George H. Thomson’s The Editions of Dorothy Richardson’s 'Pilgrimage': A Comparison of Texts begins with an introduction defining methods and goals. The six following chapters set out in table format the many variants identified by comparing the different editions of the Pilgrimage texts. The 1938 Collected Edition of Pilgrimage, reprinted in 1967 with March Moonlight added, was revised and proofread by Dorothy Richardson herself. Is the revised text reliable? How does it compare with the texts of the English First Editions, ten of them issued by Duckworth between 1915 and 1931 and one by Dent in 1935?

These questions are answered in Chapters I through IV of this study, corresponding to Volumes I through IV of the Collected Edition of Pilgrimage. And further, how do the English First Editions of the first six novels, from Pointed Roofs to Deadlock, compare with the reset texts published by Knopf in New York between 1919 and 1921? And which of these first editions serve as copy text for the Collected Edition? These questions are answered in Chapter V.

Finally, what may be learned by comparing the periodical version of Interim in the Little Review with the significantly revised text of the English First Edition? The answer is offered in Chapter VI: so great are the changes, it is as though for this one time we are allowed to glimpse in the Little Review a Richardson MS in an earlier state of development.

The Editions of Dorothy Richardson’s 'Pilgrimage': A Comparison of Texts is the first detailed examination of Richardson’s Pilgrimage texts. It completes Professor Thomson’s reading of Dorothy Richardson, begun in A Reader’s Guide to Dorothy Richardson’s "Pilgrimage" (ELT Press, 1996), and continued in Notes on 'Pilgrimage': Dorothy Richardson Annotated (ELT Press 1999). Taken together these three books enable readers to understand Richardson as a key figure of the modernist movement and to appreciate Pilgrimage as one of British literature's most challenging, most rewarding, most underestimated masterpieces.