II.C.1: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Weaver’s Manuscript Errata for the English Second Edition (1917)
Material Description and Collation
The manuscript consists of a loose sheet of rolled blue paper, with writing on both sides of the sheet in Harriet Shaw Weaver’s hand in black ink. The sheet has an illegible watermark with an image of a knight’s helmet.
Title
The recto of the sheet is headed “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Corrections“.
Measurements
The sheet measures 32.9 x 20.2 cm.
Contents
The manuscript consists of a list of 70 corrections by Harriet Shaw Weaver to the first American edition of A Portrait (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1916; Slocum and Cahoon A11) for the first English edition with English sheets (London: Egoist Ltd., 1918; Slocum and Cahoon A13). The errata list is composed of 5 headings from left to right: “Page“, “Paragraph“, “>Line“, “Incorrect” and “Correct“; the columns are separated by lines drawn in lead pencil.
By 10 April 1917, Joyce had also made his own errata list (Yale MS 10.1), which he sent to his agent J.B. Pinker in London, who had the list typed (see MS II.B.2). 53 of the corrections on the errata list here coincide with Joyce’s own corrections; the other 17 corrections here are Weaver’s (see A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, edited by Hans Walter Gabler with Walter Hettche [New York and London: Garland, 1993], pp. 7–9). Subsequently, Weaver marked up a copy of the first English edition, which had been printed with American sheets, with the errata here and on Joyce’s list, for use as the printers’ exemplar for the first English edition with English sheets (i.e. the second edition).
Dating
Weaver prepared this errata list in the spring of 1917 and sent it to Huebsch on 2 May 1917, together with MS II.C.2.
Other Markings
B.W. Huebsch wrote “Sent by | Miss Weaver | May 2 / 17” in lead pencil in the upper left corner of the recto.
Publication
The manuscript has been reproduced in black and white photo-facsimile on JJA 7.454–457.
Notes
For whatever reason, Huebsch did not incorporate these corrections in his third printing of A Portrait (1918) and, therefore, the third English printing (London: Egoist Ltd., 1921), which was again printed with the uncorrected American sheets, was in fact another issue of the first American edition. Peter Spielberg compiled a list of corrections taken from MSS II.C.1 and C.2 and it appears in his “James Joyce’s Errata for American Editors of A Portrait of the Artist,” in Joyce’s Portrait: Criticisms and Critiques, edited by Thomas Connolly (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962), pp. 318–328. The sheet has been folded once horizontally and once vertically.