COLLECTED FICTION: A VARIORUM EDITION


S. T. has just pofted a new blog, in which he states:
"I am delighted to say that work on Lovecraft's Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition is now all but complete. Derrick Hussey, the publisher of Hippocampus Press, has been incredibly diligent and meticulous in going over all the texts (as well as my own textual notes) and has saved me from countless errors. It appears that my own records of textual variants were not at all as accurate or coherent as they should have been (but remember that I started doing this work as a callow eighteen-year-old freshman in 1976!). But now the work is done, and all that remains is to look over the final proofs before sending them to the printer. Derrick vows that this will be done on or before June 1, which means that the three-volume edition should be ready by mid-July. I am a but mortified that we first announced the edition as appearing in late 2014--but the long delay is well worth it, trust me!"

The three volumes may be ordered at www.hippocampuspress.com/h.p-lovecraft/fiction/variorum-lovecraft ... ye three hardcover volumes will be $180.00 but are now being offer'd for $162.00. Ye three volumes come to a total of 1600 pages and will not be sold separately. Pre-orders have been coming in so abundantly that ye initial print run of 500 copies has now been expanded to a total of 750 copies. Once these sets are sold out, they will command enormous inflated prices on ye Internet. 

[Volume 1:]
In this first volume, Lovecraft's earliest stories are printed in chronological order by date of writing. Included are such early triumphs as "Dagon" and "The Outsider," along with the many tales Lovecraft wrote under the inspiration of Lord Dunsany. The celebrated "Herbert West--Reanimator" and "The Rats in the Walls" show Lovecraft experimenting with longer narratives--a tendency that will culminate in the novelettes and novels of his final decade of writing.

[Volume 2:]
In this second volume, the tales that Lovecraft wrote immediately after returning to his native Providence, R. I., from two years of "exile" in New York are presented. The landmark tale "The Call of Cthulhu" was only the tip of the iceberg of a flood of stories he wrote in 1926-27, which include the two short novels The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. "The Colour out of Space" is a pioneering tale that initiates Lovecraft's distinct melding of horror and science fiction, while "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" are rich novellas simultaneously evoking terrors from outer space and the brooding darkness of the New England backwoods.

[Volume 3:]
In this final volume, the tales of Lovecraft's final years are presented. The Antarctic novella At the Mountains of Madness is perhaps Lovecraft's most finished work, a superb fusion of weirdness and science fiction that he referred to as "cosmicism." "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is a chilling evocation of the terrors inherent in a lonely New England backwater, while "The Thing on the Doorstep" and "The Haunter of the Dark" feature physical horrors with cosmic implications. "The Shadow out of Time" is the culmination of Lovecraft's portrayal of the vast vistas of space and time--his signature contribution to literature.


Comments

  1. I think I put my order in December. But, believe me, I don't mind the wait. I would rather see a book, or set in this case, put back 8 months or a year and see it error free than get it riddled with errors.

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  2. I hope that the set is error-free; but, sadly, such a thing seems an impossibility these days. We haven't long to wait.

    ReplyDelete

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