This essay is a continuation of a study begun in Studies in
Bibliography, XV (1962), 191-205. In the first essay, on the basis
of
an examination of the various manuscripts and proofs of one story, "The
Dead," I attempted to establish a rationale for the textual criticism of
Dubliners. In brief, and without the supporting evidence, the
rationale is this: The first complete printing of Dubliners was
done by the firm of Falconer in Dublin in 1910 for a projected edition to
be published by Maunsel and Company. This printing went through three
states: 1) a set of galleys, printed from Joyce's holograph manuscript but
including many compositorial "improvements" in punctuation (including
about one thousand additional commas); 2) a set of early page proofs,
somewhat more correct than the galleys; 3) a set of printed pages (referred
to as a "late stage" of the printing in these studies but almost certainly the
final stage, ready for the binder) thoroughly corrected by
Joyce and containing some new improvements to the text made by him in
proof-reading.
When the Dublin publisher and printer finally refused to publish the
book, Joyce obtained a set of the early page proofs (the second state
described above), which became the printer's copy for the actual First
Edition published by Grant Richards in 1914. There are two states of the
printing of this edition. The Edinburgh printer, The Riverside Press,
eliminated the galley stage and provided a set of page proofs for correction.
Having been set from the quite incorrect early page proofs of the abortive
Dublin printing, these proofs required considerable correction. They were
sent to Joyce, who made his corrections hastily,
expecting to see another set of proofs. When the other proofs were not sent
to him, he forwarded a set of corrections which he hoped would be made.
It was not until two years later that he discovered that not only had the
thirty additional corrections not been made but that two hundred of the
original corrections indicated on the page proofs had not been made either.
The second state of the Grant Richards edition is the First Edition itself.
Modern reprint texts of
Dubliners differ from this only by a
few
proof-reader's corrections and some new compositor's errors introduced
into the text.
For this second study of the text of Dubliners I have
examined and collated all the available manuscript and proof versions of all
the stories not treated in my first study — that is, all but "The
Dead."
Since the materials available for study vary from story to story, each will
be treated separately below, after a discussion of the general problems
which will face the future editor of Dubliners.
