ABSTRACT
In all probability, fewer than a dozen people have ever read Romola exactly as George Eliot herself wrote it, and without significant interventions by a succession of third parties. This chapter considers the textual history of the novel. Eliot wrote Romola between 1 January 1862 and 9 June 1863. Her autograph manuscript (MS), preserved complete in the British Library, served as setting copy for the serialization in the Cornhill Magazine (CM) from July 1862 to August 1863. Though a handful of changes might have resulted from a CM compositor misreading her script, and she then failing to notice this, for the most part the verbal changes between MS and CM can fairly safely be ascribed to Eliot's own intervention at proof stage. The case for preferring the punctuation of CM to that of MS is thus based on historical and material grounds: the MS version, lightweight throughout and occasionally lacking altogether, was simply a working draft.
