 |
IV
Studies in bibliography |  |
IV
Since critical editing had its beginnings in the treatment of works
from the
remote past, for which authoritative evidence is comparatively
slight,
editors who began the process of applying scholarly methods to
more recent
works were faced with some problems of adaptation. Means
for handling more
evidence from authors' times had to be developed, but
more obviously the
critical text had to be redefined with greater preci-
sion, so that
unmistakable was its status as a conjectural reconstruction
of a single
moment in the life of a work that in its totality may be defined
by several
recoverable moments. The historical focus of the critical text,
that is,
must narrow and sharpen as the level of original evidence rises;
it must not
be conceived of or presented as a supra-historical synthesis
of the work as
a whole—as Bowers had mistakenly done when he edited
Maggie. Time was needed for the historical purpose of
critical editing to
reassert itself in its new surroundings. After Greg's
examples of autho-
rial revision in "The Rationale of Copy-Text," Bowers,
fresh from his
experience editing the dramatic works of Thomas Dekker,
pushed un-
derstanding forward in "McKerrow's Editorial Principles for
Shakespeare
Reconsidered."[52]
Here Bowers indicated that a dramatic work could have
several
"final" forms, prepared for either literary publication or stage pre-
sentation. He recognized that the critical text would aim at reconstructing
one of these versions, with the variants of the others recorded in the ap-
paratus. Shakespeare critics usually identify performing versions by their
comparative brevity, and few editors—Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, and
their associates of the Complete Oxford Shakespeare being the notable
exceptions[53]
—have been willing to set aside suspected authorial passages
McKerrow) was with the editorial majority in his orientation toward re-
constructing the fuller versions, his method called for careful investigation
of the sources of variation. In a few multiple-authority plays of Shake-
speare, certain passages are not present in both or all three sources, giving
rise to questions of who made the cuts, and why: whether they were made,
for example, to serve the (potentially related) interests of dramatic struc-
ture and theatrical performance. The questions sorely test the evidence
in Shakespeare, but their difficulty does not alter the fact that they are of
basic interest to the author-centered editor.
In light of the foregoing consideration it becomes apparent that an em-
phasis on performing versions of plays—such as that exhibited by Wells,
Taylor, and associates—while requiring uncommon editorial choices,
does not carry an editor as far from the tradition of Greg and Bowers
as the tenor of recent editorial disputes would suggest. The distinction
between social, collaborative, or performing texts on the one hand and
authorially intended texts on the other has been drawn so starkly in re-
cent times that the two sides are at best thought of as mutually exclusive
alternatives. Logic and experience, however, suggest a less than absolute
divide, which varies from situation to situation. The possibility of con-
structing an authorially intended critical text is unaffected, for example,
by the matter of whether the work being edited has one author or several:
collaborated works have been the object of this approach since Bowers's
edition of Dekker.[54]
Wells and Taylor and their colleagues have been criti-
cized for
their belief that the shorter versions of Shakespeare's plays were
made
either by the author or by others with his approval, in the pur-
pose of
improving their "overall structure and pace.…"[55]
The criticism
those caught in the prevailing current of questioning the importance or
even the existence of authors.[56] The evidence for or against the presence
of authorial revision in Shakespeare is scant and much in dispute, but
where authorial revision has been reasonably hypothesized, nothing
prevents an author-focused editor from constructing critical texts of the
revised versions. On this subject, it is worth remembering that Greg for-
mulated his ideas on copy-text in response to the problem of authorial
revision.
As works created in ever more recent periods began to draw editorial
attention, the levels of evidence encountered demanded critical texts and
apparatuses with an increasingly precise historical focus. The widest edi-
torial experience in modern letters has been gained with the works and
papers of American authors; results have been uneven, but in places the
field has given bloom to sound, exciting scholarship. Reference to a few
exemplary bright spots will, it is hoped, serve to indicate the dimensions
of the editorial experience of recent works, for which multiple signifi-
cant moments are recoverable. Here comparatively plentiful evidence of
composition and printing history, while never amounting to a complete
record, throws into relief a range of textual problems that remain mostly
hidden for literature from more remote times. The detection of errors
remains of primary importance in the editing of modern works, but clari-
fication of the history of the intentional alteration of the text becomes an
equally important objective. The authorial orientation of the traditional
approach can and should concentrate editorial attention on the interests
of
others involved in the publishing process as well as on the trajectory of
the author's changing intentions. Editors of modern works soon become
familiar with a great range in the sources of alteration, including purely
authorial revision, the author's acceptance of the suggestions of an invited
reader, his or her acquiescence to the textual demands of others whose
approval was needed for publication or performance, and the imposition
of
publishing- or printing-house styles in matters of spelling, punctuation,
or
even grammar. The many colorfully worded complaints about printers
and
proof-readers made by exacting writers like Mark Twain and A. E.
attainment of which eluded their most diligent efforts.[57]
The point at which authors seem finally to accept the alterations of
others
does not necessarily or even usually equate with the editorial idea
of
authorial intention, and scholarly editors who focus on the latter are
justified, evidence permitting, in reconstructing texts as they stood be-
fore being so altered. This was the course followed by Harrison Hayford,
Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle, editors of the Northwestern-
Newberry Typee (1968), when they presented a critical text
of Melville's
story repaired of the textual contributions and subtractions
which had been
forced upon the author by his American publisher, John Wiley
of Wiley &
Putnam.[58]
Typee presents, for Melville's works, a textual situation
of un-
usual complexity, and though the volume was the first in the
Northwestern-
Newberry edition, it comes very close to providing a model of
historical
editing. The first American edition of Typee (A), hurriedly set from proof
sheets of the English edition
(E), suffered not only from careless typeset-
ting but also from small
changes apparently made by Wiley, who softened
seizing upon Melville's modest suggested alterations (and restorations)
for a revised edition, Wiley demanded of him a thorough cleansing of
most wording touching on sexual and religious matters. Melville had little
choice but to acquiesce, and so the American revised edition (AR), while
containing some authorized changes (including "The Story of Toby"), is
chiefly distinguished by euphemizing corruptions and missing passages.
After analyzing this history, the editors decided to construct a critical
text which referred to the moment when Melville submitted his changes
to
Wiley. The decision was motivated neither by aesthetic considerations
nor
personal preferences (accusers of editorial "Platonism" take note),
but by
an interest in carrying out, as far as the evidence permitted, the
author's
last known wishes for his work. The decision of course also meant
the denial
of Wiley's wishes, and so as is often true of author-centered
critical
texts, the outcome of an earlier, coerced agreement of publisher
over author
would be reversed. The editors' goal was ambitious given
the limits imposed
by the available evidence (rich as this evidence might
seem to an editor of
works from the remote past). The complete loss of
Melville's final
manuscript[59]
was one obvious limitation, and another was
the near complete
absence of evidence of the early revisions made by
the author's brother, who
in London arranged for first publication, as
well as of those of John
Murray, publisher of that first, English, edition,
and Henry Milton,
Murray's reader. The editors began with E, the earli-
est extant complete
authoritative text, but this text already incorporated
more than one level
of non-authorial alteration. As often happens in lit-
erary archaeology,
several earlier moments in the history of a work were
found in E, but in a
collapsed state. Only the last of these moments was
meaningfully visible;
from internal and external evidence the erstwhile
existence of the earlier
moments could be recognized, but little could be
done further to distinguish
them. The editors restored American spellings
to some "our/or" words,[60]
but made little headway in identifying what
had been altered, let
alone recovering Melville's original version. In A,
because enough evidence survived and Wiley's interest was understood
(illustrating not only the editorial relevance of psychology, but also the
author-focused editor's appreciation of the intentions of persons other
than the author). Thus were some substantive variants in the first Ameri-
can edition identified as Wiley's work; as for what Melville called the
"Revised … Expurgated?" edition (AR), the editors subjected this text to
much analysis. In addition to the thorough bibliographic examination of
AR, aesthetic, social, and psychological factors were taken into account,
with the result that the editors were able to distinguish, in the matter of
the substantives at least, some or all of Melville's earlier, uninfluenced
revisions from those Wiley had forced upon him.[61]
The role and importance of the critical text has rarely received so
dramatic
a demonstration as it does in the scholarly edition of Melville's
Typee. The evidence presented there concretely reveals that
the two first
editions imperfectly represented Melville's early intentions
(E a good deal
less imperfectly than A), and that the revised edition
clearly betrayed his
later ones. These pre-existing documentary texts,
records of the author's
interactions with his publishers and first readers,
are of permanent and
undeniable value. Yet few would deny equal value to the
constructed
critical text, which convincingly approaches the Typee that Melville at last
wanted. The totality of
the evidence displayed by the scholarly edition, in-
cluding the critical
reconstruction of the finally intended text, heretofore
denied the author
and his readers by contingent factors no longer obtain-
ing, allows for the
study of the recoverable life of this work through its
development. Careful
review of the Northwestern-Newberry Typee should
give
pause to those who profess that author-centered editing is ignorant of
either the "instability" of literary works or their social context.
The editors of Typee had little choice but to accept the
early alterations
of Melville's brother and his publisher, since evidence
enough survived to
know that they were made, but not enough to identify
them. When the
details of an author's interactions with contributors are
known to an edi-
"social text" sometimes assume that all nonauthorial contributions, once
identified, are rejected by an editor taking an author-centered approach.
This assumption proceeds, however, from far too abstract a view of the
authorial focus. Welcome verbal (and pictorial) contributions to literary
works made by persons other than the author have usually been endorsed
by traditional critical editions. The works of Mark Twain offer many
examples of collaborative relationships in which the author was a will-
ing partner. He wanted his books to be illustrated, and invited artists to
depict scenes of their own choosing, and his publishers' agents to select
or create captions for them. Intolerant as he was of unsolicited printing-
house alterations of his manuscripts, he sought textual advice from friends
and family members whose literary talents or ear for coarse language
he valued. Charles Henry Webb assembled and edited the sketches for
The Celebrated Jumping Frog (1867); Bret Harte criticized the manuscript of
The Innocents Abroad (1869), and Olivia Langdon, then the author's fiancée,
read the proofs—thereby beginning a lifetime of service to the literature
of her husband-to-be; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) received read-
ings from both William Dean Howells and Mrs. Clemens. Where the per-
tinent evidence survives, it usually shows an inclination on Mark Twain's
part to accept the suggestions of his readers. The author was aware that
his vivid use of English was ahead of prevailing notions of politeness, and
while he wanted to test those notions, he did not want far to exceed them.
The nature and limits of the counsel he willingly followed in this area is
explored fairly thoroughly in the volumes of the University of California
edition of Mark Twain's works. The author's relationships with his arbi-
ters of taste could be lively, as an outstanding episode in the history of
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) reveals. The details are
fully discussed in the California scholarly edition, edited by Bernard L.
Stein and his colleagues at the Mark Twain Papers.[62] It was a controversy
which, in the editor's words, reproduced "in miniature one of the crucial
issues in the nineteenth-century debate over realism."[63]
Connecticut Yankee received readings from Mrs. Clemens
(manuscript),
W. D. Howells (proof), and, in between, from poet and
chronicler of
American literature Edmund Clarence Stedman (typescript). Not
quite
an invited contributor, Stedman was foisted upon the author by nervous
first-time publisher Fred Hall—though once arrangements were made,
Mark Twain welcomed his involvement. Stedman professed deep admira-
tion for the novel, but a studied commitment to respectability prevented
not understand the book as he did. In keeping with his assignment, he
suggested a few minor changes of a polite nature, which Mark Twain duly
accepted. The author probably accepted most of Howells's suggestions
too, though this is a guess, since the proof sheets that Howells read and
marked are lost—with one spectacular exception. A single sheet from
the novel's conclusion (ch. 43, "The Battle of the Sand-Belt") preserves
printed and holographic evidence of the author's struggle, in November
1889, with one of Howells's queries. In the printed text of the sheet, the
Yankee's "head executive," Clarence, enlightens his boss by imagining the
reaction of the commander of the royalist insurgency after a messenger
reads him the Yankee's order to surrender: "'Disembowel me this animal,
and convey his kidneys to the base-born knave, his master; other answer
I have none!'"[64] Howells found this language too strong, a reaction he
registered by underlining, more or less, the first eight words, and writing
a question mark in the margin. Mark Twain responded by inscribing the
following message on the sheet, which he then sent to his publisher:
Dear Mr. Hall:
Submit this sentence (underlined by Howells,) to Stedman. I strenuously object
to modifying it—in fact it is already modified, for the man would
have said
guts—but if Stedman sides with Howells I will yield. In
that case, return it to me
for alteration.
S L C
Hall returned the sheet inscribed with a note of his own: "Mr. Stedman
says
that this is stronger as it is, but that it had better be changed, he
suggests the words 'Disembowel' & 'Kidneys' might offend some." The
sheet also bears Stedman's attempt to revise the offending sentence, which
reveals that he objected also to the word "knave": "Cleft Cleave me this
man
in twain, & convey his lights (?) to the the base-born hind, his, etc."
Mark Twain, good to his word, returned the sheet again, now inscribed
with
his final note:
Dear Mr. Hall:
I yield. Make it read thus:
"Dismember me this animal, & return him in a basket to the base-born
knave his master; other answer I have none!"
S.L.C.
Nov. 14.
The first American edition, which went to press a few days after Mark
Twain
wrote this last note, followed the instruction but further substituted
"who
sent him" for "his master", possibly without authorization.
The scholarly critical text followed the instructions in the last note ex-
actly, though it would have been within its purposes to preserve the earlier
and more vivid expression, given Mark Twain's strongly stated prefer-
ence
for it. On the other hand, the caution governing this decision likely
arose
from an awareness of the particular circumstances under which this
work was
first produced. Compared to the author of Typee before him
or
of Maggie after, Mark Twain was in an unusually
powerful position. He
could take or leave requests coming from the
publishing house, Charles L.
Webster and Company, because he was its senior
partner. As for the
recommendations of his wife or best friend, these were
freely asked for,
freely given, and not binding. The author was more or less
at liberty to
follow his own artistic lights, but knowing that in places
these burned
too brightly for the times, was willing to accept moderating
advice from
trusted sources in the matter of potent words and phrases. About
Adven-
tures of Huckleberry Finn, for example, he
told Charles L. Webster, "I want
Howells to have carte blanche in making
corrections."[65]
Evidence of the
contributions of Howells, Mrs. Clemens, or others to
the texture of Mark
Twain's prose, and the author's reactions to them, has
rarely survived in
so dramatic a form as the tell-tale proof sheet from Yankee. Yet whatever
form it takes, surviving evidence
of the give and take between author and
invited reader has little caused the
editors of the University of California
edition to go back on the author's
original decisions.[66]
Though today
be recognized, had a genuine disinclination to inflame public sentiments
uselessly (as he saw it) by a few casually chosen words and phrases. He
admitted to having "dug out" and "throttled" most of his own "darlings"
from A Connecticut Yankee, but felt nonetheless that Howells's help was
needed to complete the job; this feeling can be (and generally has been)
regarded as part of his artistic intentions.[67] Discovery of the social context
in which Mark Twain worked is one of the purposes of the scholarly edi-
tion; the serving of this purpose rather clarifies than obscures the nature
of the author's genius.
The American experience has confirmed much past editorial wis-
dom, but also
demonstrated that in the approach to works represented
by abundant original
textual evidence, scholarly attention shifts: as sev-
eral recoverable
moments in the life of these works are recognized, the
demand arises for
critical texts of greater historical focus, accompanied
by revealing
historical apparatuses. The reasonableness of the traditional
editorial
emphasis on authors was repeatedly reconfirmed, finding new
definition in
authors' visible struggles with publishers over realistic scenes
and
language. These struggles also gave new meaning to the editorial
concept of
intention (and not only authorial intention). The relevance of
this concept
was further strengthened by a deeper understanding of the
problem of textual
control—a benefit derived from the ability to study
multiple
authoritative documents of the same work. These lessons were
not learned
everywhere and at once. Textual history that might have
been understood was
missed, and sometimes even deliberately simplified.
The importance of
revealing this history was overshadowed in places by
the emphasis on
establishing finally intended texts for works then avail-
able only in bad
editions, if at all. That the shelves of American libraries
the first time—may have led some editors to regard the critical text as
a metaphysical ideal, rather than a conjectural reconstruction of a par-
ticular historical moment. (Certainly advertising departments of some of
the participating university presses fostered such a viewpoint, with copy
announcing sales of the "only authoritative" texts.)
On the other hand, the historical purposes of scholarly editing did find
many worthy demonstrations. In a classic appreciation of those purposes,
Jo
Ann Boydston, then editor of the John Dewey edition, spoke of the
essential
importance of the critical apparatus: "Every apparatus has a
story to tell
that is, like that of Dewey's Psychology, a story of
suspense and
discovery, a true textual drama."[68]
Her edition of the work she names was
purposefully designed to
reveal a complex history of authorial revision.
The result, which appeared
in 1967, fulfills the promise of critical edit-
ing: it presents a critical
text of the work at the moment in 1891 when the
author submitted final
revisions to his publisher, and displays the other
recoverable moments in
the accompanying apparatus. Together, critical
text and apparatus recount
the motion of Dewey's early thought, as he
began to modify a youthful
Hegelian outlook. Far from obliterating dis-
tinctions between the moments
of literary history—in the service, as de-
tractors would have it, of
an idealistic abstraction—the well-constructed
critical edition
brings that history into view. When the editors are skilled,
the history is
presented truly and in a manner conducive of understand-
ing; at this point,
if the history remains obscure in places, it is owing to
the limits of the
preserved evidence, and the elusive relationship between
thought and its
records.
Fredson Bowers and Alice Walker, "McKerrow's Editorial Principles for
Shakespeare
Reconsidered," Shakespeare
Quarterly 6 (Summer 1955): 309–324; the paper includes
Bowers's
discussions annotated with commentaries by Alice Walker, who
had been McKerrow's assistant
in the projected Oxford Shakespeare.
The Complete Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press) consists of the
follow-
ing volumes, all edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor
(general editors) and John Jowett and
William Montgomery (editors):
William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (1986;
rev. ed., 2005);
William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Original-Spelling
Edition (1986); and William Shakespeare:
A
Textual Companion (1987; rev. ed., W. W. Norton, 1997), a critical
apparatus meant to serve
both the old- and new-spelling versions.
The first volume of The Dramatic Works of Thomas
Dekker (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953)
included Dekker's
addition to Sir Thomas More, the second volume (1955)
included The Honest
Whore, part 1 (by Dekker
and Thomas Middleton), and the third volume (1958) included The
Roaring Girl (Dekker and Middleton), The Virgin Martyr (Dekker and Philip Massinger), and
The
Witch of Edmonton, for which Dekker was
one of at least three authors.
William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986), p. xxxv
of the introduction by Stanley Wells.
In a lengthy review of this (modern-spelling) volume
appearing in Review of English Studies (n.s. 40 [August 1989]:
402–411), Brian Vickers held
that the theatrical preferences of
Wells and his colleagues were not expressed consistently
throughout
their editions nor justified with consistent logic. Vickers pointed out that
the editors
ascribe the same variants (as in the two hundred lines
missing from the Folio but present in the
Q2 version of Hamlet) here to the demands of performance and there
to Shakespeare's artistic
second thoughts. Paul Werstine has also
criticized the Oxford editors' approach for seeking
to present texts
as "collaboratively reworked for performance" while attempting to retain an
authorial focus (see "Shakespeare," Werstine's contribution to Scholarly Editing, pp. 270–271).
The
categories identified by these critics are not necessarily mutually
exclusive, though ques-
tions of revision in Shakespeare will remain
open barring the (unlikely) discovery of decisive
new evidence.
In his "Shakespeare" essay in Scholarly Editing, Paul
Werstine writes of the Oxford edi-
tors' notion of Shakespearean
revision as "popular … among many who cling to the category
of
author." Elsewhere he refers to the Oxford editors' "repeated invocation of
the 'sovereign
author' as their foundation" being insufficient, in
view of the performing versions presented
as the main texts, to
satisfy reviewers such as David Bevington, G. Blakemore Evans, and
George Walton Williams, "for whom the rhetoric of authorship is still
viable" (quotations from
pp. 269–271).
A typical example of Housman's many attempts at textual control is his
letter of
28 August 1911, to friend and publisher Grant Richards,
concerning the manuscript of his
Manilius II, which reads in part: "On
former occasions the proofs have come to me full of the
usual
blunders,—numerals wrong, letters upside-down, stops missing, and so
on. I have then, at
the cost of much labour, removed all these errors.
Then, when the last proof has left my hands,
the corrector for the
press has been turned on to it, and has found nothing to correct; where-
upon, for fear his employers should think he is not earning his pay,
he has set to work meddling
with what I have written,—altering
my English spelling into Webster's American spelling, my
use of
capitals into his own misuse of capitals, my scientific punctuation into the
punctuation
he learnt from his grandmother" (quoted in Richards, Housman: 1897–1936 [London: Oxford
Univ.
Press, Henry Milford, 1941], p. 102).
For Mark Twain, see Robert H. Hirst, "Editing Mark Twain, Hand to Hand,
'Like All
D—d Fool Printers'" (Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America 88 [June 1994]: 157–188);
there Hirst remarked, "Clemens's persistent efforts to wrest control
of his punctuation and
spelling back from the typesetter make W. W.
Greg's theory of copy-text an ideal instrument for
editing his
published works, especially since in spite of those efforts, Clemens rarely
prevailed
over the printer for long" (p. 159). As an example of the
problems the author encountered,
Hirst called attention to his unhappy
experience with the typesetting of The Prince and the
Pauper,
which Mark Twain called a "mess of
God-forever-God-damned lunacy" that "has turned my
hair white with
rage." He was so upset that he told the publisher of his politely written
novel
to send him no more proof "until this godamded idiotic
punctuating & capitalizing has been
swept away & my own
restored" (see the University of California edition of The
Prince and the
Pauper [cited in note 66], pp. 392ff.). The
frustrations of Housman and Mark Twain illustrate
the intractability
of the problem of transmissional control, since these authors were known to
have uncommon influence with their publishers.
Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life,
ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel
Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle, with a
historical note by Leon Howard, The Writings of Herman
Melville
(Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern Univ. Press and Newberry Library, 1968);
for
discussions of printing and revision history, see "Editorial
Appendix." See also: Melville to Evert
A. Duyckinck, 15? July 1846 and
30? July 1846, in Herman Melville, Correspondence,
ed. Lynn
Horth, The Writings of Herman Melville (Evanston and Chicago:
Northwestern Univ. Press
and Newberry Library, 1993), pp.
52–53, 60–61; Hershel Parker, Herman
Melville: A Biography,
vol. 1, 1819–1851 (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press), pp. 404–406, 433, 440–448.
One leaf of an intermediate-level manuscript (two MS pages) was available to
the
editors. A few more leaves of this MS were discovered in 1983; all
are now in the Gansevoort-
Lansing Collection of the Manuscripts
Division of the New York Public Library.
The editorial approach of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville,
like that
of most scholarly editions of American authors, explicitly
involved following Greg's recom-
mendation for designating a copy-text
in all situations. For Typee, the first English
edition
was the only possible choice according to this criterion,
since the first American edition was
derived from that typesetting.
The complexity of the editorial goal, however, which sought,
for
example, to incorporate Melville's known preference for mainly American
spelling, made
the concept of a copy-text problematic, as the editors
acknowledged at the time (on p. 320 of
the Northwestern-Newberry Typee). This experience may have contributed to
Tanselle's ulti-
mate critique of Greg's copy-text, which appeared
twenty-five years later as the essay, "Editing
without a Copy-Text"
(see note 42).
The Melville quotation is from the second letter to Evert Duyckinck cited in
note 58.
According to Wiley's demands, nearly thirty pages of text
were wholly excised for the revised
edition, parts of eighteen pages
were also removed, and many other passages or words were
modified
(such as "Naked" to "Lovely"). Yet the revised edition also included "The
Story of
Toby" (which Melville was able to write once his lost island
companion, Richard Tobias Green,
surfaced in Buffalo), as well as the
less obvious changes that Melville made to the first edition
before
Wiley made his demands. The editors identified the word "liberally," for
example, as
a correction of "literally," in reference to a loose
translation of Marquesan speech, reasoning
that the British
compositor, in puzzling through Melville's cramped handwriting, misread 't'
for
'b', an error repeated in the derivative first American edition,
where the author finally noticed
it. (The editors also identified and
deciphered a few misreadings of his handwriting that Mel-
ville
missed; their restoration of "Lacedemonian matrons" is very fine: see the
Northwestern-
Newberry Typee, p. 332).
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The
Works of Mark Twain, ed. Bernard L.
Stein, with an introduction by
Henry Nash Smith (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979).
This quotation and the others from the tell-tale proof sheet appearing below
it were
transcribed from the reproduction in the California Connecticut Yankee, pp. 545–546. At the time
the scholarly edition appeared, the original document was part of the
Estelle Doheny Collec-
tion of rare books and manuscripts housed at
St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, California; the
collection was sold
at auction in six sales held from 1987 to 1989.
Mark Twain to Charles L. Webster, 22 April 1884, MS at Vassar, repr. in Mark Twain,
Business Man, ed. Samuel Charles
Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946), pp. 249–250.
The salient exception is, of course, the portion of chapter 16 of Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn known as the
"raftsmen's passage," which, at Charles L. Webster's suggestion and with
the author's agreement, was kept out of the novel as first published.
For discussion of its inclu-
sion in the University of California's
critical text, see pp. 407–409 and 705–711 of Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, The Works of
Mark Twain, ed. Victor Fischer, Lin Salamo, and Walter
Blair
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003). The editors of the critical
edition have more
commonly endorsed Mark Twain's acceptance of
collaborative contributions, as the example
of The
Prince and the Pauper demonstrates. With this novel, Mark Twain's
intermittent interest
in pleasing those of genteel taste—in
this case, his Hartford neighbors—reached its apogee.
In the
words of Kenneth R. Andrews, who first extensively discussed the subject,
"The Prince
and the Pauper … became,
more than any other book of Mark's, the product of community
collaboration" (Andrews, Nook Farm: Mark Twain's Hartford
Circle [Cambridge: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1950], p. 192). Mark
Twain described this work as "grave & stately … considered by the
world to be above my proper level" and wanted to publish it
anonymously, to avoid prejudice.
In keeping with his intention, he
sought criticism from an unusual number of readers, including
Howells,
the journalist Edward H. House (who was also an English history buff), his
own and
others' children, and two Hartford preachers. The editors of
the California scholarly edition
found that apart from resisting some
suggestions of his two Puritan-critics, the author accom-
modated most
of his readers' advice. At Howells's suggestion he removed the
"whipping-boy's
story" (which Howells had described as "poor fun"),
and made about thirty smaller moderating
changes, which the editors
identified by collating sales prospectuses and carefully examining
copies of the first edition for evidence of plate alterations: see The Prince and the Pauper, The
Works of Mark
Twain, ed. Victor Fischer, Lin Salamo, and Mary Jane Jones (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1979), pp. 4–7, 393–401. The
author's much different reaction to the un-
solicited printing-house
alterations of this novel's accidentals is recorded in note 57.
Mark Twain to W. D. Howells, 5 August 1889, MS at Harvard, repr. in The Mark
Twain—Howells Letters, ed. Henry
Nash Smith, William M. Gibson, and Frederick Anderson,
2 vols.
(Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), vol. 2:
608–609; the wider
context of the quoted words helps reveal the
extent and limit of the author's willingness to
make linguistic
concessions: "If Mrs. Clemens could have sat down & read the book
herself, I
could have got you off, maybe, but she has not had an
hour's use of her eyes for reading since
she had the pink-eye six
months ago. So she is afraid I have left coarseness which ought to be
rooted out, & blasts of opinion which are so strongly worded as to repel
instead of persuade.
I hardly think so. I dug out many darlings of
these sorts, & throttled them, with grief; then
Steadman went
through the book & marked for the grave all that he could find, & I sacrificed
them, every one."
"In Praise of Apparatus," Text 5 (1991): 1–13,
quotation from p. 10; Boydston's remarks
were first delivered in 1989,
as the presidential address to the Society of Textual Scholarship.
While the critical text of Dewey's Psychology
presents the finally intended version (1891), the title
of the
scholarly volume containing this work emphasizes its 1887 beginning: The Early Works
of John Dewey, 1882–1898,
Volume 2: 1887 (ed. Jo Ann Boydston, intro. Herbert W. Schneider
[Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1967]).
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IV
Studies in bibliography | |