1307
March 25th 1916
Dear Mr. Joyce,
This morning there has come a refusal from a seventh printer &
I am becoming fairly hopeless. I am writing today to a firm[1] in Edinburgh who printed the
Temple
edition of Shakespeare. If they refuse I have very little hope of finding any
firm willing to print without deletions. Possibly they are all frightened by
the recent prosecution of Mr. D. H. Lawrence's book "The Rainbow." Mr.
Pound wrote a week or so ago that he had written to you making the
suggestion that if all printers refuse, the book should be printed with blank
spaces where passages had been cut & the excisions afterwards
manifolded by typewriter on good paper & pasted in.[2] Probably I shall hear from him as
to
whether or not you agree to this suggestion.[3]
Both Mr. Pound & Mr. Pinker tell me they do not consider
publishers' seasons of any importance with a book of this kind.[4] But if there is much more delay
I am
afraid the clerk (working for another journal here) whose services we
should borrow & who is the only person here who knows anything
about
book publishing, may have gone, as he is expecting to be called up for
military service any day now.
Mr. Pinker has sent a draft agreement but if you do not mind I would
rather not sign it just yet, for he has put in a clause by which "The Egoist"
undertakes to print & publish your novel this year. I hope it may be
done
but owing to all these difficulties there is of course some doubt. I should
have no hesitation in signing it if we had only you to deal with, but it is a
different matter to be in Mr. Pinker's hands & he appoints himself
your
representative on all questions concerning the carrying out of the
agreement. There does not appear to me to be any urgency as regards the
signing of the thing, & as you were good enough to say you would
agree
to any terms (subject to a 10 percent discount to Mr. Pinker) I think you
will probably raise no objection to the delay.
I had thought you might prefer to see proofs but as this is not the case
we will not waste time by sending them & if Mr. Pound does not read
them I will. | With kind regards | Yours sincerely
