Editor's Fence

VI EDITOR'S FENCE 1. Conference k. Aga i η: The Conference on English Fiction in Transition: Aestheticism and Decadence will meet at Washington, D. C, as follows: Michigan Room Thursday, 27 Dec 1962 Hotel Statler 10:30 a.m.-11:45 In this number we publish two papers on the subject of the Conference; they will not be formally presented; and discussion will not be limited to the specific theses of these papers. We shall, as on past occasions, be concerned with clarification of the terms and with their applicability to specific works. 2. Post-Conference Forum: At last year's Conference, the editor had a distinct impression that many members of the audience had comments of some length to make for which there was no time during the meeting. Others indicated later that they had some second thoughts after the Conference had ended and they had had some time in which better to formulate their ideas. The editor therefore offered to. provide ample space in EFT for the publication of such comments. The available space was filled to overflowing. Under the heading "Forum," we published over seven pages of comments in the first number of EFT to appear after the meeting. This year we shall provide from ten to fifteen pages for such a forum. We shall be happy to have 2-3 page comments, notes, and correspondence for publi cation in the first number of ELT in 1963. These remarks should bear directly on the subject of discussion at the Conference. These comments may deal with the two Conference papers published in this number, they may be extensions of our discussions in Washington, they may be rebuttals, supporting arguments, provocative assertions— anything specifically bearing on the aesthetic and decadent movements in English literature between about 1880 and 1900. 3. ELT. Again: Beginning with the first number of Volume 6 (1963), we shall retitle our journal ENGLISH LITERATURE IN TRANSITION. Essentially this means that we call attention to this publication as a period rather than a genre journal. To support the intention of this change of title, we shall add many poets, critics, and dramatists, as well as more fiction writers, to the list of authors with whom we shall be concerned. In other ways we shall retain the same policies that guided EFT. We shall continue to publish annotated bibliographies of writings about ELT authors, articles of all kinds and lengths, manuscript location lists, and reviews. We continue to define our period broadly as beginning about 1880 and ending about 1920, although we willingly give or take ten years at either limit. We shall continue to be interested in minor writers for the quality of their performances and for their importance as elements in the historical scene. We shall continue to be interested in major writers, not only for their critically valued intrinsic excellence, but also for their place in literary history. We shall more vigorously than evern insist on the need to bring together literary history and literary criticism. We recognize the equal importance of studies of variant texts, of individual works in the context of an author's whole canon, of an author's work in the context of his life or his time, and analyses of structure and verbal patterns in a given work without detailed reference to peripheral vi ι information. We believe in the objective approach informed by subjective insights and in the subjective approach intelligently guided by objectively derived data. We insist that critics get dates right and correctly identify and evalute their texts; w insist that historians attend to the meaning and quality of the work as a work of literary art. 4. We Shall Publish; a descriptive bibliography of the fiction of W. H. Mal lock, an annotated bibliography of writings about Hubert Crackanthorpe, an article on Crackanthorpe, and a short article on Kipling and Forster. We have contributors at work on material dealing with Henry Handel Richardson, Olive Schreiner, Hardy, Conrad, Lawrence, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, Israel Zangwel1, a thematic aspect of the period, Gissing, Ernest Dowson, Ford Madox Ford, and other authors and special subjects. We would especially like to see more work on the poets, dramatists, and critics...