letter from Carlyle to Napier, November 23, 1830, in which he says: "My respected friend your predecessor [Jeffrey] had some difficulty with me in adjusting the respective prerogatives of Author and Editor, for though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write nothing without studying if possible to the bottom, and writing always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general nowise to my mind."[1] Napier also heard from Jeffrey who wrote, "I fear Carlyle will not do, that is, if you do not take the liberties and the pains with him that I did, by striking out freely, and writing in occasionally."[2] Macaulay was perhaps less sensitive; at all events, he wrote to Napier that he quite approved the alterations Napier had made in his article on Mackintosh.[3]
Mrs. Gaskell took umbrage at what she regarded as a reflection on Mr. Gaskell's ability as a critic. She wrote Dickens, objecting to "the purple patches with which he was anxious to embroider her work." All her work had been criticized by her husband, she wrote, and therefore she felt that what was good enough to pass his scrutiny was good enough for the public. She "keenly resented any alteration in her manuscript, and wrote off in great haste to Dickens," who had changed a complimentary allusion to Pickwick Papers in the first Cranford paper, "demanding the withdrawal of her sketch," but it was too late as it had already been sent to the printer of Household Words.[4]
Dickens apparently had little hesitation in altering the manuscripts of his contributors and his letters show the "delicate changes" and the rejection of titles that he made in them,[5] although himself indignant when the slightest change was made in his own manuscripts.[6]
- ↑ Macvey Napier, Selection from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, Esq., p. 96.
- ↑ Ib., p. 126.
- ↑ Ib., p. 173.
- ↑ Mrs. Ellis H. Chadwick, Mrs. Gaskell Haunts Homes and Stories, pp. 143–144, 184.
- ↑ R. C. Lehmann, Charles Dickens as Editor, pp. 51, 65, 70, 99–101, 126, 136, 188, 194, 319.
- ↑ Ibid, pp. 29–32.
