Collected Works Woolf, Virginia: Complete Works | v.11.1 | Update 6 Feb 2024

[pynch]

I intend to proof most of the books contained in this collection against (if possible) British print editions. Here are the first four, with lots of puncuation and spelling mistakes fixed, but also some missing words and lines restored:

Proofed Monday or Tuesday against the 1921 Harcourt Brace edition and corrected about 50 mistakes. (The first exception to the rule: as the first British edition is riddled with mistakes, I used the first American one. Leonard Woolf famously called the Hogarth Press edition “one of the worst printed books ever published.”)

Proofed Jacob’s Room against the 1929 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 60 mistakes.

Proofed A Haunted House and Other Short Stories against the 1943 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 110 mistakes.

Proofed To the Lighthouse against the 1930 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 630 mistakes and variants (my text was based on an American edition before!), not counting the 400 restored full stops after Mr or Mrs. According to the foreword of the 2000 Penguin edition, the reason for the huge number of variants lies in the fact that Woolf didn’t revise/correct the page proofs of the British and American editions consistently.
I deliberately do not fix mistakes that are in the print editions, but in this case I kept the correction of the misnumbered chapters in the third section “The Lighthouse” (they left out n° 2).
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Some words on the method I used:
I generated new raw OCRs of the print editions and compared the resulting epubs with the texts of my edition twice, using the Calibre tool. This might not be 100% foolproof, but it’s quite effective. I consider these texts to be fairly accurate now. Please let me know if you find any mistakes in them.
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By the way, the Digital Library of India is a good resource for scans of books still copyrighted in the US, but public domain in other countries.
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Does anyone of you own a pre-1943 Hogarth Press edition of The Waves? I was surprised to see in the only one I could find (the 1960 reprint of the 1943 ‘New’ edition) that there are double spaces instead of full stops. I am wondering if this had always been the case (the American editions use full stops). Double spaces would not be a good idea for epubs, so I might work with the American edition for this one.

[tempura]

Since, I am from India myself specifically the place where the Digital Library of India server is being hosted, I knew about the Digital Library, but I didn't really know about this particular piece of information. So, I thank you for that. Also, good to see a new update. As always you do a wonderful work with your files.

[pynch]

Another bunch of books corrected:

Proofed Mrs Dalloway against the 1947 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 530 mistakes and variants.

Proofed The Common Reader I against the 1951 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 40 mistakes.

Proofed Between the Acts against the 1947 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 30 mistakes.

Proofed The Moment, and Other Essays (including On Being Ill) against the 1947 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 290 mistakes and variants.

Proofed Granite and Rainbow against the 1958 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 50 mistakes.

Proofed Women and Writing against the 1979 Harcourt Brace edition and corrected 4 mistakes.

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I have found the first British edition of The Waves in a library and it does have full stops, so I won’t have to use the American printing. What a relief.

[HarryT]

Great work, pynch! Many thanks for this.

[pynch]

Thanks, Harry, you’re very welcome.

[pynch]

I have added the sixth volume of her letters, Leave the Letters Till We’re Dead, which covers the years 1936 through 1941, sourced from a prehistoric CD-Rom (1997 A.D.!). The missing volumes I and II and the early journals will follow as soon as I find the fun in copying and pasting 1500 single pages from the CD.

I’m currently proofreading the essays and reviews of the 6-volume edition and have finished correcting the 173 essays she published between 1919 and 1940. As the essay titles don’t always tell you what they’re about, there’s also an index now of the authors whose books she reviewed.

[anacreon]

Dear Pynch,
Many thanks again! I was in London last week, and visited the very interesting exhibition about Virginia Woolf at the National Portrait Gallery. I've ordered the "catalogue", not really a catalogue, but a book by the curator, which might interest you and others subscribers of this thread.

PS: you forgot to update the list of works in the first post.

[pynch]

Originally Posted by anacreon

Dear Pynch,
Many thanks again! I was in London last week, and visited the very interesting exhibition about Virginia Woolf at the National Portrait Gallery. I've ordered the "catalogue", not really a catalogue, but a book by the curator, which might interest you and others subscribers of this thread.

PS: you forgot to update the list of works in the first post.

Thanks for the info. They also have some materials on their website. (She had that elegant way of smoking a cigarette one doesn’t see that often anymore.)

[pynch]

Proofed The Waves against the 1931 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 330 mistakes and variants.

Proofed Flush: A Biography against the second 1933 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 280 mistakes and variants.

Proofed The Death of the Moth and other essays against the 1981 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 120 mistakes.

Proofed The Captain’s Death Bed and other essays against the 1950 Hogarth Press edition and corrected about 70 mistakes.

[johnsalmond]

Pynch:
Thanks for this excellent resource for a wonderful writer who all should read!!
John Salmond
Canberra Australia

[pynch]

You’re very welcome.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by pynch

It might be too early in the morning for me to try to explain this, but I think that writers publish their texts and not their lives. And as I worship their writings, anything I add could only reduce them.

Many of the writers whose work is defined popularly by their bios would agree with you. Cf. E. Hemingway, V. Woolf, C. Isherwood, K. Acker, E. St-V Millay, etc. I suspect that even the confessional poets would have concurred (Berryman, Lowell, Sexton, Snodgrass, Plath). Sylvia Plath probably said as much in some interview I've forgotten.

Baudelaire would have laughed, sneered or both at the thought of his bio being important. The astonishingly humble Mr. Keats would have shrugged at the idea, unable to comprehend that any reader could sustain the merest whisper of an interest in K.'s life.

[lolalaguna]

Dear Pynch,
I was reading the essays and I perceived that the appendix of those volumes are not there. Am I wrong? I didn't find them either in the scans you send me to check the eventuals mistakes (I'm sorry for working too slow on it, but my phd requires all my time and eyes and hands). I was looking for a transcript version of Woolf's essay "Byron and Mr Briggs" that should appears, I think, as appendix II on volume III of the essays... Do you know anything about it?

I'm sorry for my poor writing in english

Anyway, greetings from Brazil and thanks again!
Carmen

[pynch]

I have ignored the transcripts of the unpublished essays when I scanned the books, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.

[lolalaguna]

Originally Posted by pynch

I have ignored the transcripts of the unpublished essays when I scanned the books, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.

It's ok, Pynch, I just wanted to know if I was wrong about it. Thanks!