Manuscript for The Cancer of Superstition, requested shortly before escapologist’s death, is discovered in memorabilia collection

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A long-lost manuscript by HP Lovecraft, an investigation of superstition through the ages that the author was commissioned to write by Harry Houdini, has been found in a collection of magic memorabilia.

The Cancer of Superstition was previously known only in outline and through its first chapter. Houdini had asked Lovecraft in 1926 to ghostwrite the treatise exploring superstition, but the magician’s death later that year halted the project, as his wife did not wish to pursue it.

According to Potter & Potter Auctions of Chicago, the 31-page typewritten manuscript was discovered in a large collection of memorabilia from a now-defunct magic shop. Part of the collection consisted of papers kept by Houdini’s widow, Beatrice, and her manager, Edward Saint.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Lovecraft typescript commissioned by Houdini. Photograph: David Linsell

“The collection bounced around after Beatrice Houdini’s death in 1943 and was never truly catalogued or ‘mined’ in all that time. The papers were never researched or inventoried,” said Potter & Potter president Gabe Fajuri. “In all that time, no one seemed to realise the significance of the manuscript.”

Fajuri said the collection was recently bought privately, and when “the new owner began sorting through the mountain of paperwork, he began putting the pieces together, and in the process discovered the manuscript and its significance”.

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The Chicago firm, which will auction the manuscript on 9 April, says it is “further along than other surviving sources have indicated it had reached”, with three sections entitled “The Genesis of Superstition”, “The Expansion of Superstition”, and “The Fallacy of Superstition”.

According to the auction house – which will open bids at $13,000 (£9,240) with a pre-auction estimate expecting a final price somewhere between $25,000-$40,000 – the document explores everything from worship of the dead to werewolves and cannibalism, theorising that superstition is an “inborn inclination” that “persists only through mental indolence of those who reject modern science”.

“Most of us are heathens in the innermost recesses of our hearts,” it concludes.

Fine Books Magazine, which first highlighted the auction, said the manuscript had been “whispered about by hopeful collectors and scholars for decades”.

Fajuri said: “The manuscript deepens the debate over the legacies of two figures whose popularity rested on playing to both sides of their audience’s curiosity over issues including spiritualism, supernaturalism, the real and the unreal,”

He added:“While Lovecraft entertained readers with weird and horrific science fiction and Houdini amazed audiences with displays of superhuman escapes, both are to be found here in what they call a ‘campaign’ against superstition. They argue that all superstitious beliefs are relics of a common ‘prehistoric ignorance’ in humans.”

According to Lovecraft scholar ST Joshi, the manuscript was actually commissioned for Lovecraft and his fellow author CM Eddy. Joshi said that a synopsis of the book, along with one chapter, The Genesis of Superstition, was published in the 1966 book The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces.

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“But it is stated there that, while the synopsis was written by Lovecraft, the chapters themselves were written by Eddy, with ‘Lovecraft’s interlinear emendations and additions’. August Derleth, who assembled the volume, was in touch with Eddy, so presumably he derived this information directly from Eddy,” said Joshi.

He added: “It appears that not all the chapters embodied in the newly discovered manuscript were published in The Dark Brotherhood,” which contained only The Genesis of Superstition. “Assuming the manuscript contains more than this chapter, then those subsequent chapters are unpublished. But they still seem to be by Eddy, not by Lovecraft,” said Joshi.