The typescript is thus probably Mitchell’s top copy of the final version the carbon of which went to Jarrold to be set in type, where it was edited and corrected. Had Mitchell lived, he would probably have marked those corrections on to the typescript and sent it on its way to the US for publication.

A comparison of this unique copy with the published 1933 text suggests few changes, though interesting ones. In the absence of proofs of 1933 (which do not seem to have survived), the text of this reprint is the 1933 version, as being overseen by the author – and without proofs we cannot tell which divergencies from the typescripts are Mitchell’s, and which the publishers’ own suggestions. The 1937 version, while catching some errors, offers no significant improvements and the 1970 version repeats the text of 1933 by photographic reprinting. In the present edition, obvious misprints have been silently corrected.

Notes

1MS Edinburgh University Library. To C. M. Grieve, 28 November 1960.

2MS Edinburgh University Library. To C. M. Grieve, 17 February 1937.

3Ian Campbell, ‘Gibbon and MacDiarmid at Play: The Evolution of Scottish Scene’, The Bibliotheck 13 (2), 1986, p. 52.

AN INTRODUCTORY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO J. L. MITCHELL

For lives of Grassic Gibbon see I. S. Munro, Leslie Mitchell: Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Edinburgh and London, 1966); Munro also edited A Scots Hairst (London, 1967) with reprints of biographical and autobiographical material from Scottish Scene (1934). Further important biographical and critical material is found in Douglas F. Young, Beyond the Sunset (Aberdeen, 1973) and W. K. Malcolm, A Blasphemer and Reformer (Aberdeen, 1984). There is a trenchant chapter in Douglas Gifford, Neil M. Gunn and Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Edinburgh, 1983). Substantial sections appear in Alan Bold, Modern Scottish Literature (London, 1983), F. R. Hart, The Scottish Novel: A Critical Survey (London, 1977), I. Murray and Bob Tait, Ten Modern Scottish Novels (Aberdeen, 1984) and R. Watson, The Literature of Scotland (London, 1984). Full bibliographies have appeared in a series of articles in The Bibliotheck, themselves listed in and complemented by Ian Campbell, ‘Lewis Grassic Gibbon Correspondence: A Background and Checklist’, The Bibliotheck 12, 1 (1984), 46–57. An authoritative overall guide is W. R.