Notes
[*]
I would like to express appreciation to Mr.
Eliot for his kind permission to quote so extensively. Also I would
like to thank Harcourt, Brace Co. for permission to quote from
works on which they hold copyrights. Quotations, unless otherwise
specified, are from Faber & Faber, Ltd. editions of Mr. Eliot's
work.
[**]
Read before the English Institute on 9
September 1955 in an abridged form.
[1]
The first quotation is from the Faber Fourth
edition of Murder in The Cathedral while the second
quotation is from the Faber Second edition.
[2]
The holograph and typescripts of "Marina" are
in the Bodleian Library.
[3]
Mr. Eliot noted this in a personal letter to
the writer.
[4]
"East Coker" appeared first in the New
English Weekly, XVI, 22 (March 21, 1940), [325]-328. "Little
Gidding" appeared in the same journal in Vol. XXI, 26 (Oct. 15,
1942), 213-217.
[5]
As an example we might note the line "Not in
this or guise, for my present purpose" from one of the later
impressions of Murder in the Cathedral, where the 'or' had
dropped out and been replaced in the wrong position in the line.
Faber & Faber, Ltd. has informed me that type for Eliot's books
is set by Monotype which is then kept standing (not recast).
[6]
Mr. Eliot had called attention, however, to
this alteration in the text in a letter to the New English
Weekly, XXVI, 15 (January 25, 1945), 112, prior to the change
in the printed text.
[7]
William Empson, Seven Types of
Ambiguity (New York: Meridian Books, M11, 1955),
91-92.
[8]
Mr. Eliot informed me in a personal letter
that "it was the author this time". However, I leave the point in
the text, since the general problem of proofreading seems to have
greater relevance for the study of modern authors than we generally
realize.
[9]
William Marshall, "The Text of T. S. Eliot's
'Gerontion'", Studies in Bibliography, IV (1951-52),
213-217.
[10]
Donald Gallup, T. S. Eliot A
Bibliography, (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1952). I owe
much
to Professor Gallup for making material available to me which was
not in my own collection.
[11]
Quoted from Gallup, p. 7.
[11a]
As with Poems 1919, so also
for
The Waste Land the textual variants must alone determine the
state, since the flexible binding associated with the first issue
can be found also in copies without the 'a' in 'mountain'.
[12]
This feeling may also be strengthened by the
deposit of the Faber edition of Collected Poems 1909-1935
to
secure ad interim copyright pending completion of the
Harcourt, Brace edition.
[13]
This is, of course, a guess, but based upon
the frequency with which copies containing the error have been seen
in relation to other books by Eliot together with several
booksellers' estimates of copies sold.
[14]
Both the first impression and the revised
impression collate A-L8 with paging differing from
I6v.
[15]
The balance of the speech is almost identical
with the text of B2 and so is omitted. The whole passage
in
B2 is on pp. 83-84.
[16]
The manuscript fragments of the first draft
of Murder in the Cathedral are in the possession of the
Houghton Library of Harvard University.
[17]
The collation of B1 is
[A-B8C6].
The first three Faber editions collate A-F8 with differences in
paging, while B5 collates
A-E8F4 with differences in
paging from the earlier editions.
[18]
Kristian Smidt, Poetry and Belief in the
Works of T. S. Eliot, (Oslo: Kommission Hos Jacob Dybwad,
1949.), p. 198. This seems to be the most sensible of the books to
date on Eliot.
