[Vwoolf] "A Room of One's Own" edition?

Mon Aug 12 07:32:00 EDT 2024

David Bradshaw and I finished off – sorry, completed – the Shakespeare Head Edition of VW with Room in 2015.  The first vol. appeared in 1992 (yes, 1992 – don’t tell students who delay handing in their papers!), and over the years there was considerable controversy over the choice of copy texts.  We chose the 1st UK edn.  “We have resisted”, I wrote (sounds like me), “the temptation to adopt two substantive variants from the US editions ... Similarly , we have not adopted from later Hogarth Press printings Woolf’s comment about women, ‘I like their subtlety’ (p. 80), being succeeded by ‘I like their completeness’” (p. xxv).

Apart from some unimportant punctuation and layout changes, we made only 3 emendations: ‘reason that[n] that’, Casaubon misspelled, ‘there was [a] fence’.

I compared the 1st Hogarth with the first 2 US editions, and then with 7 Hogarth impressions.  The latter brought in a very meagre haul.  Apart from ‘I like their completeness’ in all 7, ‘Life of Miss Emily Davies’ was corrected to ‘Emily Davies and Girton College’ from the 4th imp. onwards.

As for checking pointless editions (i.e. ones to which VW could have had no input), I’m sure that the Penguin Books edition of 1945 has mistakes, and I believe that it was used for the Penguin edition of 1963, which has more.

Although I says it as shouldn’t, I think our edition is the best currently available.  Unfortunately, it is expensive.  Not only that, it is printed on thin paper and when you hold ‘this slim volume’ of xxx, 162 pp. in your hands, you hardly feel you’ve got value for money.  Not only that, but c. 20 errors crept in, mainly to the notes, although they had been OK on a previous round of proofs: e.g. some books and journals lost their italics.

Stuart

From: Edward Mendelson via Vwoolf 
Sent: Thursday, August 8, 2024 11:31 PM
To: Emily Kopley ; vwoolf at lists.osu.edu 
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf's marked copies of her books?

Hello Emily and all, Thank you for this! Julia Briggs’ essay is terrific - and she is surely right to say that more or less everyone’s agreement to use the first English edition as the text for the Penguin editions needs to be revised. ThankHello Emily and all, 

Thank you for this! Julia Briggs’ essay is terrific - and she is surely right to say that more or less everyone’s agreement to use the first English edition as the text for the Penguin editions needs to be revised. Thank you again!

Edward

  On Aug 8, 2024, at 1:33 PM, Emily Kopley via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

  Hi All, 

  A belated reply to Edward's question about the word changed between impressions of AROO. The first UK and US editions have, "The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their subtlety. I like their anonymity." But the second UK impression has "...their unconventionality. I like their completeness..." In short, VW turns "subtlety" to "completeness." This was pointed out by Julia Briggs in Essay 14 of her Reading Virginia Woolf, "Between the Texts: Virginia Woolf's Acts of Revision," p. 208.

  Best,
  Emily

  On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 11:14 AM Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

    I think not: ‘him’ *was* the problem.  Grammatically, it refers to Joseph 8 ll. up.

    Stuart

    From: Zoe Guttenplan
    Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2024 2:49 PM
    To: Stuart N. Clarke
    Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
    Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf's marked copies of her books?

    This is fascinating. From my typesetting experience, I know that a gappy line is just as much of a problem as a tight one. It is therefore also possible (technically, though less convincing perhaps) that her intention was to cut the “after all” and the insertion of “Peter Walsh” was merely to fill the extra space.

    Zoe

    On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 at 13:22, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

      It has been remarked that, since VW knew from her own experience the practicalities involved in setting type, when she altered a line in a reprint she was careful to ensure that that line did not spill over onto the following line.  Thus, in this instance, “Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later.” became “Yet how much she owed Peter Walsh later.” (p. 56).

      If one were editing the text, it would be reasonable to argue that what VW ‘really’ wanted was to amend it to “Yet, after all, how much she owed to Peter Walsh later.” 

      Stuart

      From: mhussey at verizon.net
      Sent: Friday, July 26, 2024 4:47 PM
      To: 'Stuart N. Clarke' ; 'Edward Mendelson' ; vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
      Subject: RE: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf's marked copies of her books?

      For what it’s worth, in the ‘Definitive’ (!!!) Hogarth edition issued in 1990 G. Patton Wright says: ‘Virginia Woolf died in 1941, so the last edition she could possibly have overseen was E4, published in 1942. Given the state of her health, her depression, and the unfinished work on her last novel Between the Acts, it is reasonable to conclude that she would have taken little interest in a new edition of Mrs. Dalloway, one printed according to restrictions of the wartime economy. Previoously, the next latest edition she might have corrected was the “Uniform Edition” (E3), published by Hogarth in 1929 and reissued in 1933. A collation of this text against E1 reveals that it is not entirely a photo-offset reprint as Kirkpatrick claims. For example, on page 56, when Clarissa recalls her experiences with Peter Walsh at Bourton, both E1 and E2 read: “Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later.” However, E3 reads: “Yet how much she owed Peter Walsh later.”

      Et cetera !! I agree with BJK that it seems impossible to produce any error-free book (speaking as someone who spent about four years ‘editing’ Between the Acts and missed a real howler…).

      From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+mhussey=verizon.net at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf
      Sent: Friday, July 26, 2024 9:54 AM
      To: Edward Mendelson <edward.mendelson at columbia.edu>; vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
      Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf's marked copies of her books?

      I am not aware of the differences in the reset edition of Mrs Dalloway in 1942, but it was reset because of wartime requirements: "some of Woolf’s books that Leonard decided had to be reprinted would have resulted in a profligate use of the

      I am not aware of the differences in the reset edition of Mrs Dalloway in 1942, but it was reset because of wartime requirements:

      "some of Woolf’s books that Leonard decided had to be reprinted would have resulted in a profligate use of the paper quota.  Mrs. Dalloway appears to have been an unfortunate example.  When it was published in 1925, it ran to 294 pages; my sample page (177) has 223 words.  Owing to the paper shortage, Leonard must have decided in 1941 to have it reset, reducing it to 252 pages; my sample page (149), which describes almost the same scene as the corresponding sample page in the first edition, has 270 words.  It was published early in 1942 and therefore should have had 323 words to the page, but it would not have needed to comply with the Agreement as the typesetting would have begun before 1 January 1942; it does not carry the economy declaration.  In 1946, Chatto & Windus ‘took under its management the Hogarth Press’ (Warner 23) and decided to issue Mrs. Dalloway under its Zodiac Press imprint.  It is hard to believe nowadays, when labour costs so much and goods so comparatively little, that the novel had to be reset once again, so that it could be printed in 1947 ‘in complete conformity with the authorised economy standards’ ([4]).  Now it was reduced to 216 pages of a slightly larger size than in 1942, and my sample page (129) reaches the target with 322 words." (VWB no. 51, p. 33)

      Someone (Leonard? John Lehmann?) would have found a copy of Mrs D – hopefully the 2nd imp., but more likely the Uniform of 1929 or its reprint of 1933 (I haven’t seen a copy, but it was probably the last time ‘destestable’ appeared) – and chucked it over to the printers of the Garden City Press in Letchworth, Herts (where the Hogarth Press itself was now located), and told to get on with it.  Someone might just possibly have remembered an additional correction or corrections (kept in a folder, even), and someone, hopefully, would have checked the text when it came back from the printers.  Someone must have noticed ‘destestable’.  It’s wartime, but this is probably how it would have happened in peacetime, too.  (For a considerable number of mistakes in VW’s essays collected in Granite and Rainbow (1958), see VWB no. 51, pp. 35-6.)

      B. J. Kirkpatrick told me that she had visited a printer’s, and wondered how any book got produced correctly!

      By the way, by comparing the 1942 text with the 1st edn, the 2nd imp., and the 1929 Uniform, you may be able to deduce which was used to produce that new 1942 edn.

      Stuart

      -----Original Message----- 

      From: Edward Mendelson via Vwoolf 

      Sent: Friday, July 26, 2024 1:47 PM 

      To: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu

      Subject: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf's marked copies of her books? 

      Two copies of The Voyage Out marked by the author for revision are known to exist. Does anyone know where marked copies might be of her other books? I’m asking in the hope that a marked copy might exist that would give some evidence for the authority (if any) for the changes made in the reset edition of Mrs Dalloway in 1942. My guess is that no such copy is known, or we would all know about it, but it seemed to be worth asking. All information will be gratefully received.

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