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Selective Chronology
On 1 July 1912, while William Heinemann was writing to Lawrence to announce his rejection of 'Paul Morel', Walter de la Mare, Heinemann's Reader, was writing to Edward Garnett, Reader for Duckworth, to inform him of the firm's decision. As a result of these exchanges between publishers in London, Lawrence, in Gargnano beside lake Garda in Italy, received Heinemann's rejection of his novel one day and Garnett's offer to take an interest in it for Duckworth the next. To state, as Mark Sexton does, that: "Undaunted, Lawrence arranged for Edward Garnett . . . to read the work" (see note 1) not only misrepresents the chronology of incident as revealed by Lawrence's letters, but (more significantly, from my editorial point of view) implies that Lawrence was more in control of events than was evidently the case.[3]
Garnett had in the same way secured publication by Duckworth for Lawrence's previous novel, The Trespasser, when Heinemann, to whom it was contracted, was unenthusiastic. Garnett had sent Lawrence detailed notes on the manuscript of The Trespasser which stimulated Lawrence to tackle it again and produce a final version; and he now did the same with the rejected Sons and Lovers manuscript. The same Guildford printers, Billing and Sons, who had set The Trespasser set the new novel, in both instances using Lawrence's
As is well known, Lawrence triumphantly sent off his final manuscript of Sons and Lovers on 19 November 1912 but Garnett could not accept that it was so much longer than The Trespasser and wrote him a withering letter, before settling down to reduce it by a tenth. He then sent it directly to the printers. It was an ultimatum, and Lawrence had no option but to acquiesce.[4]
Having been asked to check only one proof for each of his earlier novels, Lawrence assumed that the proofs of Sons and Lovers which began arriving in batches on 5 February 1913 were all he would have to correct. He does not mention whether the relevant pages of his manuscript were returned to him with each batch of proofs, although this was the usual practice. However, the proofs themselves were unusual. They were in the style of the French placard proofs of the period: four columns printed side-by-side on large sheets of paper. The columns were numbered (but not the sheets) and each contained eighty-eight lines of type, which was double page-length. Lawrence had corrected them by 3 March 1913 and expected his novel to be on sale in three weeks (Letters 1: 524).
He knew that Duckworth's terms included a downpayment of one hundred pounds on the day of publication and awaited the day with intense eagerness not only because he believed the book would make an impact but because his financial anxieties were acute. He had earned very little since resigning from his teaching job and he now had Frieda to support as well as himself—and indeed expected to be fined as a result of the imminent divorce proceedings. So he was aghast when he learned that Duckworth, who evidently wanted the novel to be censored further, had decided on another round of proofs, and he wrote back in desperation: "I don't mind if Duckworth crosses out a hundred shady pages in Sons and Lovers. It's got to sell, I've got to live" (Letters 1: 526).
The page proofs were in signatures of sixteen pages with forty-four lines of type to a page. They appear to have begun reaching Lawrence on 22 March 1913 and he seems to have finished correcting them by 11 April. This time the revised galley proofs were sent back to Lawrence with the batches of page proofs. His revisions had caused some realignment of text and therefore the galleys had been trimmed so that the text began and ended at the same point as each signature of page proofs. As Lawrence finished working on each batch he posted the page proofs to Duckworth and the corresponding galley proofs to Ernest Collings, an illustrator.
In his letter to Collings he referred to them, perhaps confusingly for modern readers, as 'the first batch' (Letters 1: 529). However, it is certain that what Collings received was a complete set of corrected galleys, for it was in his son Guy's possession that the few surviving galleys came to light when James Boulton wrote to enquire whether any of Lawrence's letters to Collings were still in existence.[5]
At this time, March 1913, Lawrence and Collings had not met, but they had been exchanging letters since November 1912, when Collings sent Lawrence a book of his illustrations in appreciation of Lawrence's first two novels. Lawrence's reason for sending Sons and Lovers proofs to Collings was that Garnett had asked Lawrence to produce some drawings of collieries for the novel's dust-cover, but Lawrence felt unable and decided to pass the request on to Collings. The proofs were a gift, chiefly to give Collings some idea of what the novel was about and also as a kind of return favour.
Only six of the original fifty-two sheets of galley proof survive and they are in fact three whole and three part galleys, containing eighteen whole and three part slips. They are in two separate sections and have been cut to tally with page-proof signatures: 23 (pages 359-368) and 26-27 (pages 401-423, i.e. to the end of the novel). The clicker's marks in the manuscript indicate that the first section was set by Moore and the second by Knowles and L. Bristow.
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