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Notes
A somewhat different form of this article was delivered as a paper before the American Literature Group of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, November 6, 1959.
Fredson Bowers, Textual and Literary Criticism (1959). Bruce Harkness, "Bibliography and the Novelistic Fallacy," Studies in Bibliography, XII (1959). Matthew J. Bruccoli, "Twentieth-Century Books," Library Trends, VII (April 1959), 566-573; "A Collation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise," Studies in Bibliography, IX (1957); James Branch Cabell: A Bibliography, Part II (Charlottesville, 1957).
A complete listing, with publication dates, of both American and English versions of the novels appears at the end of this article. Not all the English versions represent separate editions; at least one (The Son of Perdition) is merely a different issue, from imported sheets.
The largest available collection is that in the Rare Books Division of the Princeton University Library, which has six of the ten, although not all are first impressions.
James Gould Cozzens to James B. Meriwether, 10 September 1958. This letter is now in the Cozzens Collection at Princeton. I am grateful to Mr. Cozzens for permitting quotation in this article from unpublished letters, and from Michael Scarlett, the copyright of which has reverted to the author.
James Gould Cozzens to Milton Waldman, 17 July 1934. Quoted from the carbon in the files of Cozzens' correspondence in the Princeton University Library. Although these files are not at the present time open for inspection, Mr. Cozzens very kindly permitted reference to this letter in order to settle the problem of this passage in Castaway.
Examples are the variation S.O.S. in the English edition from SOS in the American, and the several cases of double or single l's: shovelling, panelled, stencilled, pencilled, in the English edition; shoveling, paneled, and so on, in the American. That Anglicization cannot be blamed for them all is indicated by a comparison with the first published text of the novel, in Scribner's Magazine, LXXXVIII (August 1930), where the readings, in the case of the S.O.S. and the double l's, are the same as those of the English edition, although the magazine is American.
The American misprints may be worth noting here: P. 17, line 9, semicolon should be omitted or replaced by comma; 43.22, quotation marks lacking; 64.18, pork for port; 132.7, period should be comma.
Two examples, more significant than most, occur at the end of Chapter One, where the deathly figure of Doctor Percival warns Anthony Bradell, the second officer, that the captain is in ill health, and then goes ashore. In the Scribner's version, the description of Doctor Percival's departure is a brief one: "He turned simply and walked away. Anthony had one glimpse of his black figure moving slowly on the gangplank." In the book version (p. 25, American edition) the description is expanded, emphasizing Doctor Percival's portentous appearance: "He had not halted a moment while he was speaking. Now his unhurried progress simply bore him on, leaving Anthony behind. The sun, slanting almost perpendicular between the edge of the wharf roof and the San Pedro's side, lay hot on the slope of the gangplank. Doctor Percival's black figure moved there, passed on; was lost in deep shadows ashore." The expanded version is considerably the more effective. However, four paragraphs earlier (p. 25, American edition) the book version omits several sentences spoken by Doctor Percival to Bradell concerning the captain: "'No, I do not mean to say he is incapacitated, or even, at the moment, dangerously ill. I am, no doubt, nearer death than he is.' He paused a moment and breathed heavily. 'It is usual for me to be,' he added. 'Clendening has always been a strong man—'" The omission of these five sentences from the book version serves the same function as do the additions to the description of Doctor Percival's departure, increasing the atmosphere of mystery. Cozzens apparently felt, on further consideration, that he was making Doctor Percival a little too obvious a death symbol here.
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