Interim

The American Edition of 1920, based on the English text of 1919, was revised by Richardson with a thoroughness exceptional for her. And the American editor, contrary to his previous custom, made no alterations of the round / around variety. Either Richardson corrected sheets from the English First Edition, provided by Duckworth for the purpose; or Knopf set the text from the English sheets and then sent galleys to Richardson to be corrected. (Knopf is unlikely to have sent page proofs, for the revisions are such that they would have disturbed the lineation and paging.) The authority of the American Edition can be gauged by the fact that of 127 textual variants found in that edition, 118 are adopted in the text of the Collected Edition. (These figures do not include 8 shifts in section numbers.) Of the 9 variants not acopted in the Collected Edition, 4 are misprints in A, 4 are minor alterations in punctuation, and 1 is a change of spelling.

Equally striking, all 37 misprints and errors in E are corrected in A and later in CE. These errors are too obvious to need comment here, except for Mrs. Bailey's shirt (E251.1) which should be a skirt (A242.22, CE429.17). Two further changes in A, also adopted by CE, probably reflect misprints in E: adjective in (E211.6) becomes the more incisive adjective is (A205.8, CE408.3); and Spies; talking idle; (E254.3) becomes the more grammatical Spies talking; idle; (A245.23, CE431.16).

Apart from these 39 probable misprints and errors in E and the 4 in A, there are a further 12 substantive changes in words or word forms. In every case CE follows the American text. The most radical alterations are the adding of a whole sentence: room. An insolent (E84.5) | room. Certainly he was some kind of strong "outsider.". . . An insolent (A86.23-25, CE338.12-13); and the deleting of 8 words from E148.24-25: again into the lamplit greyness leading along to Donizetti's, leaving simply again (A147.26, CE374.8).

Almost certainly the American Edition was used as copy text in setting the Collected Edition text of Interim. This text required major surgery because the dialogue of chapters I through VII of both first editions was set out in the Joycean and Continental manner without quotation marks or paragraphing. These chapters had to be brought into conformity with chapters VIII through XI in which Richardson had reverted to her usual and traditional practice. For this reason alone, Interim would have come under intense scrutiny in preparing the Collected Edition.

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

NOTE In both first editions a number of common sayings or traditional clichés are placed in single quotation marks instead of the standard double marks. Since these have been noted as anomalous in comparing the English First Edition with the Collected Edition, they are not recorded here.

Chapter 5 introduction

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