| Chapter : | Introduction |
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“concerns the meanings embodied in the work” (qtd. in West, “Historical” 487). For West,
In this sense, West did not feel it imperative to restore all of Dreiser's original language, only that which constitutes Dreiser's active intention. Nevertheless, a comparison of the Barrett typescript and the Pennsylvania edition shows that West restored virtually all of Dreiser's original language, making very few changes of his own. West did include some Harper changes in the recognition that “[a]uthors can delegate intention to editors or amanuenses, and these persons can act in the author's stead, correcting errors and repairing verbal confusions in ways that are satisfactory and beneficial to the author” (487).
The restored edition of Jennie Gerhardt is, as Brennan states, an eclectic text. However, West argues that “[t]he history of Jennie Gerhardt is so complicated that definitiveness is not possible,” and therefore an eclectic text is the only possible solution (485). As is common in most restored editions, the Pennsylvania edition does provide the reader with an index listing all cuts and emendations made by the Harper editors and the pages on which they appear (or should appear). In this way, the reader can choose to accept or reject West's critical decisions. As a matter of fact, the reader could even construct an entirely different restored edition from the one West offers.
The critical discussion of which edition is authoritative, the restored edition or the 1911 Harper edition, began with the publication of Jennie Gerhardt: New Essays on the Restored Text (1995). In his review of the book, however, Brennan states that although the essays are useful in their “interchange of ideas, information, and interpretations” concerning the novel, only one of the nineteen essays in the book specifically examines