Re: Lovecraft: definitive texts?
Posted by:
Martinus (IP Logged)
Date: 25 May, 2008 04:07AM
The English Assassin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> n the one hand there are the current Arkham Press
> hardbacks, which look rather splendid but are a
> bit pricy OR should I go for the Penguin Books,
> which are also edited by ST Joshi and also seem to
> claim to be definitive.
>
> Does anyone know what the difference is between
> these two versions? Which is better? Or are they
> just the same thing under different publishers?
To answer the original questions:
The Arkham House volumes -- the three "basic volumes", that is -- have some more stories, such as "The Transition of Juan Romero" and "The Alchemist" and "In the Walls of Eryx" with Kenneth Sterling.
The Penguin volumes have slightly fewer stories, but on the other hand, they correct some errors that crept into the AH volumes. For example, in "The Quest of Iranon" "and thou wouldst" has been corrected to "an thou wouldst", and in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" "Almonsin" has been corrected to "Almousin".
AND the Penguin has something that the AHs lack: the corrected texts of "The Shadow Out of Time" and "Hypnos". In fact, the corrected text of "Hypnos" (although admittedly the differences are VERY small) has been published nowhere else so far.
The problem is that the Penguin people insisted on re-transcribing the texts, so some NEW errors have been introduced: missing words (usually small ones like "a" and "the"), added words, errors of punctuation, etc. In "The Statement of Randolph Carter", one of Harley Warren's "Beat it!" has gone AWOL.
I have sent S. T. Joshi lists of all instances where the Penguins differ from the AHs, so hopefully these errors won't appear in the B&N volume.
Yrs
Martin
P. S. I should add a qualifier to my previous answer: you will of course miss "Poetry and the Gods" if you settle for the forthcoming B&N volume, The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, and Eyes of the God.