Transatlantic Twins: Towards a History of British and American Editions

By:
Dr J. Lawrence Mitchell
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It has often been said in jest that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language. The focus of attention in this paper will be upon a subset of those twentieth-century works of fiction that have seen publication on both sides of the Atlantic. These “transatlantic twins,” have, for the most part, been given short shrift in author bibliographies and have never garnered the scholarly attention they deserve. I will explore the different—sometimes radically different—ways in which the same books are presented at home and abroad and the cultural, linguistic and sociological implications thereof. The areas in which variation is likely to be encountered include such seemingly mundane details as binding, date of publication, dust-jacket format, and endpapers—but such details often prove crucial to our understanding of the history of publication. Sometimes there may be substantive differences in the contents, such as chapters / stories reordered or omitted; and even titles get changed—Conrad’s 1897 “The Nigger of the Narcissus” became “The Children of the Sea”, Graham Greene’s 1932 “Stamboul Train” became “Orient Express” and Harry Potter’s “Philosopher’s Stone” became a “Sorcerer’s Stone” in the American version.


Keywords: British, American, Fiction, Editions, Publication, History
Stream: Books, Writing and Reading, Publishing
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation in English
Paper: Transatlantic Twins

Dr J. Lawrence Mitchell

Professor, Department of English, Texas A&M University
USA

J. Lawrence Mitchell is Professor of English at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he served as head of department for fourteen years. Previously he taught at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and has held visiting appointments in Beijing, China, and Sunderland, England. He was educated at King’s College London (B.A., 1962) and the University of Iowa (M.A. 1968, PH.D, 1971). His scholarly interests are both linguistic and literary, with a focus on historical linguistics and Modern British Fiction, and he is currently editor of The Powys Journal. He recently published T. F. Powys: Aspects of a Life (Brynmill, 2005) and his articles have appeared in such outlets as The American Journal of Germanic Linguistics, American Literary Realism, The Canadian Journal of Linguistics, James Joyce Quarterly, The Journal of New Zealand Literature, The Library Chronicle, The Journal of Modern Literature, Planet, PN Review and Scriptorium.

Ref: B06P0131