The Complex History
|
| The evolution of ML printings of Up Stream is more complex than indicated in the Toledano Guide. Lewisohn's autobiographical volume was originally published by Boni and Liveright in 1922. The B&L plates were too large for the ML's format, so when Cerf and Klopfer decided to add it to the ML in 1926 they had to reset the text. When Lewisohn found out that the book was being reset, he asked to make revisions in the text -- something that wouldn't have been possible if the ML had been able to use the original plates. The revisions, he told Klopfer, were of great moral and literary importance to him. Most of the passages he rewrote concerned his wife Mary, from whom he had separated since the book was originally published. He removed a number of references to his wife in the ML edition and rewrote others. For example:
B&L text: "My father was, characteristically, aglow; he saw visions of grandeur. My mother's womanly and solitary heart yearned over Mary. So Mary and I were married and we all settled down in an old, roomy house in Queenshaven. The house overlooked the bay and from our study windows Mary and I watched the horned moon float over the silken swell of the dark waters and listened to the tide...." (B&L, p. 135) ML text, 1st printing: "My father was, characteristically, aglow; he saw visions of grandeur. Mary, furthermore, insisted that we must be married to save her honor and her very life. I was a gentleman still and a Southerner. I tried to hope many things to still the fatal monitions within me.... We all settled down together in an old house overlooking the bay. But Mary's responsibilities to her family robbed her of the power, even though she had had the will, to be my wife or -- despite her age, the daughter of my parents. . . . She was a middle-aged woman who had insisted on marrying a man not much older than her oldest child. She acted like Dora Copperfield.... Something indomitable must have been in me that I did not go under ... a strength and a faith…." (ML 1st printing, pp. 159-60) Mary Lewisohn threatened to sue the ML for libel after she saw the ML edition. She objected specifically to the passage, "Mary, furthermore, insisted that we must be married to save her honor and her very life." The second ML printing in November 1927 omitted the passage quoted above and the following passage from the new introduction Lewisohn wrote for the ML edition: "I say this in all humility and say it in order to record the fact that the general texture of Up Stream remained free, has always been free, of the unveracity that marked a small number of passages now changed or expunged. Why, in my ardent search for the truth of things, did I deliberately falsify one element in my life and draw falsely one character? Through a mistaken kindliness? Yes. But more through shame -- shame of the all but unbelievable physical and moral facts. . . . That blot on the book has now been wiped out. . . . If Up Stream is still worthy of being read; if it is worthy of being remembered -- let it be read and remembered in the form in which it is now definitively printed here. . . ."(1st printing, p. xi) The introduction occupies pp. vii-xii in the first printing. The omission of the passage quoted above results in the introduction appearing in the second printing on pp. vii-xi. But Mary Lewisohn was not satisfied with the changes in the second printing. Three days after the second printing was released, the ML agreed to drop the introduction altogether and substitute the original Boni & Liveright text for the revisions supplied by Lewisohn. The introduction was cut out of all remaining copies of the second printing. The table of contents which listed the introduction is also removed in all copies I’ve examined. The stubs of four leaves remain visible. In bibliographical terms, these copies constitute the second state of the second printing. This should have settled the matter, but somebody made a huge blunder when the third ML printing was made in July 1928. The third printing retained Lewisohn’s introduction in violation of the settlement with Mary Lewisohn. The three leaves containing the introduction were cut out of the book, apparently before any copies were distributed. A newly printed leaf with the note required by the ML’s agreement with Mary Lewisohn, was pasted to the stub of one of the cancelled leaves. The note reads: "The Modern Library announces with this definitive edition, the final form of UP STREAM corrected to correspond with the original text published by Boni and Liveright, 1922." There is a bibliographical puzzle with the third printing that I haven’t resolved. In some copies the final gathering consists of 14 leaves with a fall 1928 ML list on the last two leaves (pp. [301-304]). In others the final gathering consists of 16 leaves with the fall 1928 list on pp. [301-304] followed by two blank leaves (pp. [305-308]). It's unlikely that there would have been two separate printings with fall 1928 lists both requiring the cancellation of Lewisohn’s introduction. The printer may have realized during the print run that the introduction had been included by mistake and that a newly printed leaf would have to be added to the book with the statement about the "definitive edition" quoted above. The printer may have removed the plates for the final during the print run, substituted two identical plates containing the statement "The Modern Library announces with this definitive edition . . ." for the two blank leaves, repositioned the plates on the press, and completed the printing with enough copies of the leaf that would have to be tipped in to replace the introduction that had been printed by mistake. This is the only explanation I’ve been able to think of, but I’ll have to check with some printer friends to see if this hypothesis is plausible. The fourth printing in spring 1929 appears to have been the first to satisfy the requirements of the ML’s agreement with Mary Lewisohn without resorting to cancellation (the removal of leaves containing the introduction). The statement "The Modern Library announces with this definitive edition, the final form of UP STREAM corrected to correspond with the original text published by Boni and Liveright, 1922." appears on the third leaf of the first gathering, and the table of contents is the first to omit reference to Lewisohn’s introduction. The first three printings were bound in imitation leather (Henry [Toledano]’s binding 4). The fourth printing is bound in balloon cloth (Henry’s binding 5). The first three printings (1926, 1927, 1928) had the first ML, Inc. typographic jacket, with the following text on the front panel: "LUDWIG LEWISOHN’s "Up Stream" appeared first in the Spring of 1922. The color and charm of the book and the continuous beauty of its prose established it immediately as an important and permanent contribution to American letters. The Modern Library edition, containing a new introduction by the author, and certain revisions that he deemed vital in the text, will undoubtedly win a tremendous new audience for the book." [...] The fourth printing has the new uniform typographic jacket introduced in fall 1929. This jacket has the following statement on the front panel: "The original text complete and unabridged, with a prologue by the author." |