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Aspenden House, Buntingford, Herts.—Discusses the reprinting of his own Outlines of Modern English Literature, and praises McKerrow’s Introduction to Bibliography.

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Transcript

Aspenden House, Buntingford, Herts.
23 Nov. 1927

Dear McKerrow,

I will now read “Outlines” {1} through again. But I fancy it should be possible to cast plates from the moulds, and reprint as things stand. You have a list of a few minor corrections. I don’t know if these are all necessary.

What are we to do in the case of authors who have died since the book was published,—I mean as to dates, & tenses? However, I’ll write to you again in a few days.

I should just like to say how splendid I think your “Introduction to Bibliography”. It is really most admirably complete and helpful. I don’t think you refer anywhere to the use of the word “printing” to mean something falling between an edition and an issue. Hutchins advocates it in his review of my “Gulliver” in R.E.S. {2} But it seems to me the word may easily confuse the issue(!) in many instances. Is it needed?

very sincerely
Harold Williams

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{1} Williams’s Outlines of Modern English Literature, first published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1920. A revised second impression was issued in 1928.

{2} Henry Clinton Hutchins’s review of Williams’s edition of Gulliver’s Travels (1926) in the Review of English Studies, vol. iii, no. 12 (Oct. 1927), 466-73.