The Critical Heritage Series and E. M. Forster

137 Stallybrass' article, "The Abinger Edition of E. M. Forster," in English Literature in Transition (XVI:4 [1973]) lists some of the more interesting of these variations and suggests the correct reading in each case· It thus makes some difference whether in Chapter 8 Margaret is "accused" rather than "excused" of indecision , whether in Chapter 14 Mr. Lanoline (Bast) is visitor at the Schlegels rather than Mrs. Lanoline (Jacky), whether again in Chapter 14 Leonard hurries through London's "tinted corridors" rather than through her "tinted wonders," whether in Chapter 21 Dolly Wilcox accuses her husband of being inconsistent about the Schlegels "five minutes ago" rather than "five months ago," and whether Meredith's stoicism lies at the "root" of all character rather than at its "foot." I now cite some interesting variants which Stallybrass does not single out in his article. It thus again makes some difference that in Chapter 8 Helen three times in a skittish mood says "genterman " and not "gentleman" as some texts have her doing one or more of the three times; it makes some difference, too, that in Chapter 26 a farm boy appears with "pig-pails" rather than with "pig-tails" and that in Chapter 19 the churches seen from the Purbeck Hills are "vanquished or triumphant" rather than "vanished or triumphant." The collation with the manuscripts solves a textual crux in Chapter 41 in connection with Helen's reflections on Evie Wilcox' wedding at Oniton: "motor-cars oozing grease on the gravel, rubbish on a pretentious band" becomes in a correct version "motor-cars oozing grease on the gravel, rubbish from a pretentious band" (the discarded word "music" in the manuscript makes the intended meaning clear). Some intonations of personality , moreover, are lost when appropriate words from the emphatic Mrs. Munt and the passionate Helen Schlegel are not italicized, in previously printed editions, as the manuscript has them. Stallybrass has demonstrated yet again that a reliable text provides the only firm basis for literary interpretation. When the Abinger Edition is completed, we can be confident that we will have the best text available for E. M. Forster. It would be a satisfaction for scholars in modern literature to have similarly reliable texts for writers like Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and Rudyard Kipling, to name some. Forster himself would undoubtedly have approved this entire project as one worthy of his eminence, providing that he would not have had to be actively engaged with it. University of Iowa Frederick P. W. McDowell 2. The Critical Heritage Series and E. M. Forster. Philip Gardner (ed). E. M. Forster: The Critical Heritage (Lond & Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, The Critical Heritage Series, 1973). $23.25 The Critical Heritage Series is a valuable collection of books 138 for scholars in the period 1880 to 1920. The purpose is to reproduce comment that greeted the publication of the major works (and some minor ones) of a given writer. This commentary consists largely of reviews, although important contemporaries offer their views in letters and journals (most already published, some previously unpublished). A number of books on ELT authors have appeared: Conrad by Norman Sherry, Ford Madox Ford by Frank MacShane , Gissing by Pierre Coustillas and Colin Partridge, Thomas Hardy by R. G. Cox, Kipling by Roger Lancelyn Green, James Joyce TTn-XWO volumes) by Robert H. Deming, D. H. Lawrence by R, P. Draper, Meredith by loan Williams, WilTiam Morris by Peter Faulkner , Swinburne by Clyde K. Hyder, H. G_. Wells by Patrick Parrinder , and Oscar Wilde by Karl Beckson. Other writers in the period 1880-1920 will also have future volumes devoted to them. Other volumes in the series are on background or originative authors for the ELT period, those, for example, on Arnold (the poetry), Browning, Carlyle, Coleridge, Clough, Dickens, George Eliot, Henry James, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Trollope. The volumes in the series are invaluable as they help us fix the contemporary reputation of a major writer and as they record the varying responses to his important works. E. M. Forster: The Critical Heritage is a representative volume. It reprints most of the important reviews of Forster's fiction and selected reviews of many of his other works. Much...