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83 be published in the last twenty years, ranks as the best. Larry Carver University of Texas at Austin SAMUEL RICHARDSON. The HistoryofSir Charles Grandison, ed. Jocelyn Harris. 3 vols. London: Oxford, 1972; repr. Otago: Otago University Print, 2001. Pp. xlix ⫹ 482; 681; 485. $45 (set). Obtainablefrom ⬍steve.williams@stonebow.otago.ac. nz.⬎. Normally an unrevised reprint would not warrant a review, but an exception must be made for this welcome reappearance of ‘‘the book that Richardson had no desire to write.’’ The Oxford English Novels series in which this Grandison was first published 30 years ago gave us scholarly texts in sturdy hard covers. They were printed beautifully, a pleasure to handle, and attractively priced. The sole change is the binding, now flexible, vermilion, and soft, and equally robust and practical; even the publisher’s blurb and list of titles in preparation back in 1972 are faithfully reprinted . The virtues of the original edition remain intact. Ms. Harris’s pithy Introduction remains a masterpiece of its kind, ending with the nostalgic aroma of McKillop, Sale, and Blanchard. Richardson ’s final intentions, traceable through his usual wholesale revisions of the second , third, and fourth editions as well as the curious hybrid at Brown University, are manifest in the posthumous true fourth edition (1762) and Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s 1810 version (which claimed over 600 authorial revisions alone). Ms. Harris opted for the first edition as copy text, because the revisions were ‘‘not aesthetic ,’’but made in responsetocriticisms and suggestions from Richardson’s friends and readers. There is no doubting the authenticity of the revisions even in the posthumous texts, but this is a rare case where authorial revision and final intention play second fiddle to an extrapolated concept of the writer’s art. It was a difficult editorial decision at the time to plump for the first or the last edition, and Ms. Harris preferred the creative writerto the commercial printer satisfying the moral demands of his readership. Subtly chosen examples in her Introduction demonstrate the shifts of tone that gradually turned the novel into a different book every time it came off the press. After the briefest of Richardsonian ‘‘editorial’’ prefaces and the unconsciously comic cast of characters listing ‘‘Men,’’‘‘Women,’’and ‘‘Italians,’’wego souse (as Pamela would say) into another half-million or more epistolary words designed to ‘‘enliven as well as instruct.’’ The whole edition appeared in the World’s Classics series, in one uncompromising volume, in 1986, long since out of print. This new set, the only one available, is a bargain. VÁCLAV HAVEL. The Beggar’s Opera, trans. Paul Wilson, introd. Peter Steiner. Ithaca: Cornell, 2001. Pp. xxxi⫹84.$25. What a contrast: when John Gay’s satire opened in 1728, the Prime Minister Robert Walpole was in the audience; in 1975, Havel’s version, as much an assault on authority, was clandestinely staged in a Prague suburban pub away from police and bureaucratic eyes. Havel was later jailed, and there were no more performances under the communist dictatorship. Gay became rich, his play frequently revived , but Walpole suppressed his sequel Polly. Havel later became President of 84 Czechoslovakia. This protean Newgate peep into the underworld servesmanyoccasions . Where Gay was light, Havel is existential , psychological, probing into Kafkaesque dilemmas of political and personal controls on society. For Gay, Peachum is a scallywag without trace of conscience in his betrayals. Havel’s underworld figure summons philosophy and complains of ‘‘years fighting crime while appearing to commit it? Do you [Lockit] have the slightestinklingofwhat that means? Wearing two faces for so long?’’Filch, a cockney pickpocket in the original, has metamorphosed into a suicide : ‘‘I don’t want to go on living anyway . I’m not suited to this world.’’ Swashbuckling Macheath lives no more. Now the therapist, he admonishes Jenny the prostitute to be more herself: ‘‘Jenny, don’t you realize that you become yourself only through your relationships to others—and primarily through love?’’ This is not a comic remark . The play’s music, its opera and poetry are also absent, a verismo stage stripped bare like film noir. Erased too is much of the satiric or amusing irony of Gay’s vision, especially...

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