The Editor's Fence

THE EDITOR'S FENCE 1. The Conference in Philadelphia: This issue contains two papers which will serve as the basis for discussion at the Conference on English Fiction in Transition (I88O-I920) to be held during the MLA meetings in Philadelphia. Since MLA limits conference attendance to 35 persons, requests for admission should be directed to the Discussion Leader: Richard Stang Department of English Carleton Col lege Northfield, Minnesota The details of the meeting (time, place, date, program, etc«) appear later in this i ssue. 2. The Conference Papers: Ford Madox Ford and, perhaps surprisingly, Virginia Woolf are the specific subjects of the two papers on the general topic "Theories of Fiction: I88O-I92O" to be discussed by the Conference. Ford's appearance on the program requires no explanation. He was deeply involved in the making of the literature of the period from about I88O to about 1920 in so many diverse ways that it is perhaps only surprising that the Conference has not specifically dealt with him at previous discussions. I hope Fordians and non-Fordians alike will take the opportunity to support or disagree with Mr. MacShane's views of Ford's ideas on novel ist ic techniques. Virginia Woolf s appearance in these pages and on the Conference program needs no apology but certainly does require some explanation. Mrs. Woolf has not been listed among EFT authors in the Bibliographies, News, and Notes section. However, because of her well-known comments on many EFT authors, especially on Bennett, Wells, and Galsworthy, and because she layed out a theory of fiction generally thought to imply a rejection of the lines along which many (not all) EFT authors seemed to be working, the period cannot be justly re-examined and fairly characterized without reference to Mrs. Woolf's theories and practice. Professor Ramsay's paper, therefore, is intended to suggest comparisons between Mrs. Woolf's theories and methods and those of EFT authors with whom she contrasted herself. Professor Ramsay's analysis of Mrs. Woolf's use of symbols and his comments on her use and transcendence of external reality should stimulate a 1ively discussion. 3. Kiplingitis: Edward Lauterbach and I, and, I suspect, our collaborating annotators have, an irritation that might be called Kiplingitis. The inflamation, however, is not caused by Kipling but by Kiplingites and anti-Kiplingites. Together we have read well over 1,000 articles, notes, paragraphs, lists, books, printed foreign-language dissertations, and reviews, In the course of this raking and sifting, the prime cause of irritation has been the inaccuracy, ambiguity, and disgraceful carelessness of almost all the bibliographies, indexes, and guides for materia! about Kipling. Even the more specialized bibliographies by reputable Kipling scholars have often been next to useless in locating material; CBEL, however useful it may be for other authors and perhaps earlier periods, is, where Kipling is concerned, more of a hindrance than a help; Ehrsam, whose bibliography is in most respects the most thorough to about 1935, makes no distinction between reprints in newspapers of Kipling's speeches and comments on his work, nor between two-sentence remarks in passing and full-fledged articles; Carrington's list of secondary materials is inexcusably inaccurate and incomplete on publication data; and so on. Equally annoying has been our experience with much of the pointless bickering in NOTES & QUERIES, and similar publications, over non-existent Kipling problems (for example, one writer began an extended discussion and after a long, tiresome series of replies, counter-statements, and more replies finally confessed that the information on which his original comment had been based was wrong). We have reached the point at which we read Kipling between annotations as an antidote to Kiplingitis, I make an issue of these matters here in order partly to explain the delays referred to below. k. Kipling Marches On: The Kipling project may well run through three numbers of EFT, These will all be part of Volume III (I960) and they will be paginated continuously . It is possible that the last part of the Kipling bibliography will not be in the mails until early I96I. Preparing a typescript, editing, stenciling, proofreading, mimeographing, assembling, stapling, stuffing, stamping, and mailing necessarily...