For the first time ever, a collection featuring all of Howard’s drafts and fragments. The last volume in a four-part series from the REH Foundation Press collects all the drafts for the novel A Gent from Bear Creek and the two drafts for two chapters made for the novel. All from Howard’s original typescripts, manuscripts, and carbons. Howard’s raw text, including typos and weird spellings, is preserved. Footnotes describe where Howard inserted text either by typing in between lines or by hand.

These books will be print-on-demand, and the first release is a beautiful boxed set featuring four hardcover books with matching covers, gold-foiled dust jackets, and sprayed edges. Later, there will be more regular, normally priced hard- and softcover books. 

For the last volume, Howard scholar Jeffrey Shanks let me use a previously published essay about Breckinridge, and Paul Herman wrote an essay about the history of the typescripts.

Contents

• iii • Acknowledgments
• viii • Editor’s Note
• viii • A Note on Language, Style, and Fidelity
• ix • Gouged Eyes and Chawed Ears • The Rough-and-Tumble World of Breckinridge Elkins • by Jeffrey Shanks

Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts

• 5 • Editorial Notes
• 5 • Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts – draft 1 • (untitled, complete)
• 17 • Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts – draft 2 • (titled, incomplete)
• 23 • Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts • (false start)

Meet Cap’n Kidd.

• 29 • Editorial Notes
• 29 • Meet Cap’n Kidd – draft 1 • (titled as “chapter .3.”, maybe complete)

A Gent from Bear Creek – the novel

• 49 • Editorial Notes
• 49 • A Gent from Bear Creek – draft 1 • (untitled, incomplete)
• 73 • A Gent from Bear Creek – draft 1 • (untitled, incomplete, page 203 variant)
• 75 • A Gent from Bear Creek – draft 1 • (untitled, incomplete, page 204 false start)
• 77 • A Gent from Bear Creek – draft 2 • (untitled, incomplete)
• 83 • A Gent from Bear Creek – draft 3 • (untitled, incomplete)
• 85 • A Gent from Bear Creek – draft 4

• • Chapter .1. • Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts.
  • Chapter .2. • Mountain Man.
  • Chapter .3. • Meet Cap’n Kidd.
  • Chapter .4. • Guns of the Mountains.
  • Chapter .5. • A Gent from Bear Creek.
  • Chapter .6. • The Feud Buster.
  • Chapter .7. • The Road to Bear Creek.
  • Chapter .8. • The Scalp Hunter.
  • Chapter .9. • Cupid From Bear Creek.
  • Chapter .10. • The Haunted Mountain.
  • Chapter .11. • Educate or Bust.
  • Chapter .12. • War On Bear Creek.
  • Chapter .13. • When Bear Creek Came to Chawed Ear.

Notes and Appendices

• 323 • Notes by Howard

Appendix 1: Family (The Breckinridge Elkins Family Tree)

• Parents
• The Sons – Breckinridge and His Brothers
• The Daughters – Breckinridge’s Sisters
• The Elkins Clan (Uncles, Aunts, Cousins)
• The Garfield Clan
• The Grimes Clan
• The Gordon Clan
• The Kirby Clan
• The Polk Clan
• The Buckner Clan
• Unclear / Other Relations

Appendix 2

• 355 • The History of the Typescripts • by Paul Herman