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THE LEAVISES 121 author's 'actual working methods' and provides the basis for a study of the genesis of the novel. The manuscript shows that the title of the novel was changed from 1980 to 1982 to '984; and that three significant passages were omitted from the published version. In the first section of the novel, after the description of the horrific war film, Orwell wrote: Typical prole reaction - not to care about the thing itself. only about its being shown in front of children. Cf. last year when they were showing Romeo and Juliet and suddenly it was flashed on the screen that a good nigger lynching was happening somewhere in America and would be televised. One of the niggers was a pregnant woman and when they hoisted her up she gave birth to the baby. The crowd played football with it. Again an old prole woman started making a fuss because she said that till then her little granddaughter aged nine hadn't known where babies came from. Orwell probably realized that this passage was overwritten, far-fetched, and slightly (though unintentionally) comical, that it emphasized the gratuitous cruelty rather than the perverse morality of the proles. (The first use of 'proletarian' in English was in Samuel Butler's Hudibras, 1663.) The sterotyped lynching recalls the black humour of the news report in the Cyclops section of Ulysses: 'Black Beast Burned in Omaha, Ga: (p 328), just as the physiological effect of hanging recalls the execution oOoe Brady: 'when they cut him down after the drop [his tool] was standing up in their faces like a poker' (p 304). In the second deleted passage Winston is intimidated by the luxury ofO'Brien's Inner Party flat. The third passage, which describes Winston and Julia'S embrace after visiting O'Brien, prefigures their tragic end and could well have been retained: 'She kissed his cheek almost violently a number of times, then slipped away into the shadow of the wall and promptly disappeared.... He had a curious feeling that ... the embrace she had given him was intended as some kind of good-bye: Conrad, a perceptive political novelist whom Orwell planned to write an essay about at the end of his life, foreshadowed the themes of both Allimal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four in a moving passage, in Under Western Eyes: 'The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent, may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its ~ictims.' Criticism and Personality: Remembering the Leavises W.J. K E ITH Denys Thompson, editor. The Leavises: Recollections and Impressions Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984. vii, 207. ilIus. $34.50 This is in many respects an admirable and important book, but the first pOint that needs to be made is that the Leavises themselves would not have approved of it. UNfVERSlTI OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 55, NUMBER 1, FALL 1985 122 W.J. KEITH Although Q.D.L. (in the interests of clarity and convenience, 1 shall throughout this review refer to Queenie Leavis by her initials) is recorded a year before her death as welcoming 'reminiscences of myself and my husband in ourearlierdays' (p 29), she had in mind a projected biography of Leavisand private family records. In terms of the printed word, however, they both deplored any critical writing that placed emphasis on personal anecdote rather than achieved work. Leavis himself would surely have relished William Cobbetfs remark: 'What signifies it who Iam? The only question is, am I right?' Yet Denys Thompson, the contributors, and the Cambridge University Press were, I am convinced, right in collaborating on this book. Around the Leavises there has gathered a whole personal mythology that ranges from sacred gospel to malicious rumour, The circumstances of their lives, their careers at Cambridg~, the literary controversies in which they engaged, all encouraged the telling of stories about them, Some of these are false, others exaggerated, some profoundly revealing. It is better that this anecdotal side ofthe Leavises' story should be aired publicly, though 1 must add at once that, for most of the contributors here...

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