Of particular interest in the publication of the U.K and U.S. editions is the toning down and removal of profanity from the U.K. edition in the Lothrop/Routledge U.S. editions. Obviously this was not a case where the same plates were used, but a completely revised U.S. edition was produced.

The following parallel passages yet again raise the intriguing question for which we have no answer—who made these changes, MacDonald or an unknown editor working for one of the American publishers, careful over the more sensitive ears of American readers?

From Kegan Paul’s one-volume U.K. edition:

“The rascal will be too many for me. . .Damn it. . .”

“Damn the rascal! I never wronged his mother. . .”

“Mrs. Manson told me. . .damned liar she always was!”. . .

“You were so damned ugly. . .”

“Oh, give them the cheque and be damned to them. . .”

“Oh, damn your conscience. . .”

“Why, damn it, boy! don't you understand. . .”

“Oh, rot Mrs. Manson! she told you a damned lie!”

But from Lothrop’s U.S. edition:

“The rascal will be too many for me. . .Curse it all. . .”

“What do you mean, rascal! I never wronged your mother. . .”

“Mrs. Manson told me. . .like the liar she always was!”. . .

“You were so infernally ugly. . .”

“Oh, give them the cheque and be hanged to them. . .”

“Oh, hang your conscience. . .”

“Why, hang it, boy! don't you understand. . .”

“Oh, rot Mrs. Manson! she told you a lie!”

We noted exactly this distinction in Castle Warlock, and the question such passages raise about the order of writing and publication. Such “edits” are not always made without requiring other rewordings. Though the differences between the U.K. and U.S. editions are relatively minor, nothing on the scale of Castle Warlock and Donal Grant, they are yet sufficient as I look at them for me to think they came at MacDonald’s own hand. In that case, however, the perplexity of the two Arthurs remains all the more puzzling.

Finally, I must admit to delight in reading, yet again, MacDonald’s prophetic look a century ahead at my own work analyzing his texts, and trying to get into his head about the whys of his changes and edits, and the sequences of various edition. He obviously did exactly the same thing with his favorite authors. In describing Richard’s textual analysis, he is clearly describing himself!

The volume in which Richard had first read the story had come into his hands as one of a set his father had to bind. It belonged to a worshipper of Coleridge, who had possessed himself of every edition of every book he had written, or had had a share in writing. There he read first the final form of The Rime as it appeared in the Sibylline Leaves of 1817. But when he came to look at that in the Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, he found differences many and great between the two. He also found in the set an edition with a form of the poem differing considerably from the last as well as the first. He had brought together and compared all these forms of the poem, noting every minutest variation—a mode of study which, in the case of a masterpiece, richly repays the student. It was no wonder, therefore, that Richard had almost every word of it on the very tip of his tongue.