“I’ve copied out different editions for comparison, and they’ve got a little mixed in my head.”

“But surely the printers, with all their blunders and changes, can’t keep you from seeing what the author wrote!”

“The editions I mean are those of the author himself. He kept making changes, some of them very great changes. Not many people know the poem as Coleridge first published it. . .”

“Oh! He altered it afterwards. . .Did he make it better?”

“Much better.”

“Then why should you care any more for the first way of it?”

“Just because it is different. A thing not so good may have a different goodness. A man may not be so good as another man, and yet have some good things in him the other has not. That implies that not every change he made was for the better. And where he has put a better phrase, or passage, the former may yet be good. So you see a new form may be much better, and yet the old form remain much too good to be parted with. In any case it is intensely interesting to see how and why he changed a thing or its shape, and to ponder wherein it is for the better or the worse. That is to take it like a study in natural history. In that we learn how an animal grows different to meet a difference in the supply of its needs. In the varying editions of a poem we see how it alters to meet a new requirement of the poet’s mind. I don’t mean the cases are parallel, but they correspond somehow. If I were a schoolmaster, I should make my pupils compare different forms of the same poem, and find out why the poet made the changes. That would do far more for them, I think, than comparing poets with each other. The better poets are—that is, the more original they are—the less there is in them to compare.”

There and Back was serialized in The Sun during 1889 and 1890. MacDonald lectured in England in May and June of 1890. Hein states that MacDonald worked on the proofs for the book edition during that spring and summer in the midst of his travels. ² (It does seem, however, that he must not have gone over these proofs with a great deal of care not to catch the two Arthurs and repeated chapter titles.) The bound edition from Kegan Paul was not released until 1891. It was the last of MacDonald’s books to be published in a three-volume “triple decker” edition.

Rolland Hein comments on the release of the book.

“When There and Back finally appeared in April 1891, The Athenaeum observed the author’s purpose was ‘Miltonic, as ever; nothing less than to “justify the ways of God to men,”’ and felt it would therefore be distasteful to many readers. ³ Curiously, the reviewer chose to commend MacDonald’s portraits of several of the minor characters as the most noteworthy and thus, by silence, reflected adversely on the major ones. But Richard and Barbara, because they are shown as developing into MacDonald’s ideal, rather than possessing it before the story begins, may be viewed as among the most real and convincing characters he drew over his long career. His not introducing the religious themes until the story is well underway also gives the imagination time to become acquainted with the characters before attention is called to the religious argument.” ⁴