University of Virginia Library

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.

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• 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: 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.