University of Virginia Library

The English Editions of James Gould Cozzens
by
James B. Meriwether [*]

That the twentieth-century American novel presents a very fruitful field for research in textual bibliography has been amply demonstrated in recent studies by Bowers, Harkness, and Bruccoli.[1] They have shown that the greatest care must be used in selecting the text to be quoted, of Lewis, Cabell, Fitzgerald, and others, because of the extent to which both errors and revisions may be present in different domestic editions, and even, through plate changes, in different impressions of the same edition. However, I am not aware of any studies yet made which indicate that English editions of contemporary American novelists should be taken into consideration when deciding upon the best available text. (On the other hand, many examples have been supplied which point out the dangers of using the American editions of English writers.) Yet a relatively brief examination of the English editions of James Gould Cozzens provides evidence that unless his case is unique, a new caveat may have to be added to the existing list of warnings about texts for the editor, bibliographer, and careful critic of that part of twentieth-century American fiction which also saw publication in England.

Ten of James Gould Cozzens' twelve novels have been published in England.[2] (The exceptions are two early ones, Confusion and Cock

Pit.) American scholars, collectors, and libraries have joined in ignoring the English versions, and no library or private collection known to me on this side of the Atlantic has anything like a complete set of the ten.[3] They are seldom listed in the catalogues of the English dealers, even those who specialize in modern fiction, and though six of them are currently available in reprints (five in a "Uniform Edition"), the other four are difficult to obtain.

Yet the importance of the English versions is attested in the strongest terms by Cozzens himself in a recent letter in which he stated that "All the English editions have a certain number of changes. They were always published later and in English proof I had a chance to change things I'd come to wish I'd changed in the American proof, so in general the English text if [sic] the one I prefer."[4] The full collation of the two texts of one novel, S. S. San Pedro, and spot-checking of sample passages in two others, Castaway and Michael Scarlett, confirm the importance Cozzens ascribes to the English versions, though it is obvious even from these few examples that he was right to qualify his statement that the English text was to be preferred, and that in some cases at least the situation is a more complicated one than that a later publication date permitted afterthoughts which could be embodied in changes in the proofs.

The simplest and most clear-cut of the cases examined may be cited first. A spot check of a number of passages in the two versions of Michael Scarlett, an Elizabethan romance which was Cozzens' second published book, reveals many minor changes, mostly stylistic, and in most cases obviously authorial rather than editorial in origin. One example will suffice. In Chapter VIII Southampton has occasion to mention the publication of a play by Shakespeare. In the American text he refers to it as a "new comedy, called a 'Winter's Tale,' which, I do confess, doth clearly take the argument from Mr. Greene's 'Pandosto' . . . ." The English text is revised: "new comedy, not produced yet, nor is it like to be soon now. It doth clearly take the argument from Mr. Greene's 'Pandosto' . . . ."[5] Acknowledging the changes as his, Cozzens (in the letter cited earlier) recalled, more than thirty years after

making them, that he could "still remember one change I made in a hurry. It was pointed out to me that in . . . [the American text] Shakespeare was caused to praise highly some verses of which I was the actual author. Pretty thick, I had to admit."

The English version of Michael Scarlett was published in 1927, two years after the American, and neither has ever been reprinted. There can be no doubt, then, that in this case the English text has been revised from the American, and is to be preferred, as Cozzens has stated, where it differs. But what of Castaway, which was published in England about six weeks earlier than in America?

This short novel presents the last days of a lone man, Mr. Lecky, who is trapped in an immense department store. The question of why he is alone in the store, and what has happened to the world outside, is never explained, and the book is a thoroughgoing tour-de-force, an ironic allegory of a present-day Robinson Crusoe in reverse, who perishes amid plenty because of his lack of inner resources.

At least a partial explanation of his plight, however, occurs as an introductory note to the English edition. Opposite the first page of the text itself this information is supplied:

The position of this note, outside the text itself, might lead the reader to suspect its authority. It sounds like dust-jacket copy. And in the American edition there is no such note, and no reference in the text itself to Mr. Lecky's city being New York, nor to a disaster having overtaken it. But the last chapter of the English edition contains a paragraph that is lacking in the American, and which supplies confirmation for the introductory note. The paragraph reads in part:

If we accept Cozzens' statement, quoted above, that the English editions were all revised in proof and represented the later and preferred state of the text, we would have to assume, in the case of Castaway, a decision on his part to clear up some of the mystery that surrounds Mr. Lecky's circumstances. The six weeks' earlier publication date of the English edition is not an insuperable objection, for delays in publication schedules might quite easily result in the prior publication of an edition which had actually been later set in type. Neither the English nor the American edition went into a second impression, so far as I am able to tell, and though the 1956 Modern Library Paperback edition follows the American text, not the English, it might well have happened that either the author had by that time forgotten changes he had made in the text, or that he had no opportunity to make such changes in this new American edition. If some future editor of a scholarly edition of the novels of James Gould Cozzens had only this much evidence to go on, he could hardly avoid including in a definitive, eclectic text the additional paragraph in the final chapter of the English edition, and he might well include the prefatory note.

And yet in Castaway the American edition actually presents the later, revised text, and the English is the earlier version. Concerning the prefatory note, Cozzens has stated (in the letter cited above) that it is not his; the English editor of the book "seemed to feel something of the kind was necessary. I didn't; it wasn't the kind of book you could 'explain'. Those who could take it wouldn't need any explanation; those who couldn't weren't likely to be helped; but I told him to go ahead if he wanted to." The editor went ahead, basing his note on the passage in the final chapter which is absent from the American edition. This absence is explained not by the fact that it was an addition to the English proofs, but a subtraction from the text of the Random House edition. In a letter to his English editor in 1934, before publication of either edition, Cozzens gave his consent to the publication of the prefatory note, but added that "In the copy for Random House I'm striking out the sentences from the last chapter which give the hint you mention, for reflection convinced me that it was then late in the day to attempt an explanation, especially one so vague and half-hearted; but that refers only to the text itself."[7]

The conclusions to be drawn from the differences between the

English and American texts of Michael Scarlett and Castaway are necessarily tentative, as they are based only upon the comparison of random passages. Nevertheless, it is obvious that very interesting results can be obtained by such random sampling. As an example of what further results can be obtained by a full collation, the texts of the first English and American editions of Cozzens' short novel S. S. San Pedro were compared throughout. The English edition, which was published two weeks after the American, showed what could be considered a normal number of the minor textual variations we expect to encounter in any English settng of an American text: thirteen differences in hyphenation (most of them hyphens added to American compounds), twenty-eight differences in punctuation, and twenty-eight in spelling. The punctuation variants are mostly inconsequential; either reading is acceptable. Two-thirds of the spelling variants are Anglicizations (clamour, endeavoured), the others attributable to differences in styling and usage that may depend upon publisher rather than country, or may simply reflect underlying characteristics of the copy.[8] There are two differences in paragraphing. And inevitably, the close reading of the text required by the collation turned up printer's errors in both editions, four in the American and seventeen in the English; each time the error was minor, and the reading was correct in the other edition.[9]

In four categories, then — spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and paragraphing — there are obvious but unimportant variations in the two texts. But a fifth category demands our attention, for in the American edition there are nineteen cases of clear-cut authorial revision. Some of the differences noted above in punctuation, spelling, even in hyphenation, may represent the author's work, of course, but they are indistinguishable from such changes commonly made by printers (either accidentally or intentionally) and by editors and proofreaders. And the two changes in paragraphing presumably were made by Cozzens. But the list below includes all variations in the text which were noted that can with reasonable certainty be attributed to the author and to no one else.

Revisions in the American Text of S.S. San Pedro

                               

First	American	edition page & line	First English edition
( 1)	19.4	said when it was over.	said.
( 2)	40.19	severe and noncommittal	severely non-committal
( 3)	41.5-9	His pointed young face turned, flippant in profile, suiting itself to the unoriginal jargon of his ready mockery. He spoke at once, with the accent, jeering, tight-voweled, of poor Boston streets. "Plenty," he said.	"Plenty," he grunted.
( 4)	43.14	Mr. Mills.	The name proved to be Mills.
( 5)	51.9	Above and behind him, the light cast	The light above and behind him cast
( 6)	59.14-15	south," he said formally, "fourteen degrees east."	south fourteen degrees east," he said formally.
( 7)	68.17	often and audibly	loudly and audibly
( 8)	74.1	She moved	"I don't know," she said, whiter still, "whether I'd rather have him really here, or have him not really here." She moistened her lips. [end paragraph] "I've got to get aft," said Anthony. [end paragraph] She moved
( 9)	75.7	Morris, delighted	Morris
(10)	75.11-12	Morris. He drawled with relish, gleeful, "These	Morris. "These
(11)	84.5	above	upstairs
(12)	101.18	now	this time
(13)	109.3-6	Morris. He hesitated an instant, examining the palms of his hands. Then he wiped them deliberately on the seams of his uniform trousers. "He	Morris. "He
(14)	109.12-13	now." His face stirred, became lively, grinning. "Pretty	now. Pretty
(15)	110.6	Morris, enlivened	Morris

       

(16)	119.17-120.2	jolts; and jarred beyond endurance, he had to stop, putting a hand, somehow worked raw, against the wall. He might have slept a moment, on his feet, to his shins in cold water, for he started, almost falling; remembered where he was going.	jolts.
(17)	123.16	"Wake up!" he roared. "Come to! You	"Not do you any good. You
(18)	124.1-2	boy? Are you all crazy?	boy?
(19)	125.19	brat! Believe	brat! Take your play-acting upstairs! Believe

When examined in context, most of these revisions are quite clearly improvements in the American over the English edition. Six of them, for example (3, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15), concern the wireless operator Morris, and in every case something has been added to what is the English text in order to emphasize his sardonic, mocking character and distinguish it more sharply from that of Smith, the other operator. It would be conceivable, of course, but unreasonable, to assume that the English text represented the revised version, and that Cozzens had gone through the book removing most of the touches that individualize Morris. But all except two of the other changes argue the same conclusion as do the six that concern Morris. Three of them (17, 18, 19) occur in MacGillivray's final outburst against the stupidity of Bradell and the captain, and together they increase the power of his words to convey his anger convincingly and easily. (Number 17, for instance, replaces what is an effective line, but one which slows the reader down and makes him grope momentarily for the syntax.) Three others are of only one word each but are unmistakably improvements in the American edition: number 7 eliminates a redundant adverb, 11 replaces a landsman's term in a sailor's mouth with a nautical one, and 12 avoids, in good Cozzens fashion, the incorrect assumption that might be made from the inexact expression "this time" by replacing it with "now". Number 16 expands a passage in the English version; again, it could be argued that the author, in this terse and tightly constructed narrative, had cut the passage in the English text, instead, but the expanded version accomplishes so much more effectively the transition from the open-air chaos of the deck to the nightmare situation in the engineroom that the idea is a difficult one to entertain. Finally, two changes (4, 5), though neither

adding to nor subtracting from the sense of the passages in which they appear, contribute noticeably to their verbal felicity.

In sum, these fifteen of the nineteen changes constitute an overwhelmingly convincing argument that neither the later date of publication nor Cozzens' general statement about the presence of revisions in the English editions can be taken, in the case of S. S. San Pedro, as an indication that the differences in the two texts arise from revisions in the English version. But such evidence, no matter how subjectively convincing on critical grounds, is no proof, and at this point it is useful to bring into consideration the supporting evidence of another text of the book.

The first printing of this narrative was in the August 1930 issue of Scribner's Magazine, in which it was featured as the first entry to be published in a contest for short novels. Collation of spot passages reveals many instances where the text underwent minor revision for the book publication a year later in America and England,[10] but in only two instances does the magazine version differ from the book version where the two editions of the book differ from each other. In every one of the fifteen cases just discussed of revision between the two editions of the book, the Scribner's text is identical with the English version. In short, the supporting evidence of the magazine text makes it clear that for these fifteen passages we must assume a process whereby the original version in Scribner's was followed for the English book publication, and the American book was revised from them.

Two other changes (6, 8) between the English and American editions

clarify still further the process of the transmission of the text. In these two changes we have a difference not only between the two book versions, but also between both of them and the magazine text. In the Scribner's version of the watch officer's announcement to his relief of the ship's course (6), he gives a different course from that in the two book versions: "'south twenty-two degrees west,' he said formally." Though the course differs from that in both editions of the book, the form of the sentence in which it is given is the same for the magazine version and the English edition, but different for the American. The other case (8) of differences among all three versions also involves a progressive revision that obviously began with the magazine text, continued in the English, and ended with the American. Here the cutting from the American text of three sentences in the English follows a process begun in the English, which cut several sentences or parts of sentences from the passage in Scribner's.[11]

So far, examination of seventeen of the nineteen revisions in the text of the English and American editions of S. S. San Pedro shows conclusively that the American text is the later, revised one. Unfortunately, the picture is somewhat clouded by the other two revisions. Both of them (1, 2) are minor; both of them appear to be better in the English than in the American version; both of them are identical in the Scribner's and the American edition.

The relatively close publication date of the two book versions presumably accounts for this unexpected complication. At some point in the process of correcting proofs, Cozzens may have neglected to incorporate in the American text these two changes which he had already made in the English. Or the revision may have been made in a typescript, or a paste-up from the Scribner's publication, prepared for the English publisher, and not carried over into the copy prepared for the American. There are several possibilities which might account for the discrepancy; the important point is that although the American text in general represents the revised and final version, the English edition incorporated two changes which appear to be authorial revisions, and which would certainly demand editorial consideration in a carefully prepared edition of Cozzens' novels.

Although the evidence given here from these three novels, Michael Scarlett, Castaway, and S. S. San Pedro, represents only a random sampling,

it is clear that for James Gould Cozzens the English editions are far more important than the present lack of interest in them in this country would indicate. It is evident, too, that in order to resolve some of the problems which this English text presents, it is necessary to draw upon the memories and correspondence of the author. The final solution of such textual (or editorial) problems often requires all possible information from the correspondence, records, and memories of author, agent, and publisher. It may well be that few modern American novelists have taken an interest such as Cozzens' in the English publication of their books, but it is obvious that the question must be raised before any sort of final decision can be made about selecting the best possible text. In turn, it is also obvious that our major research libraries have the obligation of providing the facilities for answering that question, when it is asked, at least about our more important novelists.

And if our libraries need to give more attention to the problem of building up complete sets of the English editions of American authors, our critics need to be on the alert for such textual differences as this article has pointed out. It will be a long time before adequate bibliographies for even our major novelists will be compiled, but in the meantime, it is often easy to turn up evidence that some important textual problem needs investigation. Not only is there an opportunity during the lifetime of an author to answer certain kinds of textual questions which cannot later be settled with the same finality, and not only are publishers' and agents' records often dispersed and destroyed with the passage of time, but also authors' memories and publishers' records need to be supplemented by the memories of officials and workmen of publishing and printing companies. In the case of English editions, this last factor is of particular importance today, because of the loss of so many publishers' records during the blitz of World War II. As memories fade, so will our opportunities for solving these textual problems.

Publication Dates of the Novels

For the purpose of establishing the relationship of two editions of a book, their respective publication dates constitute evidence of only limited usefulness, and the closer the dates are, the less useful is the evidence. What is really needed are the dates when copy was first received by the publisher, when it was sent to the printer, when galley and page proofs were pulled, when the sheets were printed, and when finished books were delivered by the binder.

But such information is generally very difficult to obtain, and in its

absence, publication dates must be used as a rough indication of a possible priority. The dates given in the list below have been supplied by the individual publishers concerned, with the exception of Michael Scarlett, where the source was the published records of the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress and the 1927 volume of the English Catalogue of Books, respectively. Since the two versions of this novel appeared two calendar years apart, the date of publication within the year is unimportant for establishing precedence, but it should be pointed out that the records of the Copyright Office are often unreliable for publication dates. These dates, as recorded in the Copyright Office, are in effect the publishers' predicted date of publication, generally at the time when an advance copy was ready for deposit, and such a date may be changed more than once as a result of difficulties of production, unexpected pre-publication demand, or other causes. Again with the exception of Michael Scarlett, all the American publication dates have been checked with the generally reliable advertised dates in the Publisher's Weekly.

• [Confusion. Boston, Brimmer, 1924. (Not published in England.)]
• Michael Scarlett. New York, Albert & Charles Boni, [October] 1925. London, Robert Holden, [June] 1927.
• [Cock Pit. New York, William Morrow, 1928. (Not published in England.)]
• The Son of Perdition. New York, Morrow, [August 22,] 1929. London, Longmans, Green, [October 3,] 1929. (Sheets imported from America.)
• S. S. San Pedro. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [August 27,] 1931. London, Longmans, Green, [September 10,] 1931.
• The Last Adam. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [January 5,] 1933. London (entitled A Cure of Flesh), Longmans, Green, [February 23,] 1933.[*]
• Castaway. New York, Random House, [November 7,] 1934. London, Longmans, Green, [September 27,] 1934.
• Men and Brethren. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [January 2,] 1936. London, Longmans, Green, [March 9,] 1936.*
• Ask Me Tomorrow. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [June 13,] 1939. London, Longmans, Green, [October 7,] 1940.*
• The Just and the Unjust. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [July 23,] 1942. London, Jonathan Cape, [April 12,] 1943.*
• Guard of Honor. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [September 30,] 1948. London, Longmans, Green, [November 7,] 1949.*
• By Love Possessed. New York, Harcourt, Brace, [August 26,] 1957. London, Longmans, Green, [April 14,] 1958.

Notes