Complete collection?

[Dexter]

Textual errors? That's unfortunate, considering the efforts made to avoid them. Here are the sources. Additional corrections were supplied by S.T. Joshi.

21 of the stories come from:

The Dunwich Horror and Others, S.T. Joshie, ed. (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1984.) Corrected eleventh printing.

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, S.T. Joshi, ed. (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1985.) Corrected ninth printing.

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, S.T. Joshi, ed. (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1986.) Corrected ninth printing.

"The Shadow Out of Time" is reprinted from
The Shadow Out of Time, S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, ed. (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003.)

 

[j d worthington]

As I recall, the errors crept in because the text was reset, and when they do that, errors galore seem to creep in these days (for about the past 30 years or so....)

 

[Dexter]

Again I'll say it: Unfortunate. In this digital age, I'd think (or maybe just hope) that things could go more smoothly. Ah well.

For me, it hasn't been an issue yet. I've not read any of these stories elsewhere and nothing has scanned oddly. They are very good reads, in fact.

It would be nice to have the stories as originally written, but from what I understand he's been edited rather freely his entire career. Poor guy.

Does anyone know of a website where these kinds of errors are tracked?
(I'm guessing not, but I'm so hoping!)

 

[Ningauble]

Again I'll say it: Unfortunate. In this digital age, I'd think (or maybe just hope) that things could go more smoothly. Ah well.

For me, it hasn't been an issue yet. I've not read any of these stories elsewhere and nothing has scanned oddly. They are very good reads, in fact.

It would be nice to have the stories as originally written, but from what I understand he's been edited rather freely his entire career. Poor guy.

Tales is supposed to be based on the corrected texts, so in spite of the new errors, you won't see any of the old errors.

Does anyone know of a website where these kinds of errors are tracked?

No, sorry. I've made errata lists for the Penguin editions, or at least lists of every instance where the Penguin edition differs from the corrected Arkham House edition (some of these aren't errors but new corrections, I'm sure). However, Joshi hasn't yet had the time to look at them.

Anyway, that list would be very uncomplete when applied to Tales, since that book has the same errors as the Dell volumes (=the Penguin errors plus some more).

 

[Ningauble]

Textual errors? That's unfortunate, considering the efforts made to avoid them. Here are the sources. Additional corrections were supplied by S.T. Joshi.

21 of the stories come from:

The Dunwich Horror and Others, S.T. Joshie, ed. (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1984.) Corrected eleventh printing.

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, S.T. Joshi, ed. (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1985.) Corrected ninth printing.

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, S.T. Joshi, ed. (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1986.) Corrected ninth printing.

"The Shadow Out of Time" is reprinted from
The Shadow Out of Time, S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, ed. (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003.)

Yeah, but that's what Library of America claims. However, the new errors that appear in the book are exactly the same as those in the two Dell volumes, The Annotated Lovecraft and More Annotated Lovecraft, e.g., "from wharves" instead of "from the wharves" on 128.13. I'd say the two have a source in common.

 

[j d worthington]

Again I'll say it: Unfortunate. In this digital age, I'd think (or maybe just hope) that things could go more smoothly. Ah well.

For me, it hasn't been an issue yet. I've not read any of these stories elsewhere and nothing has scanned oddly. They are very good reads, in fact.

It would be nice to have the stories as originally written, but from what I understand he's been edited rather freely his entire career. Poor guy.

Does anyone know of a website where these kinds of errors are tracked?
(I'm guessing not, but I'm so hoping!)

In this case, the "digital age" may be part of the problem, as proofreaders have become much more lax, the amount and time of book production being more complicated, etc. With fewer books, more literate editors, proofreaders, etc., and a longer time to actually go through the (multiple sets of) galleys, there tend to be less errors creeping in... especially as different sets of galleys tended to go to different proofreaders, so what one missed, another would probably catch. I don't believe that's the case, now, at least with many houses. And since you seldom have typesetting firms doing the work (including proofreading on their end, plus the writer, plus -- sometimes, at least, someone at the publishing company), you often have things going through multiple editions or printings before errors are caught.

 

[Dexter]

Hey, Ningauble, you know what? I read that story and never noticed it, but you're right. Maybe I should be a proofreader, eh j.d.?

Thanks for the heads-up. It's a sad state of affairs, that's for sure.

Anyone have a "the" they can spare?

 

[Nesacat]

Errors aside, I think the Library of America is a very important addition to the body of the Old Gent's work. It's recognition well deserved and long overdue.

It is sad that there are grammatical errors and typos that really ought not to be there, but that should not diminish the importance of the book itself or put people off from getting to know Lovecraft and his work.

I am an editor and it irks me a great deal to find errors in books and as JD has said, the errors seem to be increasing of late. However, I am also always glad to at least be able to still obtain these books and read them at affordable prices.

 

[j d worthington]

I'll agree with Nesa on that one. It always irks me to find such errors... and I tend to be hyperaware of them. Nonetheless, the fact that Lovecraft has now been included in this series is a big step forward where recognition as a major American author is concerned, and should be recognized as such. Also, for those who are just making their acquaintance with Lovecraft... while textually precise editions would be much preferred, the ones I first read were often much, much worse (the Beagle Boxer editions of several, and the earlier Arkham edition of At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels), and nonetheless decidedly captured my imagination and made me realize that here was something very special; with the later editions Joshi edited, I found even more to like, as I began to appreciate just how precise and meticulous HPL was... but had it not been for those earlier editions, I doubt I'd have been inclined to pick up the later (though one can never be certain)... and this is a massive amount of his work in one volume; not really all that far off from the amount available in The Outsider and Others, which still remains a very notable collection....

 

[Ningauble]

JD, it appears to be the second volume of the series and will be presented in two volumes. It's a shame it's so expensive, though I'm still curious as to which texts they'll use.

The page now indicates that it is the Joshi-edited texts that will be used.

 

[Nesacat]

Just completed a collection entitled The Loved Dead ... it's a collection of Lovecraft collaborations and has a foreword of the rates he charged for his services. They feel terribly low and he was often not even paid that small amount.

The book contains:
The Green Meadow
Poetry and the Gods
The Crawling Chaos
The Loved Dead
The Horror at Martin's Beach
Imprisoned with the Pharoahs
The Last Test
The Black Bottles
The Thing in the Moonlight
The Curse of Yig
The Mound
Medusa's Coil
The Trap
The Man of Stone
Out of the Aeons
The Disinterment
The Diary of Alonzo Typer
Within the Walls of Eryx
The Night Ocean

 

[Ningauble]

Just completed a collection entitled The Loved Dead ... it's a collection of Lovecraft collaborations and has a foreword of the rates he charged for his services. They feel terribly low and he was often not even paid that small amount.

The book contains:
The Green Meadow
Poetry and the Gods
The Crawling Chaos
The Loved Dead
The Horror at Martin's Beach
Imprisoned with the Pharoahs
The Last Test
The Black Bottles
The Thing in the Moonlight
The Curse of Yig
The Mound
Medusa's Coil
The Trap
The Man of Stone
Out of the Aeons
The Disinterment
The Diary of Alonzo Typer
Within the Walls of Eryx
The Night Ocean

The one thing that doesn't qite fit in there is "The Thing in the Moonlight", since it's not a revision or a collaboration, but an excerpt from a letter to which a magazine editor added an opening and an end.

 

[Ningauble]

I got the Gollancz Necronomicon today.

Just as I suspected, it's got corrupted texts -- but not as bad as the Omnibus series, since some (but only some!) of the corrections from the Arkham House editions have been used. For example, in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" there are "bholes" instead of "dholes" (which is correct), but also "Zoogs" instead of "zoogs" and "Throk" instead of "Thok" (which are not). "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" mentions, as expected, a book by "Artephous" instead of "Artephius", "Hacher's Hall" instead of "Hacker's Hall" and "the scow Fortaleza instead of "the snow Fortaleza"; at least, it hasn't got the same first line in two chapters which has plagued the text of "Ward" in most incarnations I've seen. And of course, "The Shadow Out of Time" has a couple of sentences missing, as have all versions except The Shadow Out of Time: The Corrected Text, Tales and The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories.

In other words, textually speaking this book is little better than the Omnibus volumes or the Del Rey volumes.

But it's a damn'd fine-looking book, with plenty of illustrations.

Here's the table of contents:

Night-Gaunts
Dagon
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Cats of Ulthar
The Nameless City
Herbert West -- Reanimator
The Music of Erich Zann
The Lurking Fear
The Hound
The Rats in the Walls
Under the Pyramids
The Unnamable
In the Vault
The Outsider
The Horror at Red hook
The Colour Out of Space
Pickman's Model
The Call of Cthulhu
Cool Air
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Dreams in the Witch-House [sic]
From Beyond
Through the Gates of the Silver Key (with E. Hoffmann Price)
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out of Time
The Haunter of the Dark
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
To a Dreamer
Afterword: A Gentleman of Providence by Stephen Jones

for a grand total of 883 pages.

Do I recommend it? Yes. But only if you've already got the Penguins and want a big beefy fake-leather volume with nice illustrations. If you haven't got the Penguins, get them instead. They've got all the texts contained in this book except the two poems "Night-Gaunts" and "To a Dreamer", and Jones' afterword (which is pretty good except for some pretty big blunders, such as the claim that "The Survivor" "was the story closest to completion at the time of the author's death" and describing Lovecraft Studies as a "fan publication").

I'm quite sure that there'll be a collection using the corrected texts eventually.

 

[j d worthington]

...and "the scow Fortaleza instead of "the snow Fortaleza"...

Question on that one; perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'd thought "snow" was correct, as it referred to a type of brig used as a merchant vessel....?

Snow (ship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

 

[Ningauble]

Question on that one; perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'd thought "snow" was correct, as it referred to a type of brig used as a merchant vessel....?

Snow (ship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Yes, sorry for being unclear: all the things I'm listing for "Ward" are errors that appear in the text in Necronomicon. "snow" is the correct word.

And these are just the ones I've found at a quick glance. *sigh*

 

[sacateca]

But it's a damn'd fine-looking book, with plenty of illustrations.

(Regarding the Gollancz edition)...So it's out already, can you tell me where from, as in Amazon it is still in preorder?

And just out of curiosity, "plenty" means it has more illustrations than the Conan edition? Which has, oh maybe about 5-7 and then some smaller ornament type drawings.

 

[Ningauble]

(Regarding the Gollancz edition)...So it's out already, can you tell me where from, as in Amazon it is still in preorder?[/i]

I bought it at the SF-Bokhandeln in Gothenburg, and Böcker och litteratur - AdLibris Bokhandel. Handla böcker från din bokhandel. has it available as well, as does Amazon UK.

And just out of curiosity, "plenty" means it has more illustrations than the Conan edition? Which has, oh maybe about 5-7 and then some smaller ornament type drawings.

The Gollancz Conan pales when compared to the Del Rey editions...

Anyway, this Gollancz Lovecraft has Gahan Wilson's map of Arkham on the flyleaves, a frontispiece by Les Edwards of Cthulhu in R'lyeh, a picture of the Cthulhu statuette on the title page, part of a Lovecraft manuscript ("History of the Necronomicon") on p. 4, and 7 full-page illustrations by Edwards in addition to numerous smaller illustrations. The afterword on Lovecraft has several nice photographs.

 

[sacateca]

Thanks a lot for the infos, sounds wonderful indeed.

 

[Lobolover]

You have any idea how much he wrote?Just listing the titles would exceed the sig limit.

To fiction-not even online stu has th BIG 4,the four colabs with Eddy,for which I have ben searching for years without resutls.

 

[Ningauble]

You have any idea how much he wrote?Just listing the titles would exceed the sig limit.

Just over 700,000 words, according to my files. There's a complete list at HPLA - Lovecraft's Fiction - Chronological Order

It omits only "The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast" and "The Slaying of the Monster", I think -- very slight revisions of two Barlow stories.

To fiction-not even online stu has th BIG 4,the four colabs with Eddy,for which I have ben searching for years without resutls.

That's because Eddy's grandson is pretty good at enforcing his copyright. But they're not particularly difficult to find; they're in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions. Any decent library should have that.

Not that they're very good, and the description "the BIG 4" had me snorting with laughter.