Today in Adventures with Edith: I thought I would work on the galley proofs of the Scribner’s Magazine version for a while to take a break from the second pass collation of the MS. Unless I wanted to retype all five chapters (spoiler alert: I didn’t), this involves reverse-engineering a transcription of the galley proofs from the Scribner’s Magazine version by going line by line until they’ve been reconstructed & then inserting EW’s corrections. So far, so good.

All was well until I scrolled ahead and realized that there are TWO sets of corrected galley proofs. Wharton made one set of changes, turned it in, and then made a whole other set that doesn’t have any of the first changes listed. My favorite remark today was this one, left by a patient compositor: “To author: Many of the corrections made on this set of proofs conflict with those on previous set–returned herewith.”