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Originally Posted by j. d. worthington  I had understood that "The Thing in the Moonlight" isn't entirely spurious, but only the central section is HPL's writing... from a letter (I forget to whom), and J. Chapman Miske(?) added the other sections in order to give it more the feeling of a story when he published it... or is my memory failing me on this? At any rate, it's not "straight" Lovecraft, but about 50/50 at best.... |
Correct. The greater part of the text was taken from a November 1927 letter to Donald Wandrei, and Miske added the opening and closing sections. I still consider the fragment a fake -- it wasn't intended as a story, and the addition of a narrator named "Howard Phillips" living at 66 College Street is just wrong (especially since the real HPL didn't move there until 1933). And Miske had told Derleth about his little deception as soon as Derleth himself published the "fragment" in 1948 (?), but Derleth still continued to include it.