Friends of CAS:
Recently Scott Conners and Ron Hilger visited me and ably assisted
in getting a fair start on transcribing my collection of manuscripts.
In the process, several unpublished short stories were uncovered, as
well as a few poems, most unpublished. There is a great deal yet to
do, but progress is being made.
The Spanish Text mentioned in another post and a little book that
belonged to Clark called "A Vision of Giorgione" by Bottomley are
now in the possession of these fine fellows as a gesture of my
appreciation for their hard work and intense dedication to the
difficult task at hand.
It is to be hoped that the entire collection can soon be published
for your pleasure and edification. It might be interesting to
some of you to see posted some pages from these in Clark's
handwriting, in order to give you some idea of the difficulty
in transcribing writing on ordinary tablet paper that is nearly
100 years old. Oddly enough, they are in better conditin than
we have any right to expect because they have been kept in my
father's army foot-locker from WWII -- air tight, waterproof.
At the guys' suggestion, I will be enlarging Clark's favorite
photo of himself taken at Pacific Grove in the patio - copies
will be available for a nominal fee plus shipping I suppose.
I shall probably mount it over a facsimile of a manuscript page
containing his signature. Please let me know if this will be
of interest to any of you.
Dr. F.

Thanks for the good word! Scott and I enjoyed the visit very much; aside from going over the fascinating material you have, the genuine Southern hospitality more than lived up to its reputation.
I, for one, would be happy to purchase any picture/manuscript copy arrangement that you might offer. Such an item is a collector's dream!
While it's true that many of the pages were water-damaged along the edges, and some of the ink bled through to other pages, for the most part they were fairly easy to decipher. I think we should count ourselves fortunate that so many of the tales were saved for CAS fans and scholars alike, and I'm sure we are all very grateful that Dr. Farmer came forward to bring this new material to light.
-Ron

Thanks to all three of you for all you have done to preserve these works. Since I am not the most patient person in the world, I must ask how long it will be before we start seeing these hitherto lost works?

Best,

Jim

Derrick Hussey at Hippocampus Press has expressed interest in publishing the new material. Again, you must realize that most of it is juvenilia, but still easily comparable to "The Black Diamonds" and "Prince Alcouz and the Magician". We didn't have time to even begin transcribing "The Sword of Zagan", but I can tell you that it appeared complete and fairly easy to transcribe. Several of the short stories were incomplete, but there are pages at Brown University which we hope will enable us to complete these as well. Unfortunately there is lots more work to be done, but I'm sure we'll get there eventually.
-Ron

<<Please let me know if this will be of interest to any of you.>>

Most definitely.

Subsequent to Ron and Scott's visit, seven poems have
been transcribed. One with the same title,"Reve
Parisien" as the Bauelaire in Sandalwood, is indeed
a Baudelaire but not the same one. Work continues
on "The Adventurer", and then I will attempt to
complete "The Haunted Chamber" which Ron had begun.
I am attempting to get all the smaller and shorter
transcriptions done before attacking "The Sword of
Zagan" which is nearly two hundred handwritten pages.
I would like to see everything that is complete
published in one single volume. Some of the
transcriptions are dubious as the documents are very
old, some were water and fire damaged, and in some
the ink itself seemed to be the old "inkwell" type
we used in grade school, which, on newsprint, spreads and becomes difficult to read. Of course, best guess
is what editor's do, isn't it?
Dr. F