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Originally Posted by j. d. worthington  How feasible? Difficult to say. It would be a massive undertaking, as what still exists would fill close to 100 volumes (unless I'm badly mistaken). |
In Yog Radio #29, STJ says that the total of the extant letters is about 4,000,000 words, so 20-25 volumes isn't impossible (it's probably "25" rather than "20", since the projected Hippocampus Press series includes replies wherever those are available).
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There's also the fact of the legal questions about publishing some of this material, as the Lovecraft estate has been a tangled legal question for a very long time. Though finally settled some years ago, getting the rights to publish all of these might also be a massive (not to say expensive) undertaking, as well. However, a goodly percentage might still make it into print during my (or your) lifetime....
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Since this is previously unpublished material, I think other rules apply.
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In the meantime, it seems that a fairly large-sized collection of such is published at least once a year, sometimes more (O, Fortunate Floridian and the Lovecraft/Derleth correspondence came out, iirc, within a year of each other, for instance, and both of those contain quite respectable amounts -- between the three volumes, they are almost as long again as the Selected Letters series....)
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The REH/HPL correspondence is slated for next year, and Messrs. Joshi & Schultz are hoping to have the CAS/HPL correspondence ready for 2010.