. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. someearlier turbidity; he was still from time to time ca-pable of a false rhyme, like mom and dawn. As forthe author of Uncle Toms Cabin her syntax was sucha snare to her that it sometimes needed the combinedskill of all the proof-readers and the assistant editorto extricate her. Of course, nothing was ever writteninto her work, but in changes of diction, in correctionof solecisms, in transposition of phrases, the text waslargely rewritten on the margin of her proofs. Thesoul of her art was present, but the for
. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. someearlier turbidity; he was still from time to time ca-pable of a false rhyme, like mom and dawn. As forthe author of Uncle Toms Cabin her syntax was sucha snare to her that it sometimes needed the combinedskill of all the proof-readers and the assistant editorto extricate her. Of course, nothing was ever writteninto her work, but in changes of diction, in correctionof solecisms, in transposition of phrases, the text waslargely rewritten on the margin of her proofs. Thesoul of her art was present, but the form was so oftenabsent, that when it was clothed on anew, it wouldhave been hard to say whose cut the garment was ofin many places. In fact, the proof-reading of the At-lantic Monthly was something almost fearfully scrupu-lous and perfect. The proofs were first read by theunder proof-reader in the printing-office; then thehead reader passed them to me perfectly clean as totypography, with his own abundant and most intelli-gent comments on the literature; and then I read them, 138. LUCY LARCOM LITERARY BOSTON AS I KNEW IT making what changes I chose, and verifying every quo-tation, every date, every geographical and biographicalname, every foreign word to the last accent, every tech-nical and scientific term. Where it was possible orat all desirable the proof was next submitted to theauthor. When it came back to me, I revised it, accept-ing or rejecting the authors judgment according ashe was entitled by his ability and knowledge or not tohave them. The proof now went to the printers forcorrection; they sent it again to the head reader, whocarefully revised it and returned it again to me. I readit a second time, and it was again corrected. After thisit was revised in the office and sent to the stereotyper,from whom it came to the head reader for a last re-vision in the plates. It would not do to say how many of the first Ameri-can writers owed their correctness in print to the zea
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