Update: Lovecraft concordance

[ghyle]

Until recently, the Lovecraft concordance had been put aside while I rushed to finish the Christopher Brennan concordance that I am also working on. However, due to delays in getting hold of raw data for that, I have had the chance to look at the Lovecraft concordance anew, and to get some work done on it.

Due to computer problems, however, I had lost all the data that I had. So it was a case of redoing the entire thing from scratch. I took this opportunity to revise my plans for the organisation of the poems, and have managed to scan over a third of the poems by volume, rather than by numbers. With luck, it will take 2-3 weeks to scan the rest, and after that I will be able to run all of the poems through my concordance programme.

The longest amount of work will be the formatting and proofreading, since both will have to be done by hand. I am estimating (very roughly) that I shall have between 2000 and 2500 pages of raw data to process, and which might take a year to a year and a half of part-time work (I am studying Honours as well, at the moment) to see done.

But at least I am getting the chance to reread, at the moment, the complete poems, including those left out of The Ancient Track.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by ghyle

Until recently, the Lovecraft concordance had been put aside while I rushed to finish the Christopher Brennan concordance that I am also working on. However, due to delays in getting hold of raw data for that, I have had the chance to look at the Lovecraft concordance anew, and to get some work done on it.

Due to computer problems, however, I had lost all the data that I had. So it was a case of redoing the entire thing from scratch. I took this opportunity to revise my plans for the organisation of the poems, and have managed to scan over a third of the poems by volume, rather than by numbers. With luck, it will take 2-3 weeks to scan the rest, and after that I will be able to run all of the poems through my concordance programme.

The longest amount of work will be the formatting and proofreading, since both will have to be done by hand. I am estimating (very roughly) that I shall have between 2000 and 2500 pages of raw data to process, and which might take a year to a year and a half of part-time work (I am studying Honours as well, at the moment) to see done.

But at least I am getting the chance to reread, at the moment, the complete poems, including those left out of The Ancient Track.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been rather out of the loop for some time when it comes to keeping up with Lovecraftian studies (at least some aspects of). Would you mind letting me know what got left out of that volume, Phillip? I was aware of the one (already noted elsewhere), but not others (either that, or I've truly gone senile at this point... which isn't all that far out as a possibility....)

Aside from this... great news! I look forward to seeing what you do with this. I'm especially interested in work on HPL's early poems which, though often negligible as poetry, are often fascinating documents in other ways. I find that, even in purportedly "serious" poems, he allowed his sense of humor and the absurd to enter in quite a bit....

[ghyle]

For the most part, the poems are those appearing in miscellaneous letters, several from those to Kleiner. There is one, though, that was recently discovered in a British apazine, and which had not been included in the earlier book because the text had been thought lost.

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been rather out of the loop for some time when it comes to keeping up with Lovecraftian studies (at least some aspects of). Would you mind letting me know what got left out of that volume, Phillip? I was aware of the one (already noted elsewhere), but not others (either that, or I've truly gone senile at this point... which isn't all that far out as a possibility....)

Aside from this... great news! I look forward to seeing what you do with this. I'm especially interested in work on HPL's early poems which, though often negligible as poetry, are often fascinating documents in other ways. I find that, even in purportedly "serious" poems, he allowed his sense of humor and the absurd to enter in quite a bit....

[j. d. worthington]

Ah, all right. That last I was aware of, the others hadn't occurred to me, but those in letters to Kleiner (or other published correspondence) I have had a chance to read. Thanks for clarifying....

I very much look forward to seeing this when it's done. 'Twill be an invaluable aid to Lovecraft scholars and fans alike; for which: thank you -- in advance....

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by ghyle

For the most part, the poems are those appearing in miscellaneous letters, several from those to Kleiner.

But are there any complete poems in the Kleiner correspondence that don't appear in The Ancient Track? At a quick glance I found only a few runaway couplets.

[ghyle]

Even though there are only a few couplets, and so forth, in reality fragments rather than complete poems, they still belong to the wider ouevre of HPL's poetry. I am thinking as a completist, that is, rather than just looking for completed poems, but, if there are completed versions extant, and they do turn up, I will happily welcome them with open arms.

Better something than nothing, is the basic motto.

[j. d. worthington]

And with Lovecraft, even the couplets that he tossed off often have a lot more to them than immediately meets the eye....

[ghyle]

Update: I have, so far, done 82 percent of the published poems.I estimate that it will take another 3-4 days to finish scanning and transcribing the poems. So either the end of this week, or early next week.

[ghyle]

Update: I have just finished scanning the poems, and have also processed them and created the raw concordance file. To give you an idea of what I now have to edit into a polished file, there are 3793 A4-pages of rough data to work on. That's 13.66 MB of concordance (yikes!). I have a lot of work ahead of me at the moment....

[j. d. worthington]

That's... putting it rather mildly....