Current Problems in Textual Scholarship on the Works of Thomas Hardy

239 CURRENT PROBLEMS IN TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP ON THE WORKS OF THOMAS HARDY By Robert C. Schwelk (State University of New York) In this paper I intend to discuss what seem to me to be some significant problems In textual scholarship on the works of Thomas Hardyi In doing so, I propose to challenge a number of currently received opinions In three main areas of scholarship on Hardy's texts: descriptive bibliography, textual analysis, and editing. Hardy is one of those rare and happy cases In which the work of the descriptive bibliographer has been done exceedingly well; It would scarely be possible to praise too much Richard Little Purdy's Thomas Hardys A Bibliographical Studyl for the reliable and thorough textual information which It supplies. The one really serious error that has been discovered In It - an assertion that the Mellstock Edition was printed from the same plates as the Wessex - was almost immediately noted2 and has been corrected In the 1968 printing; other limitations in It - e.g., that It provides no descriptions of text type faces and sizes, no Indication of text dimensions, no account of the kinds of paper used, no record of copies examined, etc. - are to be expected In a descriptive bibliography published in 195^. and Michael Sadleir's criticism of its binding descriptions Implies no really serious fault.3 Inevitably, of course, subsequent research has uncovered so me significant variations in impressions and editions which represent Important stages In the evolution of Hardy's texts^ - variations which, had they been known to Professor Purdy, might have warranted fuller comment than he has provided, In order to fulfill his avowed purpose of showing "by what stages Hardy's writings came to their final form."5 But, In spite of the wealth of accurate information provided by Thomas Hardys A Bibliographical Study and the various corrections and additions which have come after it, there remain Important problems about Hardy's texts for which Purdy's work provides no answers. Of the copytexts revised by Hardy and used by editors and compositors In the printing of Hardy's later editions there Is little information provided in Purdy's book; even the nature of the copy-texts used In the printing of the "definitive" Macmlllan Wessex edition of 1912 Is presently generally unknown, and, as I shall suggest later in greater detail, information about the nature of those copy-texts may be of great importance for future editors of Hardy's work. Furthermore, what has long been assumed to be known - that, as Professor Purdy has put It, "the Wessex Edition Is In every sense the definitive edition of Hardy's work and the last authority In questions of text"6 - is In fact, I submit, very much an open question* although it is a conclusion which has been widely accepted by otherwise scrupulous scholarly editors, it is certainly premature. The Wessex Edition itself is not the product of a single uniform impression, although references to it seem generally to assume that all copies of the Wessex Edition provide the same text and have the same authority; and I know of no published information which would allow a scholar to determine for himself whether the some nine pages of 240 corrections and additions which Hardy made in the Wessex Edition as late as 1920 would be of importance for his particular research. Nor, so far as I know, has anyone shown what, if any, textual significance the Mellstock Edition of A Pair of Blue Eyes may have, although it is known that Hardy read proof for It. I shall return to these matters later in this paper when I take up some problems in the editing of Hardy's texts; at this point it is sufficient to note only that what constitutes the "definitive edition" of Hardy's work and the "last authority in questions of text" is a matter to be decided by the procedures of modern editorial practice. Assuredly it is not a question the answer to which can be determined beforehand by the dictum of the descriptive bibliographer. By contrast with the work in descriptive bibliography of Hardy's writings , the various separate analyses of...