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V

To discuss all of the Harper's Bazar and Harper book variants in detail would only bury the basic issues in an accumulation of individual words and short phrases. The striking thing is not that two authorized American versions have gone so long unnoted, but that Hardy would make the effort each month to read consecutively each of the two sets of advance proofs to be sent to his American publisher and nonetheless content himself with making only picayune revisions. The

American texts reveal no trend in either revision. It would seem, then, that Hardy was not interested in shaping or was not able to shape his overall creative vision until the proofs of the entire novel were in his hands, which situation naturally was not possible at this time because the serialization of The Woodlanders began before Hardy had finished writing the novel.

There is no reason to give credence to a natural suspicion, that someone in America may have written the significant variant passages in the two Harper texts. The variants in both Harper's Bazar and the Harper book are logical middle stages in the evolution of the affected passages from the manuscript to the Macmillan's Magazine text. This generalization holds true even though a few revisions do not fit into the scheme of progressive revision discussed in this article but follow an "alternate text" (1, 3; 2, 4) pattern. An example of an "alternate text" pattern is Melbury's reference to his second wife as Grace's "mother-law" in the manuscript (1) and the Harper book (3), but as Grace's "mother-in-law" in Harper's Bazar (2) and Macmillan's Magazine (4) (p. 185). Timothy, one of Melbury's workmen, uses the phrase "sole of his foot" in the manuscript and the Harper book, "sole of his boot" in Harper's Bazar and "sole of his boots" in Macmillan's Magazine (p. 255). An occasional variant in Harper's Bazar is a relative pronoun which clarifies an otherwise confusing sentence — a sentence that is published in the Harper book as Hardy originally wrote it. But these exceptions are minor, and were probably made either by Harper's Bazar proofreaders or by Hardy himself, who omitted to transfer the revisions to the second set of proofs, or — as in the case of "sole of his boot" — may have retained the manuscript reading in the second set of proofs and made a different revision in the proof sheets meant for Macmillan's Magazine. In the face of the preponderant evidence for progressive revision of the proof sheets destined for Harper's Bazar, the Harper book, and Macmillan's Magazine, these atypical variants are important only because they offer further evidence that the two American versions were set up from different copy. Certainly, the double variants referred to in Section IV of this paper demonstrate prima facie that a dissatisfied mind is striving consistently over a number of readings to achieve particular effects. Moreover, the longest addition, that describing Mrs. Charmond's artificial manner in receiving Melbury, is written in a style not unlike Hardy's frequent ponderosity in the setting of scene and description of motive. And so, even had Hardy given the Harper publishing house permission to alter passages of The Woodlanders as he had Atlantic magazine to alter those of Two on a Tower,[6] it is unlikely that any of the important passages discussed here were written by someone in America. The

improbability is confirmed by the inclusion of several of these passages in Macmillan's Magazine months before the publication of the American first edition.

To summarize the key findings of this investigation, then: In view of the number and types of differences among the four earliest versions of The Woodlanders, it is evident that Hardy sent in monthly installments one set of advance proof sheets to America for use by Harper's Bazar after he had made only a comparatively few revisions. These revisions were copied onto another set of proof sheets. This second set was sent to America after more revisions were made, and this set provided copy for the Harper book text. The absence of trends in the Harper book revisions indicates that this second set of proofs was also mailed in installments, probably within a few days after the installments of the first set; this indication is supported by noting that the main purpose of the second set was precautionary, against loss of the first set. In revising still a third set of proofs, to be returned to Macmillan's Magazine, Hardy altered or deleted some of the revisions made in the two sets of advance proofs sent to America in addition to making many completely new revisions.

These findings add impetus to the contemporary scholarly view that Hardy was a conscientious craftsman, concerned that his product be as good as he could make it.[7] Obviously, the former view, that Hardy's awkward prose style can be attributed to his giving less than his best efforts because of his contempt for fiction when compared to poetry, is completely mistaken. Hardy was content with his work only after numerous rereadings and revisions that would have stultified the creativeness of a less dedicated writer. Indeed, Hardy was an inveterate reviser, given to making basically nit-picking revisions as well as — if not more than — to making significant changes. That he paid little attention to subsequent American printings of The Woodlanders does not negate this view, although he obviously held a less vigilant attitude toward his American texts once he had published them than toward his English texts, which he continued to revise intensively until 1912.[8]