The Horror in the Museum Read Free

confirmed it. Rimel has stated that Lovecraft wrote the entire third section of the tale, as well as the citation from the mythical Chronicle of Nath in the second section. Will Murray first suspected, on internal evidence, Lovecraft’s role in “The Disinterment.” Rimel maintains that Lovecraft’s revisions in the story were very light, and letters by Lovecraft unearthed by Murray and myself appear to confirm that claim.
For R. H. Barlow’s “Till A’ the Seas’“ we have a typescript by Barlow (apparently a second draft) with exhaustive revisions by Lovecraft in pen. Dirk W. Mosig discovered Lovecraft’s hand in Barlow’s “The Night Ocean,” as cited in a letter to Hyman Bradofsky (4 November 1936). Mosig believed the tale to be nearly entirely written by Lovecraft; but documents subsequently consulted by me suggest that he played a much smaller role in the genesis and writing of the tale. The work was probably largely Barlow’s, although with heavy revisions and additions by Lovecraft at random points.
For a more detailed discussion of the degree of Lovecraft’s involvement in these stories, see my article “Lovecraft’s Revisions: How Much of Them Did He Write?” Crypt of Cthulhu 2 (Candlemas 1983): 3-14.
Our editorial practice for this disparate body of work must of necessity be cautious. Autograph manuscripts (or Lovecraft’s autograph corrections) exist for only two tales in this volume—”Till A’ the Seas’“ and “The Diary of Alonzo Typer.” Typescripts exist only for “The Mound” and “Medusa’s Coil,” although both were prepared by Frank Belknap Long and contain several errors and incoherencies, the apparent result of Long’s inability to read Lovecraft’s handwriting. The texts for all other works must be based upon publications in amateur journals or pulp magazines. For the primary revisions we have reinstated Lovecraft’s normal punctuational, stylistic, and syntactic usages, on the principle that nearly all the prose in these tales is his; for the secondary revisions we have only corrected obvious misprints or internal inconsistencies of usage in the original publications.
Many colleagues have assisted in the compilation of this volume, and I am especially grateful to Donald R. Burleson, Kenneth R. Johnson, Marc A. Michaud, Dirk W. Mosig, Will Murray, and Robert M. Price. The advice of James Turner has been invaluable both in the overall arrangement of this edition and in countless points of difficulty in the texts themselves.
S. T. J OSHI

Lovecrafts “Revisions”
However paradoxical it may seem, in view of his present posthumous fame as a master of the macabre, Howard Phillips Love-craft made his scant living principally by revising and correcting manuscripts of prose and poetry sent to him by a variety of hopeful writers. The greater number of his clients seldom achieved publication in any but amateur-press magazines, but his revision of the stories by a small group of writers with reasonably strong themes but a concomitant lack of literary skills or prose style enlisted a greater share of his interest and assistance—amounting often to the complete rewriting of a submitted manuscript—and so found their way into print.
Lovecraft’s revision work can be divided into two classes. The bulk of it amounted to little more than professional correction of language, syntax, punctuation, and the like, but a minority of tales in the domain of the macabre aroused his personal interest to the extent of active participation. Even this small group of tales was subdivided into areas of lesser and major interest. Some, as in the case of Sonia H. Greene’s story, the early work of Hazel Heald, and the tales of his old Providence friend C. M. Eddy, Jr., required less drastic revision and more or less advisory assistance. Writing on 30 September 1944 of one such story, “The Man of Stone,” the late Hazel Heald admitted, “Lovecraft helped me on this story as much as on the