A heavily corrected full-length typescript of George Steiner’s magnum opus on translation bearing around 500-700 autograph emendations and additions to the text. These range from single word corrections to full paragraphs in Steiner’s hand. The typescript comes from the estate of Elsa Southern, Steiner’s longterm secretary and assistant in Cambridge whose role in his work is credited in several of his printed works. After Babel is a seminal work that explores the ‘intricate and multifaceted nature of language and translation’ which emerged out of a decade of work, 1965-1975 following on from his Book of Modern Verse Translation - a connection he credits in the preface to this work. These typescripts will have been shuttled between Steiner, sometimes in Cambridge, sometimes Geneva, and Southern at her address in Marion Close, Cambridge - the envelopes that carried them to and fro are also present. Accompanying the typescript is a small archive of research material and reader’s letters sent to Steiner and to Elsa Southern relating to The Book of Modern Verse as well as a handful of receipts for sutstantial sums paid for copying work done by the University Library at Cambridge - presumably relating to these and earlier texts. Steiner’s archive is held by Churchill College Cambridge - their online catalogue doesn’t reveal whether this phase of the creative process that gave rise to After Babel is also held there.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
1. After Babel, full length Xeroxed typescript on rectos only of foolscap paper, 289 numbered sheets with around 50 additional sheets including inserts and unnumbered leaves of endnotes which were incorporated in the printed text as footnotes. Main text is complete through to the Afterword which lacks the final 3 leaves. No prefatory material is present. Steiner’s autograph emendations are confined to the first four chapters, terminating at f186 - the corrections to the remainder of the text are in the manner of proofing corrections and in a different hand, perhaps Elsa Southern’s. Steiner makes his corrections in a mixture of pencil and biro, frequently as interlineations with more substantial additions often written at right angles to the text in the margins. These range from single words to full sentences and a couple of full paragraph insertions as well as corrections details of spelling and capitalisation; Steiner repeatedly emends Americanisms in the text. To take the first page of Chapter I only, this bears four autograph emendations, the last of which is sentence length, regarding the understanding of Shakespeare’s text by his contemporaries, and all found to be incorporated into the final text. There are inserted leaves with paragraph length additions marked at f97 and f177 - this second insertion comes in a long section on Wittgenstein which is the most heavily revised section of the typescript. There are estimated to be 500-700 alterations in Steiner’s hand overall. These effectively produce a sort of palimpsest as the Xerox also reproduces an earlier generation of autograph corrections on the original typescript.
2. After Babel, Xeroxed typescript ff158, with proofing corrections in the second hand, possibly Elsa Southern’s
3. ADDITIONALLY; two offprints re translations; 5 Cambridge University Library receipts for Xeroxing by George Steiner and Elsa Southern; ‘It happened tomorrow’ typescript by Steiner, ff9, examining the future tense; 4 letters to Elsa Southern: 3 from Evelyn Howell, about ‘whether Dr Steiner is contemplating a second volume of his Penguins book of Verse Translaton or not’ (perhaps the inspiration for the whole subsequent project?) and Francis Wylie writing to ‘Dr Steiner’ regarding an article in ‘Encounter about translation’. Large manila envelope with typed label: ‘For Second Edition - Penguin Book of Modern Verse Translations’.
