Genesis and Revision in Modern British and Irish Writers

This unusually diverse collection of ten essays, devoted to British and Irish writers and poets from 1895 to the present, explores many aspects of the creative process, from inspiration to publication and beyond. The volume shows how writers’ manuscripts and revisions give us a better understanding of their published work by drawing on unpublished archival sources to unveil, across genre and gender, the intricacies of their craft. It examines how the paper medium and writing implements influence the act of composition; reveals the latest developments in such fields as life writing and digital humanities--especially how modern scholars, through the filter of hypertext, revisit modernist texts, or respond to newly-found material; and analyzes the hidden handwork, be it throughout the writer’s exhaustive self-editing process or the writer-editor collaboration. Finally, it captures an award-winning poet and a living novelist reflecting upon their craft and work in progress.

Jonathan Bloom is Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris-Dauphine, Paris Sciences & Lettres, France. He has published widely and his book The Art of Revision in the Short Stories of V. S. Pritchett and William Trevor (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) received critical acclaim. He has been awarded three Harry Ransom Center Fellowships and is a member of the University of Montpellier III research group EMMA.

Catherine Rovera is Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris-Dauphine and head of the James Joyce research team at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes (ITEM, CNRS/ENS), Paris Sciences & Lettres, France. A specialist in genetic criticism and modernism, she is the author of a monograph titled Genèses d’une folie créole: Jean Rhys et Jane Eyre (Paris: Hermann, 2015).