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The textual history of Brideshead Revisited is probably the most complex for the bibliographer and the most rewarding for the student of any Waugh novel, for it exists In at least five variant panted states and those states reveal in concrete terms Waugh's changing attitude towards the style and sometimes towards the characters of his best-known novel. Until the manuscripts and Waugh's cistrespondence become available, the textual history cannot be traced in detail, but it is possible fo indicate at least something about the nature of the problems and the kind of information that textual study can provide.
The variants given below were gathered from a comparison of the Chapman and Hall "revised edition" of 1945 (apparently a new impression rather than a new edition) with a Little, Brown edition of 1945. The variants were then checked against a Chapman and Hall third edition of 1945, a Penguin edition (a 1957 reprinting of a 1951 edition), a Chapman and Hall revised edition of 1960 this a real revision), and the serial version that appeared in Town and Country from November, 1944, te February, 1945.
Although some anomalies cannot be...