(Spoilers Main) More Stuff from the Cushing Library

After seeing u/gsteff 's posts about Cushing, I decided go to the Cushing Library earlier today to look at some of the stuff in the GRRM Collection they have. I didn’t really find anything that interesting, but there were some minor things that I discovered while there that I thought I’d share.

Boxes 136 and 139

Box 136 had correspondences from 1987 - 1997 with Ralph Vicinanza, and Box 139 had correspondences with various people from 1994-2002. I checked these out because a couple of years ago u/zionius_ suggested that these might contain the unredacted 93 outline, or the outline from when Martin changed the series to be six books. I pretty much found nothing, as these boxes mostly had Wildcards stuff, or financial deals for publishing the series in other countries. (One country had paid an advance for Thrones, Dance, and Winds all together back in 96 though, and I thought that was kinda funny.)

Box 78

The other box I checked was box 78. This contains a partial manuscript from November 93 of the first book, and a reader's version of the same content, but I didn’t see any differences between the reader version and the partial manuscript. This box also had a longer manuscript from November 94. I mostly skimmed through these, with a focus on Ned chapters, so there’s definitely small changes that I missed, but here’s what I found.

November 93 Manuscript

• This manuscript goes until Tyrion II, and is mostly the same as the first 13 chapters of the published version. Again, I didn’t notice anything super interesting in these chapters. It was a lot more similar to the published version than I suspected, especially since GRRM still considered it as the first book in a trilogy at this point.
• There was an early map, which u/clintwstevenson posted a few months ago. Like the map suggests, the Eyrie was called Harrenhal in the text. Also the red door was in Tyrosh, as others have noted before.
• There were also a few mentions of a plague, which I hadn’t seen online before. Ned worries about the plague when Robert invites him down south, and the plague is also mentioned in regards to Jon Arryn’s death. (I was not the one who underlined those words, it was like that when I got there).
• The last notable thing is that Ned never mentions the promise to Lyanna. I used a search of ice and fire to compare the “promise me Ned” lines in Eddard I and II to the 93 versions, and they’re completely missing.

November 94 Manuscript

• This manuscript was longer than the earlier version, going up to Eddard VII, but the first 13 chapters were still pretty similar to the 93 version.
• There was no map in this version, but the Eyrie was called the Eyrie, not Harrenhall, and the red door was still in Tyrosh.
• The mentions of the plague were completely removed, and “plague” had been changed to “sickness” in regards to Jon Arryn’s death.
• The biggest change to this version compared to the 93 version is in regards to Lyanna. In this manuscript, Ned does remember the “promise me” lines, which are mostly unchanged compared to the published version. The main difference is that it was actually Jon Arryn, not Howland Reed who found Ned at the Tower of Joy holding Lyanna’s body.

So yeah, nothing really notable in this post, but if someone has other boxes they want me to take a look at I can. I didn’t have the time to read the whole manuscript, and even if I did, I don’t really have the ASOIAF knowledge to see the difference between what’s significant and what’s not, but if someone else wants me to take pictures of manuscripts so that they can read them, I can. It looks to me that there’s still some ADWD manuscripts available in Box 148, referred to as a “foul manuscript” that might be interesting to check out.