University of Virginia Library

1. The Typescripts of Under Western Eyes

The following discussion of the transmission of the text of Under Western Eyes addresses the period following Conrad's revision of the extant typescript. The typescript (TS) is an 843-page document that accumulated between October 1908 and January 1910.[2] The tale was first conceived as a short story called "Razumov" in December 1907, but it continued to evolve as Conrad explored the personal themes contained in the narrative. Despite repeated insistences that the composition was at a penultimate stage, Conrad continued to add to the narrative throughout the first eight months of 1908 until a 288page clean typed copy was prepared (from the messy typed copy that had accumulated to that point) in September and October 1908 by Conrad's occasional secretary, Lillian Hallowes. In October 1908, Conrad insisted that "Razumov" would be a seven- or eight-chapter novel, requiring only a short period of time for completion. But this did not occur and the narrative continued to expand.

The typing of these 288 pages ended a difficult ten months of composition and revision, and the beginning of a further fifteen months of composition before Conrad suffered a nervous breakdown at the end of January 1910. Throughout 1909 Conrad continued to expand the story, adding almost five hundred pages of typescript to the growing pile. The typescript from this period is clearly divided into batches that match batches of the extant manuscript (MS), indicating that TS grew alongside MS as Conrad completed batches of manuscript and sent them for typing (Osborne, 2000, 212-214). The typescript batches following the first 312 pages are unnumbered and were held together with brads before they were arranged and labelled A-T in April 1910. The last batches of typed copy were probably forwarded to Conrad soon after he declared the novel complete on 26 January 1910. But the stress caused by his £2700 debt to Pinker, his immersion in the personal narrative and the prospect that Under Western Eyes would not make enough money to erase his debt brought on a complete nervous breakdown at the end of January 1910.[3]

Conrad did not touch TS again until the end of March 1910. Having sufficiently recovered from the breakdown to be able to work, he returned to the typescript afresh. In April and May 1910 he clearly marked part and chapter divisions for the first time, then cut large sections of text from this new arrangement with blue pencil before revising the remaining pages with grey pencil. These revisions added two more levels of revision to the occasional ink revisions executed during composition. It is difficult to describe Conrad's motivations at this time with certainty, making these revisions an important

transition in the growth of Under Western Eyes. Scholars have offered a number of explanations for the excision of such a large amount of material, including artistic, psychological and financial motivations. However, the ambiguity of Conrad's extant correspondence inhibits our complete understanding of this period. There is no concrete indication that he intended later to restore text he had cut from TS, but Conrad's apparent acceptance of the new text should not consign the discarded sections to the workshop floor.[4]

A clean typed copy of TS was organised and corrected by Conrad's lawyer, Robert Garnett.[5] This non-extant typed copy (and probably a carbon copy) then served as the setting copies for the serialisation of Under Western Eyes in the North American Review and the English Review. While there is no evidence to prove a carbon copy was made, Conrad's practice in previous years suggests that the new text of Under Western Eyes existed in at least two copies with Garnett's corrections imposed on those pages.