Chapter IV: Pilgrimage Volume IV I 
       
The Collected Editions (CE) and the English First Editions (E) Compared

March Moonlight

CE: Volume IV, Book 13, 1967

"Work in Progress," Life and Letters, 1946

Quotation marks for dialogue, and for sayings:

 ' . . . ' in CE 

" . . . " in Life and Letters 1946

Titles of books, journals, music, etc.:

Italics in CE

Italics in Life and Letters 1946

Publishing house rules:

Mr, Mrs etc. in CE 

Mr., Mrs. etc. in Life and Letters 1946

Foreign words and phrases:  

Italics in CE

Italics in Life and Letters 1946

See Life and Letters and the London Mercury 49, No. 104 (April 1946), 20-44; No. 105 (May 1946), 99-114; 51, No. 111(November 1946), 79-88


Misprints and errors are indicated by an asterisk*

 SUMMARY OF VARIANTS

This final book of Pilgrimage was published in 1967 as the conclusion to Volume IV of the Collected Edition. The first three chapters had earlier appeared as "Work in Progress," Life and Letters, 1946. The parallel text in the 1967 edition occupies IV, 555-605, for a total of 51 pages. Apparently Richardson wrote these three chapters during the winter and spring of 1937-38 (Gloria Fromm, Dorothy Richardson, 308, 310). After the poor sales and disappointing reception of the Collected Edition in 1938, she lost heart to go on with the novel (Fromm, 321). It is possible, however, that the "scraps" from "the past year" typed up in the spring of 1940 (Fromm, 328) represent the present Chapter III. Sometime before November 1945 Richardson revised these opening chapters and, after having Chapters I and II typed, on November 28 sent them off to Bryher for Life and Letters (Windows on Modernism, 532). Chapter III, though revised, had not been retyped. This she promised to do herself later, if the editor wanted it. He did want it (Windows, 532). The remaining chapters of the novel she worked on intermittently until 1952. The Typescript of the novel, found at the time of Richardson's death, was faithfully reproduced to provide the text for the 1967 publication of March Moonlight.

A comparison the first three chapters of the novel and the three chapters published in Life and Letters reveals 229 variants, of which 41 entailed changes to commas and 54 to hyphenation. Substantive variants number 65. Differences in spelling (10), punctuation (5), italics (2), number (2) and tense (6) account for 28 of these; as well, the 3 chapter heads in CE vary or are absent from the Life and Letters text (LL).

In preparing the Typescript of March Moonlight, Richardson deletes unimportant words from LL on 2 occasions, and adds words to the TS (and the CE version) on 2 occasions also.

In 15 places she substitutes words, from the insignificant her | the to the extensive found her squatted in an empty corner, facing | found her crawled to an empty corner and squatted there, facing (CE581.19; LL100.19-20).

There are 6 errors to record in CE, simple misprints except for two. In the case of to garden light | the garden light (CE583.5; LL102.6) it is just possible that the to of CE, rather than being in error, is intended to signify to the accompaniment of. The shift to her voice (CE592.15) from his voice (LL111.12) is an inexplicable mistake since the pronoun must refer to Richard Roscorla. The 12 errors in LL are fairly obvious, but note with indifference | with a difference (CE575.9; LL39.30); and Sarah's patent shoes | patient shoes (CE578.37; LL43.15).

As one would expect, when the three instalments of "Work in progress" became Chapters I to III of the Typescript of March Moonlight, Richardson's revisions were not extensive. Indeed in a kind of ironic reversal of past practice, commas deleted outnumber commas inserted 27 to 9, and all but 2 of the 54 hyphen changes are deletions.

Substantive variants are marked >

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