Eddy, Lovecraft, and 'The Loved Dead'

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Advance Access published July 29, 2015 Stylometry and Collaborative Authorship: Eddy, Lovecraft, and ‘The Loved Dead’ ............................................................................................................................................................ Alexander A. G. Gladwin, Matthew J. Lavin and Daniel M. Look St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, USA ....................................................................................................................................... Abstract The authorship of the 1924 short story ‘The Loved Dead’ has been contested by family members of Clifford Martin Eddy, Jr. and Sunand Tryambak Joshi, a leading scholar on Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The authors of this article use stylometric methods to provide evidence for a claim about the authorship of the story and to analyze the nature of Eddy’s collaboration with Lovecraft. Correspondence: Alexander Further, we extend Rybicki, Hoover, and Kestemont’s (Collaborative authorship: A. G. Gladwin, 753 Franklin Conrad, Ford, and rolling delta. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 2014; 29, 422– Ave. Columbus, OH 43205 31) analysis of stylometry as it relates to collaborations in order to reveal the United States. necessary considerations for employing a stylometric approach to authorial E-mail: [email protected] collaboration. ................................................................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction Although controversy has continued to surround the story, the focus is no longer on the subject When ‘The Loved Dead’ was published in the May- matter. Instead, the question of authorship has June-July 1924 issue of Weird Tales—accredited to defined the discourse surrounding ‘The Loved Clifford Martin Eddy, Jr., or C. M. Eddy, Jr.—con- Dead’, because Lovecraft—one of Weird Tales’ troversy followed. The issue was banned in at least most popular contributors—is known to have Indiana, if not nationwide (Joshi, 2010, p. 501); the revised it. The extent of his revisions, though, re- magazine’s editor, Farnsworth Wright, would hold a mains unclear. wariness of stories containing socially contentious subject matter for years. ‘The Loved Dead’ is a first-person narrative of a necrophiliac who is on 2 Biographical and historical the run from authorities as he explains the roots considerations of his predilection for corpses. The material proved too explicit for audiences, and Wright’s at- Because direct historical evidence is typically privi- tempts to preclude another controversy caused rela- leged over computational analysis, we seek to ex- tively innocuous stories such as ‘In the Vault’ by haust these resources before enacting a less Howard Phillips Lovecraft—better known as H. P. conventional approach. However, the results are Lovecraft, who was a friend of Eddy—to be denied not fruitful; when we consider the fact that publication in 1925 in fear of another mishap (de Lovecraft ‘revised’ the story, we find only more am- Camp, 1975, p. 244). biguity. The term may imply copy-editing or Digital Scholarship in the Humanities ß The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EADH. 1 of 18 All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] doi:10.1093/llc/fqv026 A. A. G. Gladwin et al. content suggestions, but Lovecraft often ghostwrote she wished to capitalize on Lovecraft’s fame and collaborated on stories while retaining the title (p. 464–5). There is no way to be certain in either of ‘revisionist’. Lovecraft biographer Sunand case, as Joshi himself is merely speculating, and there Tryambak Joshi, or S. T. Joshi (2011), identifies is no reason to dismiss Muriel’s statement about ‘The the author’s frequent undermining of his input on Loved Dead’ out of hand. revised stories: he and his friend, Robert H. Barlow, Jim Dyer—Eddy’s grandson and head of Fenham cowrote ‘Till A’the Seas’, but Lovecraft allowed it to Publishing, which continues to release collections of be published exclusively in Barlow’s name to en- Eddy’s stories—further argues in favor of his grand- courage the young author (p. 10–11). In another father’s nigh-complete authorship: ‘There should be case, he took a two-sentence treatment by Zelia no confusion regarding my Grandfather’s stories. Bishop and turned it into a 29,000 word novella, Lovecraft and my Grandfather would read their ‘The Mound’ (Joshi, 2010, p. 745); he does not stories aloud to each other and both would give appear to have sought credit in its attempted pub- advice and suggestions. My grandfather’s stories lication. Thus, the term ‘revision’ is separated from were written by him as any of the people who its denotation and even connotations in the context knew both Lovecraft and my Grandfather could of Lovecraft, and a careful suspicion of declaring the attest to’ (personal communication, 21 February story to be Eddy’s on that basis alone is warranted. 2014). He echoes Muriel’s viewpoints, and the opin- To Lovecraft, revision could mean copy-editing, ion of Eddy’s family on the matter is consistent. minor rewrites, major rewrites, or sole writing The historical evidence does not provide a clear, based on ideas. Current primary and secondary single narrative. Joshi (2010) argues in favor of claims do not clarify the extent of his contribution. Lovecraft, albeit without any concrete evidence: Additional historical details about the authorship ‘There was... in all likelihood a draft written by complicate the question further. In terms of first- Eddy for this tale’, he says, ‘but the published ver- hand accounts, Lovecraft (1925/2005) does refer to sion certainly reads as if Lovecraft had written the entire thing’ (p. 466). Joshi compares the ‘adjective- the story in a letter to his aunt as ‘poor Eddy’s ‘‘The choked prose’ to Lovecraft’s contemporary short Loved Dead’’’ (p. 252). However, Eddy and story, ‘The Hound’.1 Most likely, Eddy wrote at Lovecraft were friends; the latter visited the former least the plot, if not an entire draft. The uncertainty on occasion, as both were permanent residents of lies in how much of the printed tale comes from Providence—excepting Lovecraft’s stint in New Eddy’s draft, and how much Lovecraft wrote or York City from 1924 to 1926 (Joshi, 2010, p. 466– rewrote. 8). If he were willing to allow his friend Barlow and numerous others to take credit for stories that he worked on, then the possibility that he would refer 3 Primary tests to the story as Eddy’s is inconclusive of its authorship. 3.1 Background However, in March 1935, Lovecraft (1935/1993) To provide a more in-depth analysis, we look to says in a letter to Robert Bloch, ‘It may interest you stylometry, a study that analyzes, per Holmes’ to know that I revised the now-notorious ‘‘Loved (1998) definition, implicit aspects of an author’s Dead’’ myself—practically re-writing the latter half’ writing style through statistical analysis. There are (p. 61). In contrast, Eddy’s wife, Muriel Eddy (1961/ numerous approaches and debates within the field 1998), claims in her memoir about Lovecraft that he about the most accurate metrics—e.g. should the merely ‘read the original manuscript and touched focus be on common words such as articles in it up in places, with my husband’s full sanction, order to measure subconscious stylistic qualities, but it was entirely the brain-child of my husband’ or words that appear rarely in order to find author- (p. 58–9). Joshi (2010) has called into question many ial stamps—but the principle remains: authors have of Muriel Eddy’s claims in this piece, citing a lack of distinctive qualities to their writing that can be un- supporting evidence and positing the possibility that covered and statistically analyzed, which provides 2 of 18 Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2015 Stylometry and collaborative authorship evidence regarding the authorship of a disputed method of testing is particularly useful for differen- text. tiating authorship in texts that were written in We first provide a historical overview of stylo- segments. metric techniques, because many have come into The publications that contained Lovecraft and popularity only to be dismissed as a result of further Eddy’s stories, such as Weird Tales, provide numer- investigation. Morton (1978) focused on words that ous authors and stories that can serve as test cases appear only once in a text, i.e. hapax legomena, and for collaborative authorship due to the literary con- their positions in sentences. Smith (1987) revealed text of ‘hack writing’—a context that adds weight to the process’ several flaws: small sample sizes, loose our inquiry into Lovecraft as revisionist. Usage of statistical inferences, and improper data collection. the term ‘hack’, from hackney, to describe a laborer To question specific stylometric methods is import- or ‘drudge’ dates back to the 18th century, but the ant, because it pushes scholars to find more sound concept of literary hackwork has its roots in the and rigorous ones. history of popular periodicals, especially London’s Several tests have yielded useful results, chief Grub Street (Cox and Mowatt, 2014). In the context among them being Mosteller and Wallace’s (1964) of the 19th- and early-20th-century United States, testing of the Federalist Papers. They attempted to literary hackwork was likewise linked to mass- analyze the texts through synonym pairs, such as the market periodicals

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