Textual criticism

Abstract

If the source critic assumes that the author derived his ideas and images from some earlier text, the textual critic tries to determine what steps the author took in order to constitute an authoritative or final text of his own. Almost all of James’s novels appear in three forms: first in a serialized magazine appearance, then as a first-edition book, and finally as a volume in the 1907 New York Edition of his collected works. Many of these novels were revised hastily between their first and second appearances, and a number of the earlier ones underwent extensive revision for the New York Edition. The result is, according to some critics, a clash of styles. For example, The American, written in the relatively simpler style of 1877, is seen by some readers as marred by the more orotund phrasings added by James when he revised it more than thirty years later.