"Ward" Manuscript

[j d worthington]

I don't know why I hadn't come across this before, but the Lovecraft Archive has posted a link to Brown University's scans of HPL's original manuscript of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. For those who are genuine afficionadoes as well as for those who have the impression he wrote in haste, it makes for an interesting experience to look at the manuscript itself and see just how many pains he took with revision on it....

https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:310436/

 

[Glisterspeck]

It's neat to read the letters (hard to read the rest) and realize that he's written the story on the back of all these scraps. Nice find! Thanks for posting!

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, I've seen photoreproductions of pages of HPL manuscripts before, and they are often hard to decipher -- the later in his life, the worse his handwriting became. The Books at Brown volume devoted to him has quite a few examples, for instance; and Nightmare Countries includes a few as well (including the opening page of At the Mountains of Madness, which is one heck of a puzzle in itself). And, of course, the Arkham House Letters volumes also include specimens of his letters, including a fair number of the illustrations he often had in them, from parodic self-portraiture to his conceptions of "the blasted heath", "Pickman's Model", and Cthulhu....

 

[yaxomoxay]

This is very interesting!!
Question: why did he write "OVER" at the bottom of page 5 and 7?

 

[Ningauble]

This is very interesting!!
Question: why did he write "OVER" at the bottom of page 5 and 7?

Meaning "Turn over; continuing on other side of sheet"?

 

[w h pugmire esq]

He wrote "over" to remind himself that he had continued writing on the reverse side of the same sheet. Thus the second side of page three is marked "3A." I have always consider'd WARD as a work that was in no way revis'd, but perhaps that isn't actually the case. Gawd, this increases my admiration for anyone who has had to edit the Lovecraft manuscripts for publication!

 

[yaxomoxay]

Thank you for the clarification.
I wonder how he was able to read his own manuscripts!!