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The Unrecognized Second Edition of
Conrad's Under Western Eyes
by
David Leon Higdon
First editions enjoy a mystique in later years as copies become increasingly scarce, and collected editions proclaim a certain sumptuousness and finality; however, the workaday inexpensive editions often reveal more about a work's reputation, audience, and publication history than either of the former. Most collectors, for example, would rather have a cerise-embossed, gold-lettered copy of the English first edition of Under Western Eyes however faded, the rarest edition of any Conrad novel,[1] than a second edition, even though the latter involves a more revealing story of melted plates, misnamed impressions, and rising sales. Jocelyn Baines pointed out that Chance, the novel which marked the turning-point in Conrad's finances and popularity, unexpectedly sold 13,200 copies in England during the two years following its publication, compared with only 4,112 of Under Western Eyes— a superior novel in every way—during a comparable period.[2] Had the Methuen records and ledgers been fully available in the early 1960s, Baines could further have added that the popularity of Chance, Victory, and The Shadow-Line, whose first edition of 5,000 copies sold out in four days,[3] spurred on a 15,000 copy second edition of Under Western Eyes, the "Cheap Edition" published in 1917 by Methuen. The Cheap Edition has a particular significance because of what it did to Conrad's text and because it has heretofore been described as a reprint rather than a true second edition. It and its relationship to the first edition also offer a clear example of the corruption of a text and the necessity of distinguishing most carefully between editions and impressions.
The first edition of 5 October 1911 consisted of 3,000 copies, 2,250 for domestic sale and 750 for the colonial market, differing from the domestic
The Methuen ledgers contain the notations "M Dec 2/11", "S May 17/15" and "M destroyed 12/2/16", apparently referring to the creating of moulds, the stereotyping of plates, and the destroying of moulds 12 February 1916.[8] Before hurrying to the conclusion that the destruction of the moulds may also have involved the destruction of the plates of the first edition, thus necessitating the new edition ordered in May 1917, one must recognize that the "Sixth Edition" of April 1920 and the "Fourteenth Edition" of 1929 are actually the fourth and probably the firth impressions of the first edition plates. It is also probable that the "Tenth," "Thirteenth," and "Fifteenth" editions are later impressions as well, particularly since the ledgers carry
Under Western Eyes was not the breakthrough to a larger audience that Chance was soon to become because of the popular audience's mood. E.D.Y., an unidentified reader, inscribed in his copy, the following:
Of course a powerful book. Also a cruel book. Turgenev? Certainly not. Dostoievski. The Dostoievski of Crime et Chastisment.
On the whole I regret I read this book. Life is too short to read such books. It is not instructive; it is not elevating—rather the reverse—; and it is not beautiful enough.
I hope Conrad will now leave the uninteresting Russian conspirators, once and for all, and come back to the true source of his inspiration: the Wide Sea.[9]
True, Under Western Eyes' pessimism and corrosive ironies, its maimed and deafened protagonist, would not have struck many readers during the Edwardian summer as being either "instructive" or "beautiful" and certainly not "elevating." The severe judgment of E.D.Y. apparently comes from a faithful reader of Conrad who most certainly had read The Secret Agent ("will now leave the uninteresting Russian conspirators, once and for all"), possibly The Nigger of the "Narcissus", Lord Jim, certain short stories such as "Youth", and, conjecturally, even The Mirror of the Sea.
The popular mood and Conrad's reputation had changed by the time of the Cheap Edition of 1917. In March, Methuen proposed an autumn shilling edition, and, on 3 July, Methuen wrote Pinker: "We presume that the author will not require to see proofs of the cheap edition of "UNDER WESTERN EYES". [¶] In dealing with Mr. Conrad's previous volumes in our cheap series, the printers have read the books for press and taken responsibility for the accuracy of the setting."[10]
The Cheap Edition condensed the front matter and text of the novel from a total of 382 pages and 24 signatures to 320 pages and 10 signatures, a savings of 62 pages, and shrunk the thirty-five line, 187x124 mm. page to a forty-line, 170x116 mm. page. The format changes were due, in part, to wartime paper shortages and undoubtably reflected a desire to reduce production costs as well. October 1917 brought the true second edition, called the "Fourth Edition," in a printing of 15,000 copies; yet another 5,000 copies were called for in 1920. In 1922, Methuen changed the paper size and format from foolscap octavo to crown octavo and the binding from maroon cloth to green cloth for the third, fourth, and fifth impressions of the second edition, calling
| I. First Edition | ||||
| Name | Ordered | Delivered | Date Published | |
| 1. First impression | 1st | 3,000 | 3,001 | 5 October 1911 |
| 2. Second impression | 2nd | 1,500 | 1,506 | October 1911 |
| 3. Third impression | 3rd | 1,000 | 1,013 | July 1915 |
| 4. Fourth impression | 6th[*] | 1,000 | n.a. | 1920 |
| 5. Fifth impression | 14th[**] | n.a. | n.a. | 1929 |
| 6. Sixth impression | 15th | 1,000 | 1,008 | November 1929 |
| II. Second Edition | ||||
| 1. First impression | 4th | 15,000 | 15,010 | 18 October 1917 |
| 2. Second impression | 5th | 5,000 | 4,888 | April 1920 |
| 3. Third impression | 6th[*] | 1,000 | n.a. | 12 October 1922 |
| 4. Fourth impression | 7th | n.a. | n.a. | February 1923 |
| 5. Fifth impression | 8th | 5,000 | 5,047 | May 1924[***] |
| 6. Sixth impression | 9th | n.a. | n.a. | September 1924 |
| 7. Seventh impression | 11th | 3,000 | 3,097 | August 1926 |
| 8. Eighth impression | 12th | 2,637 | 2,096 | December 1926 |
| 9. Ninth impression | 16th | 2,500 | 2,525 | July 1943 |
| 10. Tenth impression | 17th | 2,000 | 2,000 | March 1946 |
| 11. Eleventh impression | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | 1948 |
| III. Impressions Not Yet Identified | ||||
| 1. "Tenth Edition" | January 1925 | |||
| 2. "Thirteenth Edition" | February 1929 |
The Cheap Edition of 1917, printed by Butler and Tanner, was the edition in which Under Western Eyes reached a fairly large audience, and, because the edition was most carelessly proofed, it perniciously subverts the text
Though it is fairly evident to a reader that "you presence" (78.35), "colouring slight" (91.1), "her fate husband" (138.34), and "for five minutes of more" (286.27) are misprints for "your presence," "colouring slightly," "her late husband," and "for five minutes or more," one must always approach assumed misprints with caution. Since 1938, readers of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock have probably been silently "correcting" the detective's remark "'You're a wide boy'" to "'You're a wise boy'" without realizing that "wide" is underworld slang for "those who live by their wits, especially gamblers, petty swindlers, race-gangsters, the lesser 'con men', dishonest motor-car salesmen, and the like."[13] Equally troubling and ambiguous are those misprints which silently distort what the author wrote. For example, describing the attitude, stride, and demeanor of the red-nosed student, Conrad wrote "He stalked deliberately at Razumov's elbow" (M70.16), but in the Cheap Edition, he "talked deliberately" (64.31). In the first edition, Natalia Haldin tells the narrator of her troubles with her mother, concluding "'I am more uneasy than ever'" (M174.31); the Cheap Edition has her saying she is "more easy than ever" (151.15)—exactly the reverse. Similarly, the Cheap Edition prints "Miss" (268.11) instead of "Mrs." (M313.31)—a seemingly minor error, but one which assigns a significant evaluation by the narrator to the wrong character—and "foreseen" (287.7) for "unforeseen" (M337.6), making the perceived connection between Natalia and her brother rather puzzling. Elsewhere, the Cheap Edition prints "put new heart in the man" (108.28-29), "the loss" (268.32), and "sceptical ghost" (305.23) instead of "put heart in the new man" (M122.32-33),
The Cheap Edition also omits a number of words and phrases, probably due to compositors' eyeskips. For example, "inspiration. It is a great privilege to have the inspiration and the opportunity" (M154.25-26) becomes "inspiration and the opportunity" (134.28-29), and "almost of the disciple of" (M159.1) becomes "almost of" (138.22). Sometimes, words such as "tawny" in "naked tawny figure" (M120.14/106.24) simply disappear from the text.
When one turns to the accidental variants, one finds much the same story: 79 of the 202 variants are simple setting errors such as misspellings, use of a comma instead of a period, omission of closing punctuation, whereas others involve regularization of -ize words (4 times) and any one (15 times), preference of variant spellings (8 times), addition of commas (5 times), and deletion of commas (38 times), even though the text does correct twelve printing errors from the first edition.
On 2 January 1942, Methuen melted down the stereotyped plates, probably of the first edition, though there is a possibility that the second edition plates were also melted down as part of the war effort, and on 4 March 1943, the blocks were destroyed.[14] Moulds surely had been made or "mother plates" retained, because there were later impressions ordered 7 July 1943, 6 March 1946, and sometime in 1948.
Thus, during the thirty or so years following the publication of Under Western Eyes, Conrad's readers had their choice of any of four editions of the novel in Great Britain: the Methuen first, the Methuen second, the Heinemann Collected, or the Dent which was printed from plates of the American Sun-Dial Edition. Conrad met these readers, moreover, not in the precisely cut style and neatly punctuated sentences he wished, but in a rather tattered, shop-worn cheap text. It was cheap, and it often looked it. Had publication rights not finally passed to J. M. Dent, the text of the second edition might still be on sale in its various guises.
Notes
See Walter E. Smith, Joseph Conrad: A Bibliographical Catalogue of his Major First Editions with Facsimiles of Several Title Pages ([San Francisco], 1979), pp. 114-115 for a ranking of "comparative scarcities." Smith ranks Some Reminiscences, Tales of Unrest, A Personal Record (American edition), and the co-authored The Inheritors as more scarce than copies of Under Western Eyes.
T. G. Ehrsam, A Bibliography of Joseph Conrad (1969), p. 307 notes the rapid sale of The Shadow-Line. American sales of Under Western Eyes were disappointing. Harper & Brothers sold 1,976 copies in 1911, 737 in 1912, and did not sell out the first edition of 4,000 copies until 1917—an average of only 377 copies per year. Harpers' second printing of 1,000 copies lasted from March 1917 until 1924 when the book was dropped from the publishing list. This information was supplied by William R. Cagle from the early draft of a "Bibliography of Joseph Conrad," pp. 151-152.
These and subsequent figures are taken from the Methuen MSS, 1892-1944, Stock ledgers of the publishing records, Volumes 4-7 and 9, cited with permission of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, which acquired the records in 1968. Entries for Under Western Eyes appear in Volumes 4:199, 5:259, 6:352, 7:320, and 9:55. The entries note such things as the number of copies ordered, the number of copies bound, the amount of quire stock, the orders for wrappers, and occasionally indicate dates concerning moulds, stereotype plates, and blocks. The records, though, are incomplete. W. R. Cagle used the Methuen records concerning the first edition and its impressions in his bibliography, pp. 149-150, but erred in calling the second edition "a fourth printing" and Volume X of the Heinemann Collected the "second English edition." The Heinemann, the most restyled of all the editions of the novel, is actually the third English edition.
In A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972), p. 317, Philip Gaskell uses Methuen's Winnie-the-Pooh (twenty-seven impressions between 1926 and 1941) as an example of a publisher's misleading use of "edition" for "impression."
Stock ledger 4:199 indicates that 1,306 copies were bound between 7 October 1911 and 3 January 1912. Were it possible to determine whether the entries in the "Received from Binders" columns run across the page or down the page, one could determine the exact number of the later impressions; however, there are too many inconsistencies in the entries for this to be done.
See Conrad to J. B. Pinker, 2 November 1911, Berg Collection, quoted with permission of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, and the Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Though Conrad may have seen such an advertisement, the third impression clearly did not materialize until July 1915.
Quoted with permission of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Carlton Lake Collection. The inscription is dated "Nov 1911" and appears in a first edition, first impression copy. Carlton Lake obtained the book from the estate of Sisley Huddleston. Mrs. Huddleston, in old age, told Lake that the book had been given to Sisley Huddleston by E.D.Y. She could not remember E.D.Y.'s name but recalled that he was a prominent English literary journalist and friend. I wish to thank Cathy Henderson of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center for supplying the information about the provenance of the copy.
Methuen to Pinker, quoted with permission of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, and the Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Extant figures are not available for the impressions of February 1923, September 1924, or January 1925, but they may be assumed to range between 1,000 and 5,000 since the 1,000 copy October 1922 impression needed replenishing by February 1923, and the sixth and seventh impressions were necessary to meet demand following the 5,000 copy May 1924 impressions. Conrad's death 3 August 1924 probably helped spur sales through 1925 and 1926.
There are two "Sixth Editions," the fourth impression of the First Edition and the third impression of the Second Edition.
The copyright page of the "Ninth Edition" cites April 1924 as the date of publication for the fifth impression.
The "Fifth" and "Seventh" editions were collated against the first impression of the first edition, and the "Fifth," "Seventh," and "Eleventh" were machine collated against one another. Collation revealed no variants within the second edition impressions other than plate damage such as can be expected from large runs. The first edition is abbreviated M. Stock ledger 7:320 indicates that the plates were recast 16 October 1926.
Brighton Rock (New York, 1938), p. 91. "Wide boy" also appears in the English first (1938), Penguin (1943), Uniform (1947) and Collected (1975) editions. For a discussion of the full textual history of this novel, see my "'I Try to be Accurate': The Text of Greene's Brighton Rock," forthcoming in the inaugural issue of The Graham Greene Annual Review. The definition cited is that of Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of the Underworld (1950), p. 772. Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1959), contains another example of the somewhat rare usage: "Toto Phelps and Bunny have been honeymooning for two full weeks now; anyone could have told him Toto's one to get very nasty if he's two-timed, but all these wide boys get swelled head" (p. 373, italics added).
The plates were undoubtedly melted down during the wartime shortages of lead. It seems fairly certain, though, that the moulds were not destroyed, hence making possible the three further impressions of 1943, 1946, and 1948. An alternative explanation would have Methuen maintaining "mother plates" (see Gaskell, pp. 204-205).
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