The Editions of Dorothy Richardson
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The Editions of Dorothy Richardson The Editions of Dorothy Richardson's Table of Pilgrimage: A Comparison of Texts by George H. Thomson CONTENTS with Dorothy F. Thomson designed & edited by Kelly Cunningham © ELT Press 2001 ISBN 0-944318-15-0 Sources & About the Book How to Use E-book Introduction ELT Homepage Acknowledgments Collected Editions & English First Editions Compared CHAPTER I Volume I Book 1 Pointed Roofs Book 2 Backwater Book 3 Honeycomb CHAPTER II Volume II Book 4 The Tunnel Book 5 Interim CHAPTER III Volume III Book 6 Deadlock Book 7 Revolving Lights Book 8 The Trap CHAPTER IV Volume IV file:///C|/EltWEB2001/richardson/contents.htm (1 of 2) [12/6/01 9:35:39 AM] The Editions of Dorothy Richardson Book 10 Book 13 Book 9 Oberland Book 11 Clear Horizon Dawn's Left Hand March Moonlight CHAPTER V Pilgrimage: The English and American First Editions Compared CHAPTER VI Interim: The English First Edition and The Little Review Compared Download E- Book file:///C|/EltWEB2001/richardson/contents.htm (2 of 2) [12/6/01 9:35:39 AM] George H The Editions of Dorothy Richardson's 'Pilgrimage' : A Comparison of Text by GEORGE H. THOMSON George H. Thomson’s The Editions of Dorothy Richardson’s 'Pilgrimage': A Comparison of Texts begins with an introduction defining methods and goals. The six following chapters set out in table format the many variants identified by comparing the different editions of the Pilgrimage texts. The 1938 Collected Edition of Pilgrimage, reprinted in 1967 with March Moonlight added, was revised and proofread by Dorothy Richardson herself. Is the revised text reliable? How does it compare with the texts of the English First Editions, ten of them issued by Duckworth between 1915 and 1931 and one by Dent in 1935? These questions are answered in Chapters I through IV of this study, corresponding to Volumes I through IV of the Collected Edition of Pilgrimage. And further, how do the English First Editions of the first six novels, from Pointed Roofs to Deadlock, compare with the reset texts published by Knopf in New York between 1919 and 1921? And which of these first editions serve as copy text for the Collected Edition? These questions are answered in Chapter V. Finally, what may be learned by comparing the periodical version of Interim in the Little Review with the significantly revised text of the English First Edition? The answer is offered in Chapter VI: so great are the changes, it is as though for this one time we are allowed to glimpse in the Little Review a Richardson MS in an earlier state of development. The Editions of Dorothy Richardson’s 'Pilgrimage': A Comparison of Texts is the first detailed examination of Richardson’s Pilgrimage texts. It completes Professor Thomson’s reading of Dorothy Richardson, begun in A Reader’s Guide to Dorothy Richardson’s "Pilgrimage" (ELT Press, 1996), and continued in Notes on 'Pilgrimage': Dorothy Richardson Annotated (ELT Press 1999). Taken together these three books enable readers to understand Richardson as a key figure of the modernist movement and to appreciate Pilgrimage as one of British literature's most challenging, most rewarding, most underestimated masterpieces. Table of Contents file:///C|/EltWEB2001/richardson/richcompar.htm [12/6/01 9:35:52 AM] INTRODUCTION The Editions of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage : A Comparison of Texts by George H. Thomson Introduction with Dorothy F. Thomson The Texts of Pilgrimage The Collected Edition of Pilgrimage was published in 1938, reprinted in 1967 with March Moonlight added, its 12 and then 13 books gathered into 4 volumes, its text corrected and proof-read by the author herself. Was that text reliable? How did it compare with the texts of the 10 individual books issued by Duckworth between 1915 and 1931 and the 1 book issued by Dent in 1935? And further, how did the English editions of the first 6 novels, from Pointed Roofs to Deadlock, compare with the reset texts published by Knopf in New York between 1919 and 1921? And which first editions were used as copy text for the Collected Edition? These questions, rarely mentioned by Richardson scholars, lingered in my mind for years as I explored other aspects of the author’s life and work. Then before A Reader’s Guide was finished and while Notes on ‘Pilgrimage’ was at a fairly early stage, curiosity got the better of me. Comparing the Texts On 28 April 1995 my wife, Dorothy F. Thomson, and I began comparing the text of the 1967 edition of Pilgrimage (identical to the 1938 edition, apart from a few minor anomalies) with the English First Edition of each of the 11 individually published books of the series. To this we added a comparison of chapters 1 to 3 of March Moonlight with their periodical version as "Work in Progress," Life and Letters, 1946. We finished that enterprise on 25 August 1996. Next, we compared the English First Editions with the independently set American Editions of the 6 novels, Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, The Tunnel, Interim, and Deadlock. And finally, we tackled a comparison of the Little Review version of Interim with the English First Edition. This last endeavor, guaranteed to put any marriage under severe strain, so radical were the differences between the two texts, we finished around mid 1997, by which time I had ceased to keep records of precise dates. I want to be quite specific about the method my wife and I used. Each evening, Dorothy read aloud from the First Edition, noting formatting and punctuation as she went along. I followed, reading silently in the Collected Edition. Each time I found a difference, the reading stopped while I recorded the change. The next morning Dorothy typed up the changes; then I proofed these against the two texts. From here we went on to the first editions, Dorothy reading from the American Edition while I followed in the English First Edition. Finally, Dorothy read aloud the English First Edition of Interim; I followed stumblingly in the Little Review text. Then twice, over the next two years, the page and line number of each variant was checked for accuracy. During this process of reviewing, a number of omissions turned up. But it will be obvious that, given the methods used to compare the texts, other omissions must be inevitable and errors unavoidable. The Plans for a Collected Edition By the 1930s Richardson believed readers of Pilgrimage were losing contact with her and she with them on account of the years intervening between one book and another. With Duckworth she was trapped. He had the rights to her earlier volumes, selling a steady trickle of them each year, but because they had been set in different types he would not reissue them in a combined format. Since Knopf had dropped her in America, however, she hoped there might be a chance with a new publisher there. On 4 October 1931 she wrote to the American agent, I. R Brussel: "The only sound way of dealing with these short chapter-volumes is to issue them in sets of two or three together & indeed I hope some wise man may be found who will adopt this plan." But no wise man came forth, though she tried several possibilities. Thus she confesses, in December 1933, after rehearsing the situation to S. S. Koteliansky: "A real edition by a real publisher would greatly comfort me & might make it possible for me to finish the book." See Windows on Modernism, Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 255. Koteliansky, who was with the Cresset Press, exerted himself. Finally, on May 21st 1935--after eighteen months of intermingled hope, despair, and anxiety--she could report to Bryher: "I have now signed Dents contract, swearing to be ready by July 1st [with Book xi, Clear Horizon], & hope I may" (Windows, 293). Richardson understood this contract to mean that after Clear Horizon had been published in the fall of 1935, Dent would then go ahead and issue the whole eleven parts of Pilgrimage in groups of two or three books, with a short time interval between each of the cumulated volumes. And with the income from Dent, she would be able to go on with Volume V of Pilgrimage, beginning with Dimple Hill. file:///C|/EltWEB2001/richardson/introduction.htm (1 of 7) [12/8/01 8:10:53 AM] INTRODUCTION Five months later, with Clear Horizon published, this was still what she expected when she wrote to Bryher in October about the winter of 1935-36: "For which I have no plans, beyond recklessly & ruthlessly beginning xii & allowing myself fifteen months in which to complete it together with the work to be done in relation to the new edition & upon the chaos created in the old by a concert of carelessness" (Windows, 298). When November came and the sales figures for Clear Horizon proved disappointing, she imagined–so she told J. C. Powys--that Dent "will now feel disposed to postpone, indefinitely, the new edition" (Windows, 303). What followed was more complicated than that. In March 1936 Richard Church, on behalf of Dent, told her that if her reputation was to be established and made secure, she and Dent must give the public a "finished" Pilgrimage. He stressed "how important for us all will be the fact that the great book has been drawn to a conclusion" (Windows, 306). That she was in no position to draw her great book to a conclusion she well knew. Though she had made a beginning with Dimple Hill, she viewed it as the first book of a new Volume V.