Lovecraft Statistics

There is a theory in semiotic studies and deconstruction that relates the usage of words by a mature writer as distinctive as fingerprints.

A few years back, another HPL fan and I studied this with HPL. The spreadsheets and extensive graphs are not easily presented on a blog, but I will summarize a few numbers here.

In essence, the use of articles, key verbs, conjunctions, prepositions and how frequent a writer uses them is unique. Characteristically, women use words very differently than men. More surprising, is that a mature writer will use the same distribution pattern of words over an entire lifetime.

So, I took Colour out of Space, Dunwich Horror, Whisperer in the Dark, and Mountains of Madness.

Lovecraft's most common words by far are the usual ones: the, a, an, and, that, to, of, & had. If you want to know more specifics on this, post below and I'll put it in a reply or a post in the future.

What is remarkable is HPL's usage of "he/him/his" and "she/her".

.........he/him/his.......she/her.......total words
CooS.....284..............19............12,238
DW.......388..............28............16,437
WitD.....327..............0.............21,044
MoM......114..............0.............38,840

In addition, HPL has certain words he adores. You've no doubt noticed.

CooS;
dark(14), down(15), deep(0), black(9), ancient(9), old(20)

DW..;
dark(12), down(27), deep(9), black(15), ancient(0), old(46)

WitD;
dark(13), down(16), deep(0), black(19), ancient(0), old(20)

MoM.;
dark(0), down(45), deep(0), black(0), ancient(21), old(64)

The original point of this was to see what HPL's semiotic profile was and to see if we could use it to determine what passages he wrote in his revisionism, and if we could tell his actual work from spurious texts. HPL did a lot of ghost writing, and later others took his notes and wrote new stories, particularly August Derleth.

One suspects, though, that if cyclopean, domdaniel, cacodaemoniacal, and a few others pop up in a story, it is either Lovecraft or one of his fans!