Typescripts
For those that don't know the story, REH generally typed all his stories. Oh, some old school work level stuff was handwritten, or occasionally stuff that he cranked out while on the road (like a letter). But 99+% of all his stuff was typed.
REH did not keep a final perfect copy of all his stories. He DID learn a valuable lesson early on when Weird Tales told him they loved one of his stories, but the stupid artist lost the draft, could he please send along his carbon. And he thought, "carbon"?? Had to retype it from scratch. Good to have a good memory, I suppose. But after that, he started making a habit of keeping a carbon, at least until the story published. And the pulps of course just threw away the pages after the story was typeset
The other imporrtant fact to remember about REH and his typescripts is that he was loath to spend money on paper, so he would recycle the back of pages that were no longer being saved. So, earlier drafts, or finals of sold stories. And of course, his stories were all different lengths. So at the time of REH's death, there were thousands of pages of STUFF sitting around his room. Some finished stories, some work in progress, but mostly, lots and lots of recycled pages, a decent percentage of it with stuff on both sides.
The vast majority of REH's typescripts were bundled up by Doc Howard and sent to the agent, Otis Kline. Otis picked out what he thought would readily sell (and it wasn't much), and sent the rest back to Doc. Most of the stuff that the agent kept ended up either sold off and trashed by the magazines. Around the time that Glenn came in as agent, ca. 1964?, there was only a thousand pages or so left with the former agents. Most of those pages ended up in the Cross Plains Libary. Most of those are nice final drafts, nothing on the backs.
All those other pages, all that stuff that OAK didn't want and went back to Doc, those were handed off to various folks over the years, and finally pulled all back together by Glenn, one of the few times he dropped some real coin to get something. And that stack represents maybe 90+% of all the known pages.
How many pages? It embarrasses me to say that I don't have an exact count yet. That's because, the scanning and indexing of the pages has occurred over a stack of years, starting as early as 2006, in multiple waves, and I don't know that I'm done yet, though I think I am MOSTLY (99%+) done. So lots of stuff was shot multiple times, cause speed tended to be part of the discussion at times. The math majors can work the numbers for how much time it takes scanning say 20K pages, one at a time by hand on a flat bed scanner, checking the output, and shooting again if needed. Tedious.
When Glenn got all this mess of goo, back in the 1960s, copiers were not common. And so he set out to sort it all by hand. Trouble was, lots of stuff had different stories on either side. AND, you might correctly pull together a full run of a draft of a story, and then have parts and pieces of three or four different stories on the back side. The pages could only go with ONE bundled up story, so Glenn would choose which story to stack the complete pages up for, then write notes on a cover page that would tell what was on the back, and sometimes where the rest of the story could be found.
There are also multple drafts of oodles of stories. I think the most I've seen for one story is seven different drafts. LSDC famously said REH was sloppy because he cranked out stories in one draft, pointing to some bluster in a letter REH wrote. So not true. REH was a craftsman, and didn't mind polishing up the work as he went along.
Drafts tended to go from shorter to longer, quite often with the earlier drafts dwindling to a synopsis at the end. Then the next draft, he'd repeat or alter a bit his earlier work, and then start cranking out more of the full story where earlier had just been synopsis at the end. Some of these never got completely completed.
REH also tended to use carbon paper until it was completely devoid of ink. So some of his carbons are just as dark as regular type. Some are almost invisible.
REH also, at least when working drafts, would want to fill the page, to use less paper. So he would type right up to the very edge of the paper, sometimes going over slightly. Same for the bottom of the page. Carbons were even worse, because they might not have been lined up perfectly. So, there are some pages where the last line is cut in half, halfway off the bottom of the page.
And, REH threw away lots and lots of stuff. Maybe most of the pages he typed. Just the way it went. So even if you think you have a "final" draft, might not really be. We have some stories with multiple "final" drafts. And titles changes occasionally in the drafting process. If you don't know if you have the true final draft, you don't know if you have to true final title. And pulp and magazine editors did all sorts of changes, some that occasionally got documented, but lots more that we never saw mention of.
Glenn's sense of order was way better than mine. Once he got it all sorted out, he thought about what he would send to publishers. And so Glenn started retyping the stories and poems and letters. So we have thousands of pages of Glenn retypes, especially the poetry. In general, those are easy to spot. Glenn's various typewriters had seriously different fonts, and he tended to double space, lots of margin, etc. Though, I recently came across pages here and there where the paper is very old, looking just like original paper, and typed in a style very similar ot Bob's, to the right and bottom edges, but it's a different machine, not Bob's. Really have to pay attention to even notice them. Glenn told Patrice once that he replaced a damaged page by retyping it, so perhaps that is where all of those came from. No real way ot say for sure. There WAS a small bundle of aged blank paper among Glenn's stuff, no doubt from REH, so perhaps that was some early Glenn work to fill the gap.
Anyway, everything typescript that has been located (Cross Plains Libary, Glenn's stash, TAMU, etc.) has been scanned and indexed. Identifying every page is a hoot, as there were hundreds of stray pages of typed stuff, out of the middle of some random story. Figuring out what goes with what is still an ongoing adventure. Even identifying everything has occasionally taken collective review by me and Rob and Rusty and Patrice to try to ID. Thank goodness Patrice has such a good memory.
We (meaning, "I") have not yet finished weeding out duplicates, and listing everything. I'm really hoping to have that done by the end of the year, though that may be wishful thinking. We also want to ID which stories we have from original typescript, which from copies of the originals, which only from Glenn retype, and which from publication only. What is the "best" version of each. And what the heck was the "best" title, if any. There will be some very scholarly wrasslin' and eye-gougin' over those, methinks.
How many pages total? Hmmm, seems some bright lad didn't keep good notes of what was on the back of what, so he has two scans for some single pages (front and back). One more thing to go sort out. I have over 21K scans. So, taking out duplicates, Glenn retypes, and ephemera, I dunno, maybe 15K?? Cut that number to take into account stuff that is two sided, and maybe 10-12K original pages.
Tomorrow, so what exactly did we find in there that was previously unknown or lost? Oh, some stories to tell . . .
), and did not have infinite money to spend on his collection. And he had a family to care for. AND, a large portion of his collection was acquired in the 50s, 60s and 70s, back when the things he was acquiring cost just a dollar or two apiece, and they clearly didn't have any real value. So Glenn never really got into treating his collection like some kind of all-consuming sacred duty. It was just his stuff! Not to mention, it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to do the museum treatment. Well, and acquiring an extra house to put it all in. Really.
