A good deal is known, now, about James Joyce's difficulties in
getting Dubliners published. (A capsule summary of the
pre-publication printing history of the book appeared in "Some Observations
on the Text of Dubliners: 'The Dead'" in Studies in
Bibliography, XV, 191 ff.) The publication of these letters from
Richards to Joyce is intended to be not so much another re-hashing of those
difficulties as a shift in focus from Joyce, the "hero," to Richards, the
"villain."
Thomas Franklin Grant Richards was one of those small publishers
who were so influential in British literary developments around the turn of
the century. Along with Richards, one thinks of Elkin Mathews, John Lane,
Maunsel & Co. (in Ireland), and Martin Secker (who became
Richards's
partner and through whose permission these letters are here published) as
men who had a direct hand in the shaping of a new literature.
Richards himself was the first publisher of G. K. Chesterton, Alfred
Noyes, and John Masefield. He also published G. B. Shaw, Frank Morris,
Richard Le Galliene, Ronald Firbank, the Sitwells, and Arnold Bennett. A.
E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and Last
Poems
came out under his imprint. And his life as a publisher was complicated by
two of the most "difficult" writers of the early twentieth century —
Baron
Corvo and James Joyce.
Richards has recounted much of his publishing experience in his book
Author Hunting (1934, reprinted in 1960 by Martin Secker's
Unicorn Press — and on the remainder lists last year). But his two
most
difficult authors — Joyce and Corvo — are not mentioned in
that book.
The reasons for Richards's reticence are interesting. He may, as Martin
Secker suggests in a prefatory note, have been planning another book on
them; or he may simply have been unhappy with his recollections of the
Joyce and Corvo episodes. Certainly his letters to Joyce must have given
him little reason for pride. In them are revealed the
almost pathological carelessness and confusion of his publishing
establishment — lost or missing manuscripts seem the rule, rather
than
the exception. And these letters must certainly have reminded Richards of
an unhappy time in his own life. His first marriage and his first bankruptcy
— both, apparently, melancholy affairs — lent a rather gray
tint to this
stage of his career. Much of his caution in dealing with
Dubliners, as a matter of fact, stemmed from his precarious
financial situation at the time.
With some knowledge of his situation in mind, we may find Richards
less of a "villain" than he is usually thought to be by those who know only
Joyce's side of the story. He was, himself, only nine years older than Joyce
and had not quite turned thirty-two when Joyce approached him with
Dubliners in 1904, though he had then been an independent
publisher for eight years. Curiously enough, Richards had once been
himself a victim of literary censorship. In 1895 William Haddon, publisher
of The Annual, wrote his printer about a story of Richards,
saying, "There is a lot of 'Devil' and 'God' and the rest of it. I want it
knocked out of it" (recounted in Richards's Memories of a Misspent
Youth, 1933, p. 319). When it came to knowledge of the
priggishness of the London literary world at that time, Richards had
intimate and personal knowledge. In addition to his own experience in
1895, he had carefully followed the uproar over George Moore's
Esther Waters (see
Chapter VI of Author Hunting). His advice to Joyce in 1904
was not unsound in terms of the temper of the times. That Richards could
publish in 1914 what he would not publish in 1904 is more an indication of
a change in the literary climate than of any change of heart in
Richards.
Only Richards's side of the correspondence is published here. A
minimal running commentary has been supplied, including some
information on Joyce's replies, but the material provided here is no
substitute for the documents themselves and is not intended to be. Joyce's
part of the correspondence is, unfortunately, scattered. Part has been
published in Herbert Gorman's James Joyce, 1939 (hereafter
referred to as Gorman), and another part in Stuart Gilbert's Letters
of
James Joyce, 1957 (hereafter referred to as Gilbert). Some
fragments
are quoted in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, 1959. Some
letters are still unpublished. Presumably all those letters not in Gilbert will
be included in Ellmann's forthcoming additional volume of Joyce's letters.
All the letters published here are quoted in full, only the addresses being
omitted and the salutation and close somewhat compressed. The
subscription has been run-in on the same line with the end of the text and
the
signature omitted. Richards's address for letters 1 and 2 was
48 Leicester Square, London, W. C. For letters 3 through 38 it was 7
Carlton Street, Regent Street, London, S. W. For letters 39 to 47, 8 St.
Martin's Street, Leicester Square, London, W. C.
