University of Virginia Library

Revision, Virginia Woolf confessed to her diary on 6 January 1925, was "the dullest part of the whole business of writing; the most depressing & exacting" (III.4). From extant proofs and letters, we know that she often revised as she read proof and that the work left her discouraged and anxious, not only because she dreaded harsh criticism from her public, but also because she herself was her most demanding critic. After a novel was published, she rarely tinkered with the text—the notable exception being The Voyage Out (DeSalvo 110ff.)—but in any stage prior to publication Woolf did not hesitate to make extensive revisions.

Significant because it is the only one of her novels for which corrected proofs are extant, Mrs. Dalloway allows us to observe Woolf's revising at the proof stage as she struggled to put the novel into its final form. Complicating the analysis, however, there are two extant proofsets with Woolf's autograph corrections, and they do not always agree in their readings: one set used for the American (Harcourt) edition is now owned by the Lilly Library at Indiana

University; a second set, with fewer corrections, Woolf sent to her friend Jacques Raverat shortly before his death in March 1925. This proofset is now in the Special Collections Department at UCLA (Lukenbill 11-16). A third set, which was used for the British (Hogarth) edition, is not extant and presumably has been destroyed.[1]

A list of Woolf's revises for the Raverat proofs is provided in Appendix I, from which one may reconstruct readings of the proofsheets and observe Woolf's revising. Following each lemma appear transcriptions detailing this revision process, according to procedures set forth by Fredson Bowers in "Transcription of Manuscripts" (212-264). Because so many discrepancies exist between the extant proofs and their corrections, it is important not only to offer a description of them but also to attempt to catalogue them as a means of understanding how Woolf went about revising her novel and what chronology these revisions followed.

Woolf completed a typescript of Mrs. Dalloway in December 1924 in order that Leonard Woolf might read it while they were at Monks House in Sussex for the Christmas season (Diary II.325). Returning to London on 2 January, she mailed the typescript to the Edinburgh printing firm, R. & R. Clark, on or shortly before 6 January, where it was promptly set in type. Proofsheets dated 13-19 January were then returned to her for corrections. Allowing for the mails, it is likely she did not receive proofs until 23 or 24 January. Because Mrs. Dalloway was to be published simultaneously in London and New York by two different presses, Woolf received an additional set of proofs (in this case three), and she found herself in the unenviable position of having to correct two identical sets without introducing textual variants through transcription errors or unclear directions to printers in two different companies.

In late January Woolf determined to send her personal copy of the proofs to her friend Jacques Raverat, the French painter and former member of the "Neo-Pagans" at Cambridge in the early 1910s. She had not seen Raverat for some years, but she knew that he was near death, suffering with disseminated sclerosis so acute that his wife, Gwen Darwin (the granddaughter of Charles Darwin), had had to tie paint brushes onto his hands so that he could paint (Letters IV.423). Woolf also knew that Raverat would not live long enough to see Mrs. Dalloway in print, since the novel was scheduled to be published in May (the actual date of publication was 14 May 1925). Because Raverat had praised her collection of stories Monday or Tuesday and her earlier novel Jacob's Room, she wanted him to read what she considered her strongest work to date. Thus, in a letter to Raverat on 24 January, she wrote (III.154): ". . . if you'd really like it, I'll send out the proofs of my novel, which has just arrived, on condition you don't bother to write to me about it, or even read it; and don't mention it to anyone, for fear we should be asked for it, and it

wont be out till May. For no other human being in the world would I do this—why, I dont know. But I'm a little morbid about people reading my books."

In his biography of Virginia Woolf, Quentin Bell notes that this is the only time, to his knowledge, that she gave anyone except Leonard a set of proofs to read before her work was published (II.107). Trusting that Raverat would be a sympathetic audience, Woolf was worried nonetheless about some parts of Mrs. Dalloway and had complained to her diary that the novel was subject to criticism for being "disjointed because of the mad scenes not connecting with the Dalloway scenes" and because there was some "superficial glittery writing" (II.323). Her letter to Raverat indicates then that she felt some conflict between the urgency to send him the novel, even in an unfinished state, and the need to withhold her creation until its publication.

Soon after writing to Raverat, however, Woolf came down with the flu and was unable to work on the proofs for almost two weeks. On 5 February, she sent him an explanation (Letters III.163): "I was struck down with influenza the very day I wrote to you [i.e., 24 January], and am still in bed. Otherwise, I should have sent off my proofs before, but they were muddled up, and influenza makes me like a wet dish cloth—even to sort them was beyond me. I have left them uncorrected. Much has been re-written. Do a little re-writing on my behalf. Anyhow, don't cast me from you; and say nothing, or anything, as you like. (It will be sent tomorrow, 6th.)" Woolf could hardly have expected Raverat to do any "re-writing": not only was it physically impossible for him, but there would have been little time to receive a reply and incorporate changes if she planned to meet her May deadline. That she was too ill even to sort the proofs suggests that when she says "Much has been re-written," she is referring either to revisions of the manuscript (October-December 1924) or to proof corrections made only for the American and British editions (24 January-5 February 1925). Two statements in this letter are contradicted by the proofs themselves: (1) whereas Woolf states that they are "uncorrected," this is not the case; and (2) although she asserts they will be mailed on 6 February, it is unlikely that she could have made all revises for Raverat in one day.

Moreover, on 6 February the Woolfs left for Monks House where she corrected proofs, including the set for Raverat. On 31 pages of the Raverat proofs (R), Woolf made over 50 emendations and inserted between pages 224 and 225 a typescript revision of the scene in which Septimus Smith commits suicide. All revises, except for this typescript and two pencil emendations on pages 175 and 184, are made in the same bright purple ink she used in correcting proofs for the first American edition (A1) and presumably for the first British edition (E1) as well.[2] Given this evidence, we can conclude that all changes for Raverat were made after 6 February.

Jacques Raverat died on 7 March in Vence, France, a small town near Nice. Literally on his deathbed, he listened as his wife read aloud Mrs. Dalloway in proof, with Woolf's corrections; and later he dictated a letter praising the novel (Diary III.7n). This time frame indicates that Woolf could not have waited long after 6 February to mail the proofs to southern France, and since she returned to London on 10 February, a date in mid-February seems the most probable cut-off point. Relaxing in the seclusion of Monks House for four days, she would have made the corrections for Raverat on a first reading of the proofs.

This urgency must have encouraged Woolf to undertake a first-round of corrections at Monks House, and after mailing a partially corrected set to Raverat, to continue making revises for A1 and E1. From 6 January to 18 March, she made no entries in her diary—a hiatus explained not only by her illness which continued throughout this period (Letters III.167, 170), but also by her need to devote energy to revising proofs for both Mrs. Dalloway and The Common Reader. Corrected proofs for the latter were sent to R. & R. Clark on 18 March (Diary III.5), and the Woolfs left for a ten-day vacation in France on 26 March (Letters III.172). It is improbable that she would have taken this vacation if proofs for Mrs. Dalloway still remained to be corrected; thus, we may assume that by mid-March, final revises for A1 and E1 had been sent to New York and Edinburgh.[3] This schedule agrees with Woolf's plans to send her novel to Harcourt "about March," as she explained in her letter to Brace on 15 November 1924 (III.142).

The hypothesis that R reflects a first-round of general revises would account for the discrepancy in the number and extent of corrections between this set and the American proofs (Apr). Indeed, Apr shows hundreds of changes Raverat never saw, many of them minor revises in punctuation, capitalization, word-choice, and sentence structure. Curiously enough, however, Woolf did not hesitate occasionally to insert punctuation or change a capital on Raverat's set as well. Whereas she began corrections for the first editions as early as page 15, no changes were made on R until page 91. Here, revises agree in four instances, but Apr 91 includes an additional six revises—deletions, insertions, alterations in capitalization—which do not appear on R. Although it is possible that Woolf selected certain revises for Raverat and omitted others, or that she was haphazard in her corrections, these discrepancies

are better explained as changes made for A1 and E1 after mid-February.

This hypothesis is further supported by the change at R 248.17 where Woolf altered an upper-case "H" to lower case, just as she did on the other two proofsets. This is the only alteration in R between pages 225 and 271, although some forty revises occur in the same section of Apr, including two punctuation revises in the same line as the altered "H". It is unreasonable to suppose that she would alter one capital letter in the space of forty-six pages of R, omitting all the intervening substantive changes she made for A1 and E1 rather, we can assume that these revises represent changes made after mid-February. A similar argument can be made for her failing to correct a typographical error at R 260.6 where "her" appears for "he", thus rendering the sentence meaningless; likewise, at R 239.18 "nake" appears for "make"; both errors were corrected on Apr, and E1 gives the correct reading, evidence that suggests Woolf caught the errors on a second reading.

Although the Raverat proofs contain revises made early in the proof-correcting process, and although they are in no way as complete as those for the American edition, their importance is by no means diminished. They provide valuable evidence about Woolf's proof-correcting and the order in which these corrections were made; furthermore, the Raverat proofs help to clarify Woolf's intentions where her revises for A1 and E1 are ambiguous or missing.

In collating the proofsets to determine a sequence of corrections, certain hypotheses need to be set forth about the transcription process. Despite the tangles of the evidence, it is possible to unravel some of the strands if the following five principles about Mrs. Dalloway are accepted:

Some three-quarters of the R revises agree with those of Apr as well as with readings in E1; thus, we can assume that Woolf made the same corrections on the proofs from which E1 was set. In these instances no order of transcription can be determined. An interesting case occurs, however, at R 141.24 where Woolf inserted "she", then deleted the word, recognizing that she had intended the clause "she said, arranging the roses" three lines later at 141.27. This deletion represents a transcription error which Woolf caught, and it indicates that R was second or third in the transcription sequence, at least at this point. Apr, on the other hand, shows that Woolf emended the passage to read "she said, arranging the flowers"; then she deleted "flowers" and interlined "roses" above, in agreement with E1. Whether Apr was first or second to be corrected cannot be determined in this instance, but it does appear that here Woolf was transcribing her revises onto R from one of the other two sets.

Correcting three sets of proof simultaneously becomes exceedingly tedious. Given that Woolf was not temperamentally suited to this kind of work and that she still felt the effects of influenza, it is not surprising to find many transcription errors on the proofs. Because these errors can exist side by side with variants of Types II-V, some rationale has to be offered for distinguishing one from another. This rationale rests on the assumption that Woolf was intent upon correcting the Raverat proofs as quickly as possible, a job she finished in mid-February; subsequent revising was then done on the other two proofsets before mid-March.

In her article on the American edition of Mrs. Dalloway, E. F. Shields argues that Woolf continued revising the Hogarth proofs without informing Harcourt of her changes; later, however, Shields proposes that independent readings of both proofsets may have taken place (158, 173-174n). Ample evidence exists that Woolf continued revising the Hogarth proofs after she mailed the other two sets, but many of the variants Shields cites (159ff.) can be attributed to transcription errors, authorial oversights, or unclear directions which Hogarth and Harcourt printers interpreted differently.

Contemplating the burden of correcting three sets of proof, an author might spread out all three sets, read and correct one, transferring each correction as it is made to the other two sets. What this method gains in accuracy and consistency, however, it loses in speed and continuity. Although simultaneous transcription was used occasionally, it is more likely that Woolf corrected one set of proofs at a stint, then used it in transcribing revises. In the next stint she might well have picked up another proofset to correct first. It is reasonable to assume that she read Mrs. Dalloway proofs sequentially, in order of the sections or "chapters," as opposed to the order followed in correcting

proofs for The Common Reader, a group of essays which could be corrected in any order. When she marked a new section at Apr 89.19/20, she found a good stopping point; and on continuing her work, she began correcting the Raverat set in addition to the other two. The fact that no revises appear in R until page 91 indicates that she did intend to leave this set "uncorrected," as she says in her letter of 5 February; but whether from error or from recognition that extensive changes were necessary on all proofsets, at this point she began correcting all three.

Revises in R tend to occur in clusters within the last seven sections of the novel. As Shields points out (169-171), there are several discrepancies between A1 and E1 in the number of sections, so some clarification is necessary. Because of poor printing procedures at Harcourt where the printer left a "blank" line at the bottom margin, the reader of A1 must count lines on pages 124 and 228 to determine that a space occurs and a new section begins. In two other instances (Apr 142.21/22 and 281.6/7), Woolf failed to instruct the Harcourt printer where to divide the text, although she did mark the divisions for E1 and in one case (281.6/7) for Raverat. Since this visual device would not be significant for Raverat, we can assume that at R 281, Woolf either confused his set with Apr, or that she forgot to make the same change. Her error or oversight has been perpetuated for all American readers of the novel since 1925.[4]

The following table sets forth these discrepancies between the corrected proofs and the first editions of Mrs. Dalloway:

Structural Divisions in Mrs. Dalloway

                       

American Proofs (Apr)	Raverat Proofs (R)	Harcourt (A1)	Hogarth (E1)
23.4	23.4	19.13	23.4
45.11	45.11	42.13	45.11
74.11	74.11	72.9	74.11
86.23	86.23	85.4	86.23
89.19/20	(89.19/20)	88.3	89.20
99.8/9	(99.8/9)	97.18	99.7-8
125.26/27	(125.26/27)	* 124.26	125.27
(142.21/22)	(142.21/22)	[142.5/6]	142.22
227.15/16	(227.15/16)	* 228.26	227.15
248.12	248.12	250.19	248.12
(281.6/7)	281.6/7	[284.4/5]	281.5-6

The first four entries in this table show where blank lines occur on the proofs, indicating five of the novel's divisions. Because they occur in proof, we can surmise that Woolf indicated them on her typescript prepared in December 1924. Line numbers separated by a slash show where Woolf drew horizontal lines to instruct her printers at Harcourt and Hogarth to leave blank lines, as at Apr 89.19/20. Page references within parentheses indicate those instances in which Woolf failed to specify a break in the text; thus, she made no such mark on Raverat's proofs at 89.19/20. Although she did indicate a break in his text at 281.6/7, she failed to make the same correction on Apr. Square brackets around a page reference indicate where structural breaks should occur in A1, but do not. As can be seen from the table, E1 provides eleven divisions for twelve sections, whereas A1 shows only seven divisions clearly. The two entries marked by asterisks identify those places in A1 where the blank line Woolf requested on Apr is the last line in the printed text.

Although the division at R 281.6/7 is attributable to Woolf's error, that at E1 142.22 is problematic. To account for it, we must assume either that Woolf forgot to make the transcription from the Hogarth proofs to the American proofs, or that this break represents yet a later revision made after the American proofs were mailed to New York. Because the first two editions agree in other substantive changes made on page 142, the latter hypothesis is more compelling. For purposes of the present argument, however, it is important to establish only the following points:

This argument assumes, then, that ten of the eleven divisions were determined by mid-February and that the division at 142.22 was made late, probably after mid-March. Evidence for this chronology is admittedly scanty, but the hypothesis gains support from other substantive variants between A1 (where it agrees with Apr) and E1. In addition, all the structural divisions Woolf added occur in the last two-thirds of the novel, except for the division at A1 250.19 which had already been determined in the typescript. Since all of the Raverat revises also occur in the last two-thirds of the novel, it is reasonable to conclude that Woolf devoted most, if not all, of her attention in the first round of correcting to this portion of the novel. This would help explain why most of the R revises tend to occur in clusters within the last seven of the novel's twelve divisions.

Having established the location of these divisions, we may now turn to a closer examination of the R revises. Appendix I lists these in sequence by page and line number of the Raverat proofs, followed by corresponding references to the first American (Harcourt) edition. Since pagination in E1 follows closely that of the original proofs, references to that text are omitted. Using any reprint of A1, a reader can determine both the reading of the proofsheets and Woolf's revises for Raverat.

Many discrepancies in proofsheet revises can be classified according to the five types outlined above: (I) transcription error, (II) authorial oversight, (III) intentional omission, (IV) intentional inclusion, and (V) subsequent

revision after one or more proofsets were mailed. Although not all variants can be absolutely identified in this classification, the value for editorial proceedings is obvious. Because variants of all five types can exist side by side, the clearest and most revealing presentation is to examine these clusters of R revises, with attention to the most significant ones, as they occur within the structural divisions.