The Editor's Fence

IV HE EDITOR'S FEHCE I5 After four years of EFT's existence, I can still report continued success. In fact, we on the staff continus to have our modest expectations jolted into quite immodest realities, Subscriptions have steadily increased, EFT continues to meet its basic financial responsibilities (postage and supplies), the Purdue English Department continues to contribute excellent secretarial assistance and the very valuable help of a graduate assistant, individual subscribers in increasing numbers help us keep costs and time-absorbing routine work down to a minimum by subscribing several years in advance (the bulk of them through 1363), and more and more libraries regard EFT as a basic research tool warranting permanent binding. Our main effort for the immediate future will be directed toward continuing the expansion of the scope of EFT. Such an effort will require a larger staff and much more outside help. VJe welcome volunteers who have access to good libraries, who are especially qualified to deal with specific authors, and who are willing to exert the patience and effort required for preparing the kind of thorough annotated bibliographies best illustrated by our work on George Moore, Kipling, Ford Madox Ford, E. M. Förster, Gissing and others. 2. After thinking it over, we have made plans to add a number of major authors to our lists. Mrs. Gerber and I are now compiling an annotated bibliography of writings about THOMAS HARDY, from the earliest review to the latest introduction for a paperbound reprint. The bulk of the material we have already assembled suggests this project may take several years. We expect to have a sufficiently complete list ready by June, 1362, to warrant our forming a collaborative committee of Hardy scholars, Edward Lauterbach is preparing a similar thorough annotated bibliography of writings about H. G. WELLS, who has appeared in our lists since 1957-58, This project, however, will include Robert P. Weeks' original selected list, all the items we have published during the past few years, and the many reviews, article, books, and references in books which we have thus far omitted. Previous annotations will be re-examined. Charles McCann (Canisius College) and I are beginning the compilation of a similar bibliography on D. H. LAWRENCE, a project which may also be in progress for several years. Verna Wittrock (Western Illinois University) has begun work on a HENRY HANDEL RICHARDSON bibliography. As soon as time allows, we shall begin work on CONRAD, WILDE, PATER, STEVENSON, and others. Broadly» we shall support the beginning date (c. I87O) of the EFT period with work tm 3utler., Wilde, and Pater; we shall support the ending date (c. I93O) with work on Lawrence, Conrad, and, of course, the many authors we already list who survived that date but the bulk of whose major work appeared prior to about 1930. Hardy, as novelist and poet, and Moore, span the whole period. VJe shall also continue to broaden the scope of EFT by including more work on poets, essayists, and dramatists writing in the period. Thus, the previously announced project on Lytton Strachey by Martin KaI lieh is now almost ready for publication, and we hope to add other non-fiction writers soon. 3. After due consideration, as the hackneyed phrase goes, we have accepted two papers for tiie fifth meeting of the Conference on English Fiction in Transition, These two papers, we think, raise many fundamental questions about the ArtistHero Novel as a broadly defined genre. While these papers do not deal in detail with all aspects of the genre, they imply or specifically deal with most of the major problems faced by the artist who has produced novels of this kind. Certainly, significant questions about tone, impersonality, and the use of the device of self-division, and about cultural pressures of a given time are raised. We think Mr. Goidberg's broad survey of the genre and Mr. Knoeprlmacher's specific analysis of one type of the genre should lead to some very fruitful discussion. Mr. Beebe, who will lead the discussion, and I have prepared some questions and statements, which appear after the two papers later in this number of EFT, in order to focus the...