A comparison of the two texts establishes that the American Edition of 1919 was set from a copy of the English First Edition of 1916 which is faithfully reproduced. The Knopf edition contains 53 variants, 22 of which are substantive. Errors in the English Edition are the source of 4 of these variants: E68.13 count, A75.13 and CE226.10 court; E82.21 nto, A89.21 and CE233.33 into; E277.11 life and, A284.6 and CE341.15 life had; and an irregularity in punctuation (E256.12-13). In the other 18 cases the Collected Edition follows the English First Edition. Of these, 8 result from errors in the American text. Examples: E5.22-23 and CE191.23-24 heavy grey [. . . ] heavy green, A13.19-20 heavy green, a whole line having been omitted because the compositor's eye slipped from heavy grey to heavy green on the next line; E217.17 and CE308.35 caught, A224.17 raught; E247.24 and CE325.3 straggled, A254.24 struggled. The American Edition also inserts the novel's title at the beginning of chapter I. As for the remaining 9 variants, the English text is to be preferred. For example E59.3 and CE220.22 "Must you?", A65.25 "Must go?" (go is possible but as a result the word is repeated--without rhetorical effect-- in three consecutive short statements); E267.8 and CE335.25 wheedling, A274.6 tweedling. We cannot know whether these changes resulted from editorial interventions or from compositorial slips, but we can be reasonably certain that the American editor simply asserted his preference for A69.24 around rather than E63.1 and CE222.20 round. If the date were later, one could believe that the insertion of 13 additional commas in the A text was at Richardson's behest, but the fact is that in 1919 she was not sprinkling in commas. (See Introduction, "Dorothy Richardson and the Art of Punctuation.") They are conventional interventions by the American editor, who is also responsible for the careless omission of the appropriate comma at A192.25 eagerly and; E186.1, CE291.3 eagerly, and.

The conclusion must be two-fold. The correcting in A of major errors in the English text (from count to court; from life and to life had) was done on Richardson's instructions, probably on the English sheets sent to Knopf. But the other variants in the American Edition were not supervised by her nor were they consulted by her in revising for the Collected Edition text.

Misprints and errors are indicated by an asterisk*

NOTE The American Edition does not revise words like apologise and realise.