Professorial Fellow Dirk Van Hulle, Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford, is co-curating a new exhibition dedicated to the creative importance of editing in literature.

 

Opening in February 2024 in the Weston Library, Write, Cut, Rewrite offers a peek behind the scenes into writers’ workshops, drawing upon the Bodleian Libraries’ unparalleled collection of modern manuscripts from the 18th century to today, to reveal little-known literary revelations – such as how The Wind in the Willows initially had a different title.

Often, in the attempt to find the perfect form, an author will cut more words than the ones that are eventually published. The expectation is that these discarded fragments end up in waste-paper baskets and disappear, but many are preserved in libraries and archives; a testament to the importance of this form of creative undoing in the writing process. The contrast and impact of these important edits turn these simple cuts into present absences, and alters the reader’s relationship with the book.

The exhibition is curated by Dirk and Mark Nixon, Professor of Modern Literature and Beckett Studies at the University of Reading. They commented:

“The exhibition reveals ideas that did not make it into some of our best-known novels, poems or plays – ideas that can only be recovered in manuscripts, held in archives and special collections.”

Write, Cut, Rewrite will feature abandoned works, such as Jane Austen’s The Watsons, and cases of censorship, such as Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It also touches on the revisions and rewritings of famous books, offering visitors a unique chance to look over the shoulder of literary greats at the moment of creation. Highlights include discarded ideas, fundamental changes, deletions, additions, notes and scribbles from great authors such as: Mary and Percy Shelley, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Samuel Beckett, and John le Carré.

Other insights from the cutting room floor will include the original ending to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, George Eliot’s reading notes, Franz Kafka’s cuts in the manuscript of his novel The Castle and the description in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, extracted from Percy Shelley’s journal.

To accompany the new exhibition, Dirk and Mark have co-authored Write Cut Rewrite: The Cutting Room Floor of Modern Literature (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2024).

Write, Cut, Rewrite opens at the Weston Library on 29th February 2024, and runs to 5th January 2025.