Long's The Goblin Tower, 1935

Long, Frank Belknap. THE GOBLIN TOWER. Setting copy and printer's proofs. Cassia, Florida: Dragon-Fly Press, 1935. . An archive, stapled together, of seventy-two variously sized pieces of papers with setting copy and printer's proofs of the collection of Long's poetry printed at and published by R. H. Barlow's Dragonfly Press in Florida in 1935. The copy was scrabbled together from different sources: typescripts (some carbons, some top copies), manuscripts (some in Barlow's hand, "An Old Wife Speaketh It" in Lovecraft's hand, dated 1923 at bottom), former newspaper and magazine appearances ("On Icy Kilnarth" from a pulp, with a nice illustration). Likewise, the proofs were pulled on whatever was at hand: the versos of old letters and stories, scraps of heavy laid paper, old Sunday four-color comic newspapers. Lovecraft visited Barlow during the summer of 1935 (June 9 -- August 18) and helped him prepare the manuscript for press, smoothing out some of Long's faulty metrics in the process: undoubtedly many if not all of the papers in this archive were handled by HPL. Barlow was 17 at the time (but past the halfway mark of his short life), Long 34, Lovecraft 45 (and less than two years away from his own death). THE GOBLIN TOWER, a collection of twenty-two short lyrical poems in a romantic manner, was the author's second book, preceded by another poetry collection, A MAN FROM GENOA (1926), printed and published by Paul Cook of Athol, Mass., who also printed Lovecraft's THE SHUNNED HOUSE (1928). Most extant copies of THE GOBLIN TOWER exist as folded and gathered sets of unbound sheets, as very few were bound up at the time. Long and Barlow were two of the innermost planets in the HPL system (or to switch metaphors, deities in the Lovecraft Mythos), and this archive documents the most important intersection of the three men. The archive as a whole has significant research value. As individual items, these make colorful and unique memorabilia. Some of the individual items are in respectable condition, but most show signs of heavy use, with ragged edges, tears, ink stains, etc. (#116768)