The Hardboiled Manuscripts Volume 1 – FC paperback

The Hardboiled Manuscripts Volume 1 opens the workshop behind Robert E. Howard’s detective and crime fiction. Part of First Cuts: The Drafts and Fragments, this volume brings together surviving synopses, successive drafts, false starts, and unfinished material for eight Steve Harrison stories, compiled and transcribed by Ståle Gismervik.

From the shadowed alleys of River Street to isolated houses and sinister conspiracies, Howard’s detective fiction combines mystery with the speed, atmosphere, menace, and violent action that distinguish his storytelling. Reading the manuscript states side by side reveals changing names, motives, scenes, and solutions as Howard reshaped his plots.

The volume includes Lord of the Dead, The Mystery at Tannernoe Lodge, The Teeth of Doom, The Black Moon, The Voice of Death, People of the Serpent, The House of Suspicion, and The Names in the Black Book. Each story is accompanied by editorial notes describing the surviving typescripts and their textual states. Gismervik’s foreword, A Field He Detested, places the material in the context of Howard’s career and the detective pulp market.

Prepared from Howard’s surviving typescripts, the edition preserves his spelling, punctuation, unusual wording, and textual irregularities with minimal editorial interference. Incomplete drafts remain incomplete. Two missing pages, one in The Teeth of Doom and one in The Names in the Black Book, are supplied from the original pulp publications and clearly identified. An accompanying note explains the edition’s approach to language, style, and fidelity.

Designed as the first of a two-volume companion to Steve Harrison’s Casebook in the REH Foundation Press Ultimate Edition series, this book is part of First Cuts: The Drafts and Fragments.

For Howard readers, collectors, and scholars, The Hardboiled Manuscripts Volume 1 offers a detailed view of a less familiar part of his work: the developing stories, abandoned paths, and revisions behind his pulp detective fiction.

More information and table of contents for Volume 1 on reh.world.

Production Details

Paperback, 588 pages. Full-colour interior on Color 70 paper. Matte cover. 6 × 9 inches. ISBN 9781955446846.

Product image is a digital mockup.