A textual matter concerning the American publication of one of
Thomas Hardy's best novels opens new areas for Hardy investigations and
for studies of nineteenth-century publishing practices. Two "American"
texts of The Woodlanders constitute separate stages of
composition of that novel; they do not correspond precisely to the
manuscript nor to any version ever published in England. The value of this
fact, beyond its usefulness to bibliographers, lies in the new insights its
explanation provides into Hardy's novel-writing and revising
methods.
Hardy scholars have long known of five printed versions of
The
Woodlanders, and they have assumed that what they considered the
first printed version [text number 4 in the list below] reproduces the
manuscript.[1] While the present study
primarily deals with two previously unidentified printed texts, it also reveals
the manuscript to be a separate version. The following table lists all eight
of the now-known versions in the order of the novel's evolution, with
explanatory comments.
- 1. The manuscript, in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester,
England.
- 2. Harper's Bazar text; weekly installments from
May
15, 1886, to April 9, 1887; published in New York.
- 3. Harper & Brothers book version, published in New York
in
one volume on March 25, 1887.[2]
- 4. Macmillan's Magazine text, published in monthly
installments in London from May, 1886, to April, 1887.
- 5. English first edition, published by Macmillan and Co. of
London in three volumes on March 15, 1887.
- 6. The "Second Edition," the first English one-volume edition,
published in London in August, 1887, by Macmillan and Co.
- 7. The text of The Woodlanders published in 1896
by
Osgood, McIlvaine & Co. of London as Volume VII of the first
collected
edition of Hardy, Thomas Hardy's Works: The Wessex
Novels.
This collected edition is usually called the "Osgood edition" to distinguish
it from the next edition in this listing.
- 8. The definitive text, Volume VI of Prose of
Macmillan and Co's The Works of Thomas Hardy in Prose and
Verse (Wessex Edition) of 1912. It is this edition that is legitimately
referred to as "the Wessex Edition."
This article deals with the first four texts, which are referred to as the
manuscript, Harper's Bazar, Harper book, and
Macmillan's Magazine. It should be noted, for emphasis, that
the middle two are the unique texts. These two hitherto unidentified texts
were both published in America and both represent early stages in the
novel's evolution, thereby pointing to an interesting if not unprecedented
bibliographical oddity. The English first edition [text number 5] is the first
edition only in date of publication; the American first edition, published ten
days later, contains an earlier version of the text.
Hardy, as the list above suggests, seldom let a new setting of type
slip by without offering a number of reworked passages to the printers. And
while he did not read the proof sheets which were made by the American
printers, he did supply the copy from which the American texts were set
up. A brief digression will show how and why this was
accomplished.
Hardy customarily arranged for simultaneous publication of his novels
in England and in the United States. In the case of The
Woodlanders, he sold the rights of serialization and domestic book
issue in each country to a major publishing house — Macmillan
& Co.
in England and Harper & Brothers in America. The economic
necessity
for simultaneous publication of The Woodlanders is an
essential
factor in the formation of the unique American texts. Before 1891 there was
no copyright protection in the United States for works first published in
England. Any publisher in America could reprint British books or
magazines without obtaining the permission either of the author or of the
original publisher. Throughout the nineteenth century, such writers as
Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Disraeli, and Wilkie Collins felt the
loss of thousands of pounds in royalties from this piracy. Under these
conditions, it was important for J. Henry Harper, Hardy's authorized
American
publisher of The Woodlanders, to be able to place on sale his
weekly Harper's Bazar and — at the end of the
serialization
— a bound edition of The Woodlanders before the
omnipresent and highly efficient American pirates of the publishing
profession could produce cut-rate competitors after obtaining a copy of
Macmillan's Magazine, which arrived in New York
via steamship a short time after being printed in London.
Since
a pirating publisher was able to sell a book under his own imprint within
thirty-six hours after obtaining a copy whose pages he could distribute
among a crew of compositors, not only days but hours were crucial
elements in obtaining priority of publication.
To gain the the slight but important edge in priority of publication,
as well as to be honest in a very basic way, the more reputable American
publishers arranged with an English author to be furnished pre-publication
copy. Hardy's usual procedure under the terms of the arrangement with his
American publisher was to send to America advance proof sheets of his
English serialization.[3] On page 85
of Hardy in America Weber prints a letter in which Hardy
proposes such a method for The Woodlanders to Thomas
Bailey
Aldrich, editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Aldrich rejected the
offer but Harper obviously acceded to a similar offer. The same variation
from the manuscript in all of the English and American printed versions
indicates that this method, rather than sending longhand copies as in the
case of Two on a Tower (whose initial appearance was as a
serial in the Atlantic),
was used for
The Woodlanders. At one point, the manuscript
contains an addition without the use of a caret:
trees of
from the later harvest (fol. 236),
which is printed as "from the trees of later harvest" (p. 210). Judging from
the position of the addition and the spacing of the words in the manuscript
(the words "the" and "later" are joined by the pen-stroke) as well as from
the sense of the phrase, "from trees of the later harvest" is what was
intended. Had
The Woodlanders gone to America in duplicate
manuscripts, this phrase would probably have been correctly written out by
Hardy or his wife Emma in a single line; but as it is, the original
typesetter's error has never been corrected.
Hardy once a month sent manuscript sheets from his home in
Dorchester to the Macmillan printers in London, who set them in type and
sent several sets of the resulting proof sheets to Hardy. Until now, it has
been assumed by Hardy scholars either that the English publisher sent the
proof sheets to America or that for each novel Hardy corrected and revised
a set of proofs to be returned to his English publisher, and that he copied
verbatim those corrections and revisions onto another set of proofs which
was sent in monthly packets to his authorized American publisher. But in
at least the case of The Woodlanders, Hardy's pre-publication
revising was more elaborate. Because of the lack of international copyright,
the sheets for Harper's Bazar had to be sent hastily, so Hardy
had time to make only a small number of revisions, which, naturally, he or
Emma copied onto the other sets of proof sheets. Hardy sent a second set
of advance proof sheets, on which he had made
further revisions, to America under separate cover as a precaution against
the possibility that the first set might be missent or lost.[4] But even the second set could not
be
revised carefully enough to satisfy the conscientious and artistically restless
Hardy, since in sending the second set of proofs promptness still had to be
the primary consideration. So, after dispatching both sets of proof sheets to
America, Hardy made further revisions on a third set before returning that
set
to the Macmillan printers for the forthcoming monthly issue of
Macmillan's Magazine.
The result, then, of Hardy's penchant for revision, the lack of
international copyright, and the vicissitudes of transatlantic mail service,
was this: Harper's Bazar set up its pages from the first set of
proofs, the Harper book printers used the second set, and
Macmillan's
Magazine used the third set. No correspondence or memorandum
remains to show whether the Harper printers realized that the two sets of
proof sheets that Hardy sent had differing author's revisions and
corrections; most probably, the book's printers were sent the second set by
Harper's editors solely for the sake of convenience.
The evidence of the above assertions concerning the uniqueness of the
American texts rests upon a comparison of four versions of The
Woodlanders: the manuscript, the Harper's Bazar text,
the Harper book text, and the Macmillan's Magazine text. In
the first of several sections devoted to particular sorts of variants, I contrast
variants in Harper's Bazar with the corresponding passages
in
the manuscript. Next, I discuss distinctions between the two American
texts. Then, I cover differences between the Harper book and
Macmillan's Magazine. A section pointing out passages that
were revised more than once in the four versions follows. Drawing upon
these sections for illustrations, the conclusion proves that the American
texts' variants were authored by Hardy; the conclusion also summarizes the
primary findings of the comparison of the four versions, and points out the
signifiance of this study to an understanding of Hardy's art.
This might be the best place to mention in passing the pirated text of
The Woodlanders sold by H. C. Munro & Co., New
York,
April 16, 1887, reprinted by A. L. Burt in 1895, and by Munro again in
1898. I have checked only 1898 and 1895 copies, but I presume that Munro
always used the same plates. If this belief is accurate, Burt's volume is
either a sub-edition or a re-issue of Munro's. This is a tentative ascription,
since there were at least eleven other pirating publishers of The
Woodlanders, but Munro's first edition bears the earliest date of the
pirates. Weber's "Tragedy in Little Hintock," pp. 151-153, contains a
check-list of the pirated — as well as the authorized —
American
printings of The Woodlanders.
The complexity of the American bibliography is increased by the
knowledge that the pirated edition itself comprises a unique text. Both
Macmillan's Magazine and Harper's Bazar
were
raided by the pirating printers, who set up their type from the June-August,
1887, installments of Macmillan's Magazine (Chapters
V-XVIII)
while using Harper's Bazar for the rest of the text. Contrary
to
another general
assumption, then, the pirates did not wait for the English first edition to
arrive in America before setting to work. Since the focus of this study is on
Hardy's habits of revision, the pirated printings were not exhaustively
checked and are not discussed here.