[ilds] Response to James Gifford's comments on Judith (Vol. 90, issue 6)

[Anthony Hirst]

A small quibble about James Gifford's "small quibble" about the Durrell School of Corfu edition of Judith. He says that "the text is predominantly from the novella draft Durrell did". It is not predominantly but entirely based on the latest of LD's typescripts of the  novella (though why not call it a novel?), transcribed with meticulous care by Richard Pine. Nor is it true to say that this text can "also be pieced together from Woman's Own". The Woman's Own version of Judith tells a story different in many respects from the one published in 2012. It is also a novel(la) but it is not the same novel(la), though there are many points of contact between the two texts. In form and style neither publication resembles a "version of a screenplay" as Bruce Redwine calls the DSC edition.

The first instalment in Woman's Own (26 Feb 1966) is headed "Judith by Lawrence Durrell from the film starring Sophia Loren and Peter Finch", and it is not clear how far this text is the work of LD himself, and certain that it is not entirely his work, since he withdraw from the development of the film script long before the film reached the production stage, and the writing style in places strongly suggests editorial intervention by the staff of Woman's Own.

I have photocopies of both LD's typescript and the Woman's Own serialization in front of me as I write, and I was closely involved in the editing and production of the DSC edition of Judith.

Anthony Hirst
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(I sent this yesterday, to two different ilds email addresses, neither of which, I now see, was the correct one for submissions)