Texts and Editions of Jean Rhys: Another Voyage in the Dark?

Abstract

This article examines the state of the textual editions of Jean Rhys's work. When we read, teach and write about Rhys, what are the texts that we use and are these texts the ones that we really want or the ones that we just have to use because there are no others available? The article suggests that future interpretation of Rhys's work can best be served by improved editions of her works and analyses different strategies for producing such texts, whether in terms of scholarly editions, practical reading editions, or electronic or genetic editions. The complex compositional history of many of Rhys's texts (such as Wide Sargasso Sea or Voyage in the Dark), the article argues, deserves better editions than exist currently.

Keywords:

• Jean Rhys
• textual studies
• scholarly editing

Notes

¹For a brief discussion of the versions of this poem, see Thacker(forthcoming).

²Gabler's version is used for the trade paperback edition, Ulysses: The Corrected Text, first published by Bodley Head, Penguin and Random House in 1986. For a brief overview of the complex composition and publication history of this text (of which many other versions are now available), see Johnson (1993: xxxviii–lvi).

³For a discussion of ‘practical editions’, see, inter alia, Bowers (1969) and Shillingsburg (2005).

⁴The series editor of the Penguin editions was the late Julia Briggs. The general editors of the Cambridge editions are Jane Goldman and Susan Sellers, and the first editions were published recently (see Woolf 2011a, 2011b). Anna Snaith's edition of The Years will be the next volume published.

⁵Penguin Books were uninterested when approached about producing new editions of Rhys's works. I am, however, in discussions with a major publisher about the possibility of a scholarly edition of her works.

⁶The Dorothy Richardson Society has a biennial conference and an online journal (see http://dorothyrichardson.org/index.html). The Katherine Mansfield Society has recently launched a journal devoted to her works, published by Edinburgh University Press, and also holds an annual conference (see www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/). A new two-volume edition of Mansfield's short stories is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.

⁷ Asphodel, for example, an autobiographical sequel to the published Her, was published by Duke University Press in 1992 and edited by Robert Spoo. This was a manuscript, it might be noted, upon which H.D. had written ‘DESTROY’. Editors, thus, we might note, do not always pay attention to the intentions of authors. Other newly published H.D. works include Paint It Today (1992) and the Florida Press edition of The Gift (1998).

⁸I do not have the space here to survey the status of editions of writers such as Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy or Gertrude Stein. None, however, have complete scholarly editions at present.

⁹A recent addition is the student guide by Savory (2009).

¹⁰Raiskin writes in her preface that: ‘Instead of distracting readers with footnotes referring to the numerous slight changes Rhys made while editing the novel, I have selected a number of letters she wrote that address her process of composition’ (Rhys 1999: x). While this editorial decision does produce a cleaner reading text, it does not, of course, present the textual variants that one might wish for in a major literary edition.

¹¹The character is Julia in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (Rhys 1971: 9).

¹²For a discussion of this passage, see Thacker (2003: 210–12).

¹³Much of this information can be found throughout Carole Angier's excellent biography, Jean Rhys: Life and Work (Angier 1992). My point is that it would be more helpful if it could also be found within the pages of some of the editions of the novels.

¹⁴The McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, USA, contains the four coloured exercise books Rhys used for her own work. Angier notes that Rhys agreed to drop these stories from the UK volume of Tigers are Better-Looking for being too ‘sad and bitter’ (Angier 1992: 581).

¹⁵See Add. MS 57858, British Library, London.

¹⁶For Time and Tide, see Spender (1984).

¹⁷For a discussion of this story, see Hulme (2000: 223–30).

¹⁸Again, Angier is excellent for dating the composition of many of the stories (Angier 1992).

¹⁹The other novel was Good Morning, Midnight.

²⁰Letter, 16 October 1968, Series 2: Correspondence, Collection 1976–011, Jean Rhys Papers, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, USA.

²¹According to Angier's biography, there is also considerable unpublished material in the possession of Rhys's literary executor Francis Wyndham (Angier 1992).

²²For information on the composition of Triple Sec, see Angier (1992: 669–70).

²³The manuscript in the British Library mistakenly refers to this as a play set in Barbados (see Add. 57856), but English Harbour is located in Antigua. For Rhys's attempt to write about it, see Rhys (1985: 49–50).

²⁴ Perversity was republished in 2005.

²⁵Angier thinks the original ending makes for a ‘more clichéd and sentimental novel’ (Angier 1992: 295).

²⁶For an attack upon the tradition of editing with respect to ‘final authorial intention’, see McGann (1983: esp. ch. 6; 1991: pt. 1). For a recent defence of the role of intentions in editorial theory, see Shillingsburg (2006: ch. 3).

²⁷The original ending of the novel was first published in 1985, with an introduction by Nancy Hemond Brown, in London Magazine (Brown 1985).

²⁸For a discussion of the status of the Triple Sec typescript, see Angier (1992: 670).

²⁹For clear overviews of the development of genetic criticism, see Falconer (1993) and Van Hulle (2004).

³⁰For genetic work on Finnegans Wake, see Fordham (2007) and Van Hulle (2004: ch. 6).

³¹See Woolf Online at www.woolfonline.com/.

³²For the story of Rhys's failure to correct the proofs, see Angier (1992: 512).