every instance to collate The Outsider and Others or other early editions, but have focused on the editions of the 1960s, which remained in print for decades and which I myself revised in the 1980s. My own editions, whether for Arkham House or other publishers, have not been collated. In my editor’s notes I have generally indicated when a given text is textually irrelevant.

  In most cases, I have not felt the need to present textual variants for section headings or other typographical elements that are largely irrelevant to the textual status of a tale. For example, Weird Tales habitually altered Lovecraft’s Roman numerals for section divisions into Arabic numerals, but these variants are not recorded.

  In this edition, any end-of-line hyphens are Lovecraft’s own hyphens. We ha
ve deliberately not introduced hyphens in other words, to prevent confusion on this point. As a result, there occasionally may be loose lines, but we feel this is a small imperfection if it eliminates ambiguity on this point.

  Abbreviations used in this edition are as follows:

  A.Ms.autograph manuscript

  ESEssential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (2008)

  JHLJohn Hay Library, Brown University (Providence, RI)

  OFFO Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow (2007)

  om. omitted

  SLSelected Letters (1965–76; 5 vols.)

  T.Ms.typed manuscript

  In my textual work, I have over the years benefited from the valuable advice and encouragement of such scholars as R. Boerem, Donald R. Burleson, Scott Connors, Steven J. Mariconda, Marc A. Michaud, Dirk W. Mosig, Robert M. Price, Juha-Matti Rajala, and David E. Schultz. For the preparation of this edition, I have been assisted by Kory Callaway, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Graham Holroyd, and Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. I am deeply indebted to David E. Schultz for his skill and sensitivity in designing this edition; and also to my publisher, Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus Press, for his exhaustive and detailed proofreading, which has saved me from many errors. For decades I have worked closely with Robert C. Harrall, Administrator of the Estate of H. P. Lovecraft, in arranging for numerous editions of my corrected texts, and he is to be thanked for supporting this most recent—and, I trust, my last—edition.

  —S. T. Joshi

  Collected Fiction: 1908–1925

  The Beast in the Cave

  The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost,[1] completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recesses[2] of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, in no direction could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as a guidepost to set me on the outward path. That nevermore should I behold the blessed light of day, or scan the pleasant hills and dales of the beautiful world outside, my reason could no longer entertain the slightest unbelief. Hope had departed. Yet, indoctrinated as I was by a life of philosophical study, I derived no small measure of satisfaction from my unimpassioned demeanour;[3] for although I had frequently read of the wild frenzies into which were thrown the victims of similar situations,[4] I experienced none of these, but stood quiet as soon as I clearly realised[5] the loss of my bearings.