Correspondence: Collie and Coustillas

238 CORRESPONDENCE: COLLIE AND COUSTILLAS I. From Michael Collie The publicity department of the University of Toronto Press has just sent me a copy of a review by Pierre Coustillas of my George Gissing: a Bibliography recently published in English Literature in Transition. Everyone knows that there is little point in replying to emotionally hostile reviews especially when, as is the case here, not one of the reviewer's negative comments is substantiated. I feel compelled, however, to register a mild protest. We all learn from reviews; few of us write perfect books; few bibliographers would claim to have got everything right. I myself am certainly only too capable of error and in normal circumstances frequently profit from the superior knowledge of reviewers. Consequently it is not my purpose here to offer you a counter shriek to imply that on every point of detail Mr. Coustillas must be wrong. My purpose is rather to draw your attention to instances of what appear to be wilful distortion. Le me give just four examples. (1) Your reviewer, Mr. Coustillas, writes: "We are invited to believe that he wrote about a country he scarcely lived in, i.e. England." Please compare this with my statement on p.- 3 of the Introduction: "Having grown up in Wakefield, he lived in Manchester as a student, ... in London (1877-90 and 1895-7), in Exeter . . . (1891-5) · · ·" Can these two statements be reconciled by a fair-minded reader? What your reviewer does here seems to me characteristic of his review as a whole. (2) Mr. Coustillas says "We are invited to believe that he never bothered to think about his business interests, remained ignorant of publishers' practices . . . and was satisfied for many years to sell the copyright outright because he knew he could live on that amount of money." Coustillas implies that these statements are so obviously incorrect that it is not necessary for him to produce contrary evidence, which is the technique of the review as a whole. At least half of Gissing's novels were sold for a direct, single payment which precluded the possibility of later royalties: my book gives the details of each of these transactions. Whether he was always satisfied is a matter of opinion: he was certainly satisfied in the case of The Nether World, in the case of New Grub Street, and in the case of his commissioned books during the nineties. Again my book gives the details. As to my main thesis i .e. that Gissing was vulnerable to being exploited by his publishers - I should think it will stand as a coherent explanation of why Gissing failed to" prosper even when his books were selling well, until Mr. Coustillas provides a better explanation. Evidently he felt no need to explain himself in the review you published. 239 (3) Mr. Coustillas states: "Mr. Collie declares (p. 20) that some dates are not known." This strikes me as being a particularly mean-spirited remark, one which is designed to give the impression that nothing in the book is to be trusted. Please look at p. 20 of my book. It is perfectly normal to omit the supposed date of publication from the description of a book as a physical object, if the date itself does not appear anywhere in the book being described. The sentence on p. 20 to which Coustillas refers is part of a Technical Note. Only someone bent on mischief could interpret this purely technical statement in the way that Coustillas has done, given the existence of the Chronological Listing on pp. 124-26, a listing which is mentioned on p. 20 in the sentence which immediately precedes the one quoted. (4) Mr. Coustillas objects to my account of Gissing's relationships with women and refers airily to sources, though not to sources he is prepared to mention in his review. He knows perfectly, well that the primary source consists of the writings of Gissing about himself. He also knows perfectly well that he himself is on record as believing that Gissing's statements about himself can be trusted and he himself has propagated the opinion, first, that Gissing was justified in deserting both his wives...