Re: Typos in THE END OF THE STORY
Posted by:
Martinus (IP Logged)
Date: 21 April, 2007 07:52AM
Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks, Martinus, for the explanations, and for
> the (dreadful and disappointing) examples. I
> really would have thought better of Penguin, and I
> now look at that publishing house with a much more
> jaundiced eye.
You're welcome. However, I still thinks that the Penguins give you the best deal for your money, so I still recommend them.
>
> Just to be clear, what I meant was not that I
> assumed the Penguins to be flawless, but that
> Joshi claimed to have corrected in them some
> additional errors that had appeared in the Arkham
> House editions. Therefore, I wasn't certain how
> you were able to tell from the discrepancies which
> ones were Joshi's later corrections and which ones
> were not (except in egregious cases, of course).
> Now I understand. You seem very knowledgeable,
> and, since you are in contact with Joshi himself
> about the matter, he can certainly act as the
> final arbiter.
In my lists of differences, I simply omitted the ones that I know are deliberate corrections, such as "an" for "and" in "The Quest of Iranon". And thanks for the compliment about me seeming knowledgeable -- I'd describe myself as "slightly crazy", but that's just me. :-)
>
> Even though they are a bit off topic, I hope that
> you'll be able to publish the final errata lists
> here; that would be great.
>
> As for the Del Rey editions of Lovecrat's tales, I
> suspect that many have a sentimental attachment to
> them because, for a good deal of us, myself
> included, they were the first editions of the Old
> Gent's work that we owned--that, and because of
> the wonderfully creepy Michael Whelan cover
> artwork. I can't say that I ever had any great
> illusions about their textual accuracy, though.
Yes, the cover art is great. BTW, I checked the latest version of [i9The Case of Charles Dexter Ward[/i] from Del Rey (in one of their new collections), and they've repeated the error of the same first line for two chapters again.
My first Lovecraft editions were the British Omnibus volumes. However, the ugliness of the covers were a major fact in me not forming an attachment to them.
> The fact of the matter is that finding (and
> creating) textually accurate editions of writers,
> such as Lovecraft and Ashton Smith, who first
> published their writings in the notoriously poorly
> edited pulps of that time, is like trying to find
> Diogenes' honest man.
True. That's why I've created my personal e-library of all of Lovecraft's fiction and compared it against all available sources. My dream is to print and bind my personal copy of the Ultimate H. P. Lovecraft, with the stories arranged chronologically and with as accurate texts as possible.