Divers hands

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Divers Hands is an archaic phrase used to refer to a project that has been contributed to by many different people. Divers is a word of Latin origin (diversus) that is still commonly used in modern French language; it literally means "many and varied". This usage of the word Divers can be found in the Bible and other older texts, but it is not commonly used in modern English. The phrase is still used to refer to the authorship of plays, essay collections, and short story collections.

[edit] Divers Hands and the Cthulhu Mythos

The most common usage of divers hands is found in the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, created by H. P. Lovecraft and expanded by other authors. How the term originated and why it regularly came to be used to refer to Cthulhu Mythos stories is unknown. It was originated either by Lovecraft himself or by his protégé August Derleth, who first published many of Lovecraft's works.

Derleth's publishing company, Arkham House, was the first to codify this usage with their publication of The Shuttered House and Other Rooms (1959), and later The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces (1966). Each was bylined "H. P. Lovecraft and Divers Hands", and each included original stories and poems by H. P. Lovecraft as well as derivative works and essays by other notables, including Fritz Leiber and Jack L. Chalker.

Today the phrase can be found in reference to many of the original weird fiction writers, including not just Lovecraft but also Clark Ashton Smith. It has also been used in many modern collections, such as the Call of Cthulhu books.

[edit] Divers Hands in the past

The oldest usage of the term to date online is Francis Bacon in Bacon's Good Pens (1679) "The Latine Translation of them was a Work performed by divers hands;"

There does not appear to be the use of 'divers hands' in the English bible itself, but often in scholarly works about the bible. There are several uses of the word 'divers', however. For example, in the King James version of the Bible, 2 Samuel 13:19 "And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of divers colours that was on her, and laid her hand on her head, and went on crying."