MTPDocEd
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Textual Introduction

Perhaps no major American author has left so large and varied an archive of literary remains as Mark Twain. If he seems at times to have thrown nothing away, his preservation of so much unachieved writing stems as much from his method of composition as from his well-known inability to distinguish his good work from his bad. It was his habit to compose several works at the same time; to pigeonhole projects when his interest or invention waned, then resurrect them when it was rekindled; and to extract passages from one work and introduce them in another. Moreover, a substantial portion of this labor, especially in his later years, was performed as therapy or experiment, with no thought of publication; or it recorded ideas Mark Twain considered so controversial that he believed they could only be published posthumously. Thus few, if any, of these stories and essays can be considered to have been finally abandoned. His unpublished writing is unfinished in every sense—not only is much of it fragmentary or unstructured, but it was always in a state of flux, subject while its author lived to constant change. It formed a store of raw material whose contents he might drastically alter, rearrange, or cannibalize.

Although the works in this volume are unified in theme, they are disparate in character and completeness. “The Victims” is scarcely more than a set of preliminary notes; “The International Lightning Trust” is a finished story which was in the hands of a publisher when Mark Twain [begin page 476] died. The volume includes autobiography (“Little Nelly Tells a Story Out of Her Own Head”); expressions of personal pain (“In My Bitterness”) and political conviction (“The Stupendous Procession”); and exercises written, according to the author, to while away the time (the “Little Bessie” sequence). Manuscript originally written for “The Secret History of Eddypus, the World-Empire” found its way instead into the periodical publication of chapters from Christian Science, though “Eddypus” itself is among the stories shelved without an ending. “Abner L. Jackson (About to Be) Deceased” has two endings; “A Letter from the Comet,” two beginnings. “The Refuge of the Derelicts” lacks structural coherence; “The Stupendous Procession,” formal consistency. “New-house's Jew Story” and “Randall's Jew Story” are two drafts recounting the same episode, while in his two efforts to satirize special providences by showering disastrous miracles on an Arkansas village, “The Holy Children” and “The Second Advent,” Mark Twain incorporates pages from the earlier version in the later one. “Flies and Russians” and “Passage from a Lecture” appear to be attempts to transform passages deleted from other works into independent essays.

The editor of works so varied in character and completeness cannot claim, as the editor of published writing may, that he is fulfilling the author's intentions. To put such work into print is itself to exceed the author's intentions, not only in the broad sense that he did not publish it, but because printing fixes its form. What is lost is the sense of manifold possibility which these works held for the author and which can still be discerned by surveying the manuscripts. In a number of intangible ways, a printed text cannot be quite the same as a manuscript: type is inevitably reductive, transforming the physical association of lines on the written page; calling attention to what is there rather than what is nascent; conveying a sense of permanence instead of fluidity. Moreover, in his unfinished writing, Mark Twain often had no settled intent, or failed to make his intentions clear. Thus, the goal of this edition is a modest one: to present texts at once readable, and, within the limits of type, true to each work as Mark Twain left it.

Copy-Text

Modern editorial theory stipulates that in order to produce a definitive text an editor must place before his readers not only the text itself, but all of the reasoning and evidence by which he reached his conclusions. When- [begin page 477] ever the editor must make a choice, he is obligated to report and defend it. As the first step toward fulfilling this obligation, the editor designates a “copy-text”—the basis for his own text, which he must follow in all particulars except where emendation is required. The choice of a copy-text determines the form in which the evidence for establishing the final text and recording its history is organized; and it informs the reader of the source of every reading in the edited text, for each reading must either originate in the copy-text or be listed with its source as an emendation. From the evidence presented in the textual apparatus, the reader must be able to reconstruct the copy-text and to judge the reasonableness of each decision to incorporate a variant reading in the edited text or to exclude it.

Thus two standards guide the choice of copy-text: the text chosen must permit the editor to marshal all the significant information about his text with the least possible confusion or distraction; and it must be the least corrupt text available to him, the text which is nearest the author's holograph. Although in practice the copy-text usually coincides with a single document—it is generally identical to a manuscript, typescript, or copy of an impression—“copy-text” is a conceptual tool; it “signifies an arrangement of words, abstracted from their physical embodiment.”1

This distinction between the abstract copy-text and the actual text or texts before the editor is crucial to the establishment of five of the texts in this volume.2 These texts survive both in manuscript and in typescripts bearing Mark Twain's holograph revisions. Because Mark Twain never typed his own literary work, the introduction of the typewriter caused the functions of creating a text and producing legible copy to be divided between author and typist. Typists make mistakes and authors revise their typescripts without noticing many of the new readings produced by typing errors and sophistications. On the typescript of “The Refuge of the Derelicts,” for example, Mark Twain altered the manuscript reading “then the roses would come back to his young wife's cheeks” to “then, oh, then the roses would come back to his young wife's cheeks.” On the same line of the typescript (219.14 in this volume) he missed the obvious typographical error “monyh” for manuscript “month,” and a few lines later (219.19) overlooked a typist's eye skip (she omitted “—a capitalist”) [begin page 478] which seriously affected the rhythm and sense of his prose. Thus neither manuscript nor typescript is both complete and completely authorial: the manuscript lacks the revisions made by the author on the typescript; the typescript bears the author's readings side by side with transcription errors he overlooked. In order to represent accurately the course of composition and the editorial choices made for these works, it is necessary to distinguish firmly between concept and object in choosing a copy-text—to disembody the editorial basis of the text from the particular documents with which the editor is confronted.

In practice, the choice is simple. Because the typescripts were made directly from the manuscript, typing errors can be detected by collating the typescript against the copy from which it was prepared. Any typed reading which is not identical to a manuscript reading can only have been introduced by the typist without authority.3 Only the author's inscription, in the manuscript or as an alteration on one of the typescripts, can be authoritative. Therefore, the copy-text chosen for these five works is Mark Twain's inscription, abstracted from the documents in which it is imbedded.4

The choice of copy-text for the remaining thirty-one works in the volume is unambiguous: only one authoritative text exists for each, and the copy-text naturally coincides with these unique documents.5 Mark Twain had eleven of these works typed, but did not revise the typescripts, so that they are without textual significance.

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Principles of Emendation

A conservative policy of emendation has been adopted. The texts are unmodernized—spellings, usages, and forms authorized by nineteenth-century dictionaries and grammar books are retained. Thus, old-fashioned spellings, like “ancle” and “recal,” and obsolete punctuation, like commas before opening and closing parentheses or semicolons inside closing quotation marks, have not been altered. Mark Twain was meticulous about his punctuation and resented any interference with it. Most emendations of punctuation correct mechanical errors—the use of a period in an interrogative sentence where a question mark is clearly needed, for instance, or the inadvertent omission of quotation marks in dialogue. Mark Twain's nonmechanical punctuation—especially the commas, semicolons, and dashes which serve his style or establish his meaning—was largely oral. It often appears to be idiosyncratic, but it has been respected even in its inconsistencies unless it is glaringly defective. He was less careful about spelling, capitalization, and hyphenation, however, and was often point-lessly inconsistent even when he was correct. His work contains outright errors, such as his habitual misspelling “sieze”; lapses stemming from haste or carelessness, like the omission of a letter in “superanuated” (“Lightning Trust,” 80.10); and miswriting, like the fusion of strokes in “mechanc's” for “mechanic's” (“Lightning Trust,” 91.19). Frequently the need for emendation arises from revision: Mark Twain often forgot to reduce an initial capital after adding new material to the beginning of a sentence, for instance. Obvious mistakes of this kind have been emended; speculative emendation, largely on literary grounds, has been necessary only when the editor has had to choose between alternative readings left unresolved by Mark Twain.

The correction of inconsistencies is more problematic, and a more flexible policy has been adopted toward it. Mark Twain found the chore of hunting down and changing his inconsistent forms distasteful and expected it to be performed by the editors and compositors of his published work. Because he expected others to smooth the formal texture of his work and because inconsistencies can be distracting to a reader, emendations for consistency have been adopted when the work as it stands is complete or nearly so, when retaining the inconsistency serves no conceivable purpose, and when Mark Twain's preference is discernible. As a rule, the resolution of inconsistencies is guided by the preponderant usage in the work itself. The consistent appearance of a form in the later [begin page 480] part of a work may indicate that it was the author's latest preference even if it is not numerically preponderant, however. The capital and lower-case forms of “Aunt” and “Aunty” appear in about equal number in “The Refuge of the Derelicts,” for instance, but because they are always capitalized in the last hundred pages of manuscript, the upper-case form has been adopted. Occasionally, when frequency of occurrence within a work is inconclusive, reference has been made to other writings of the same period. And in a few instances, as with the spellings “recognize/recognise,” Mark Twain appears to have been utterly indifferent, and the choice is essentially arbitrary. Emendations for consistency have only been made within each work, not imposed on one work from another. Since Mark Twain's practice varied from time to time, the form rejected in one work may be the one adopted in another. In every case, however, the form chosen has the warrant of the author's usage.

Inconsistent readings have not been changed if there is any possibility that Mark Twain may have intended them to remain. The alternative spellings “suit” and “suite” have been allowed to stand in “Lightning Trust,” for example, because Mark Twain may have felt that the latter spelling was a pompous one and used it for satirical reasons (see the textual note to 100.29). Sometimes the unfinished character of a work dictates the retention of inconsistencies. Their presence may be a sign of the author's indecision; or, although a problem may stem from lapse of memory, the manuscript may provide no indication of how to resolve it. In “Eddypus,” for instance, the Christian Science empire is said in one passage to have renamed Boston “Bostonflats” and in another “Eddyflats.” The inconsistency may have arisen from error or from uncertainty about which name to settle on. But in either case, to resolve it through emendation would distort the text by obscuring Mark Twain's indecision or by imposing a subjective editorial preference on an indifferent variant. Finally, a work may be so far from completion that a polished texture would clash with the rough state of the work as a whole. In order to preserve the flavor of a preliminary sketch in “The Victims,” its inconsistencies have been retained; in “The Stupendous Procession” the variations in format and style are not only consonant with the incomplete state of the work, but with the evidently experimental character of the essay. Mark Twain apparently tried to convey a sense of the line of march in the placement and type style he assigned to floats, banners, and participants; to impose consistency on those features he left inconsistent would be to foreclose options he left open. By the same token, to leave these features [begin page 481] of the work inconsistent but to style spelling and hyphenation consistently would produce a hybrid of editorial and authorial forms.

A few mechanical changes have been made throughout the volume without being listed in the tables of emendations. Forms peculiar to the written page have not been transferred to the printed page. Ampersands have been expanded to “and,” “&c.” to “etc.” Superscript letters have been lowered to the line. Eccentricities of Mark Twain's handwriting have not been noted unless they produce an ambiguity that requires an editorial decision. Mark Twain used both square brackets and parentheses where a modern author would use parentheses; square brackets are here reserved for editorial insertions; Mark Twain's square brackets appear here as parentheses. He designated chapter headings with a variety of abbreviations, in upper or in lower case, or with blank spaces. Sometimes he numbered his chapters; sometimes he lost track and left the numbers for others to fill in. Chapter headings in this volume have been standardized as “Chapter” followed by an arabic numeral. The typography of chapter headings and titles is editorial; periods and flourishes following headings and titles have been dropped. Mark Twain's signature, which appears at the end of some manuscripts, has also been omitted. The opening words of each chapter appear in small capitals with an ornamental initial letter. This convention is only noted in the emendations list if the words styled are italic in the copy-text.

Two forms of authorial revision in the typescript require editorial decision. Mark Twain frequently instructed his typist to omit manuscript underlinings because he wanted to rehear the work and add fresh emphasis marks. On the first page of the “Eddypus” manuscript, for instance, he wrote “Pay no attention to italics, Jean.” When he came to read a typescript, however, he sometimes carried out his intention of supplying new italics, but sometimes marked only part of it for emphasis, and sometimes none at all. When the typescript has been fully revised in this respect, it becomes the sole authority for italics in this edition; when it is not marked at all, the manuscript emphasis has been restored; partially marked typescripts have been considered individually. The textual commentary on each work for which revised typescript survives sets forth the authority for the italics in the edited text.

Sometimes, Mark Twain's revisions are occasioned by a typing error. Working without reference to the manuscript, he revised on the basis of the corrupted reading instead of restoring the manuscript reading. In “The Refuge of the Derelicts,” for instance, the typist skipped the word “pride”; [begin page 482] Mark Twain caught the error and supplied “endorsement,” without consulting the manuscript. Such changes produce two independent authorial variants, in effect, alternative readings. The conflict can only be resolved by emendation on literary grounds. A textual note identifies and discusses each of these choices.

Guide to the Textual Apparatus

The textual apparatus strives for completeness and clarity, so that interested readers can judge editorial decisions in the broadest context and have the evidence to reconstruct the full history of each text.

Depending on the complexity of the work, the apparatus may be divided into as many as five sections: “Textual Commentary,” “Textual Notes,” “Emendations of the Copy-Text,” “Word Division in the Copy-Text,” and “Mark Twain's Revisions.” Two special listings, for “The Second Advent” and “Little Nelly Tells a Story Out of Her Own Head,” also appear.

An objective designation of ink color is impossible because of variation in chemical reaction to age, light, and paper, and differences in shading caused by a change in pens or angle and pressure of writing. Therefore, ink colors, when noted, are designated only for purposes of comparison within each work. An ink may be called light blue in “Eddypus” to distinguish it from a darker blue in that work, but it is not necessarily the same color as the ink called light blue in “The Second Advent.”

Line numbers in cues and citations do not count titles and chapter headings. Alternative readings are separated by a slash; a vertical rule indicates the end of a line in the text under discussion.

Textual Commentary identifies the copy-text for each work and specifies those sections of apparatus which are omitted as irrelevant. Whenever a text presents unusual features which require expansion or modification of the general editorial principles set forth in the textual introduction, the commentary describes the problems and notes the new procedures.

Textual Notes specify those features of the text discussed generally in the commentary, record all of Mark Twain's marginalia, and discuss emendations, refusals to emend, or aspects of Mark Twain's revision which require fuller explanation.

Emendations of the Copy-Text lists every departure from the copy-text with the exception of the normalizations set forth in the textual introduction. The adopted reading as it appears in the text of this edition is in the [begin page 483] left-hand column, the rejected copy-text reading in the right-hand column. When Mark Twain's typist supplied a needed correction accepted by the editors, the symbol “TS” follows the adopted reading, but does not imply any “secondary authority” in the document cited. Emendations made by the editors without such aid appear without ascription. Starred emendations are discussed in textual notes. When an error was occasioned by a revision, a dagger appears at the entry to refer the reader to “Mark Twain's Revisions.”

Word Division in the Copy-Text presents the readings adopted when a compound which could be rendered as a solid or hyphenated word is hyphenated at the end of a line in the copy-text. These ambiguities are resolved in the same manner as Mark Twain's inconsistencies: by other appearances of the word or by parallels within the manuscript when possible, or by his practice in other works of the period when it is not. The table lists the words as they appear in the present text.

Mark Twain's Revisions records every change made by the author in manuscript and typescript. The only exceptions are essential corrections that Mark Twain made as he wrote or reread his work. These fall into six categories: (1) letters or words that have been mended, traced over, or canceled and rewritten for clarity; (2) false starts and slips of the pen; (3) corrected eye skips; (4) words or phrases that have been inadvertently repeated, then canceled; (5) corrected misspellings; and (6) inadvertent additions of letters or punctuation that have been subsequently canceled, for instance, an incorrect “they” or “then” altered to “the,” or superfluous quotation marks canceled at the end of a narrative passage.

When more than one ink color appears in a manuscript, the color of ink used for the initial inscription of each section of manuscript is given in centered headings; the ink color of a revision is mentioned only when it differs from that of the original inscription. All revisions appear in the manuscript unless their origin in a typescript is noted.

“Above” in the description signifies “interlined,” and “over” signifies “in the same space.” “Follows” and “followed by” are physical, not temporal, descriptions.

Following the textual apparatus, a list of ambiguous compounds hyphenated in the copy-texts and at the end of a line in this volume provides the correct form for quotation.

Editorial Notes
1 

G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Meaning of Copy-Text,” Studies in Bibliography 23 (1970):192.

2 

The works are “Little Bessie,” “The Refuge of the Derelicts,” “The International Lightning Trust,” “The Secret History of Eddypus, the World-Empire,” and “The Stupendous Procession.”

3 

Typed readings can have no authority so long as the typescript is a direct transcription of the manuscript, made without the intervention of verbal instructions from the author or a lost copy. The textual commentary for “Little Nelly Tells a Story Out of Her Own Head” considers the possibility that such intervention took place in the transmission of that text.

4 

One could arrive at the same edited text by designating either the manuscript or the typescript as copy-text. What would be sacrificed would be the clarity of the textual apparatus. If the manuscript were copy-text, each revision in the typescript would have to be listed as an emendation instead of appearing in the record of the work's course of composition where it belongs. If the typescript were copy-text, a list of emended typing errors—cruxes which can be detected and eliminated without editorial inference or judgment—would be intermingled with emendations that do call for editorial decision.

5 

With one exception, the copy-text for these works is Mark Twain's manuscript. Dixon Wecter's typescript of “Colloquy Between a Slum Child and a Moral Mentor” is the source for the text in this volume because it is the only accessible copy of the work. Apart from “Colloquy,” unrevised or modern typescripts and modern printings have only been used as an occasional aid to editorial correction of the author's errors and for conjectural reconstruction of readings in damaged manuscripts.