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New York, and it demonstrates graphically that after the first chapter of the 1918 version—which is crossed through entirely, and for which no revised manuscript exists—Lewis did not leave a single page of the earlier
Tarr
unrevised. Some of these changes are minor, such as alterations of character and place names. But in most cases the changes are substantial. Although Lewis cancels some earlier passages, his revisions are overwhelmingly additive. Many pages contain multiple accretions, the margins filled with balloons of new text and arrows that criss-cross so densely as to render some pages nearly impenetrable.
    In places where Lewis added even larger passages of text, he pasted new manuscript material over passages to be cancelled, and attached extra sheets to the bottoms of the pages of the working text that needed to be unfolded by the printers (Chapter 9 of Part IV, ‘A Jest Too Deep for Laughter’, is particularly densely revised in this way).For two sequences that he expanded yet more substantially—the preparation for Kreisler’s duel (Chapter 4 of Part VI, ‘Holocausts’) and Tarr’s later conversations with Anastasya (Chapter 1 of Part VII, ‘Swagger Sex’)—Lewis directs the printers to separate manuscripts and typescripts to be incorporated into the already densely revised text. Although no doubt a challenge for Chatto and Windus’s typesetters, the 1928 version of
Tarr
proved to be a success. Unpublished letters at Cornell show that Lewis’s editor C. H. C. Prentice reported to him in 1929 that the publisher had sold almost two thousand copies of the new
Tarr
; while a much later communication from the publisher notes that
Tarr
was one of three of Lewis’s books, along with
The Art of Being Ruled
and
Time and Western Man
, that had repaid their advances. 5
    Lewis intended
Tarr
to be known solely in its revised version. The 1928 text served as the basis for all subsequent editions of
Tarr
in Lewis’s lifetime, including an edition published by Methuen in 1951 to which Lewis contributed a few further minor alterations. Nonetheless, some contemporary readers prefer the original 1918
Tarr
on the grounds that its greater stylistic roughness is closer in spirit to the avant-gardism of
Blast
and Vorticism than is the relative polish of the revision. Such readers regret in particular the loss of Lewis’s use of an idiosyncratic form of punctuation in some sections of the 1918 Knopf
Tarr
, doubled dashes that look like equals signs (‘=’) and that Lewis used to divide sentences from one another. The 1928
Tarr
, in compensation, is fuller and more complexly novelistic, containing more expansive descriptive and character detail without compromising the integrity of its aesthetics or its world view. With the availability of Paul O’Keeffe’s edition of the 1918
Tarr
, readers can make such judgements for themselves. 6
    Finally, it is worth noting two idiosyncrasies of usage and orthography in the 1928
Tarr
. Lewis often prints foreign words and phrases in roman type, reserving italics for specific emphasis. He also prints adjectives referring to national, cultural, and religious groups without initial capitals. At times Lewis uses this orthographyplayfully (as when he writes ‘But being a Pole, Soltyk participated in a hereditary polish of manner’, p. 119). But this orthography also represented Lewis’s considered belief that standard English usage overemphasized the importance of national differences compared to other bases for comparison or self-definition. As he explained in his journal
The Enemy
:
    [M Y ] use of capitals and lower case departs from current english usage. This has been objected to by some critics, and I agree with them that there is a good deal against it. Only between the german habit of over-capitalisation and the soberness of the French in their use of the capital letter (‘un français’, for instance, is what we write ‘a Frenchman’) the english usage seems rather