Gardner-Harvey Library News: ‘Ruining What Was Very Nearly Perfection’: Conrad Richter’s The Awakening Land

Thursday, August 22, 2019

‘Ruining What Was Very Nearly Perfection’: Conrad Richter’s The Awakening Land

Please join us on September 5 at 1:00pm as Dr. Marianne Cotugno (ENG) solves the mystery of a reprint gone wrong!

Conrad Richter's historical fiction trilogy The Awakening Land (our September book discussion on 9/11/19 features the first book, The Trees) was reissued by Ohio University Press in 1991, but something was "ruined" (in the opinion of an Amazon reviewer).

Dr. Cotugno will explain that there was no error, and delve into larger questions about online reviews, authorial revision, and publication history.

We will meet in Room 110 of the Gardner-Harvey Library. Light refreshments will be provided.

For more information, please read the review in question and the description offered below by Dr. Cotugno (spoiler-free!):

“Being intimately familiar with the original publication of this trilogy, I can say with utmost disdain that whoever was responsible for taking the liberties of rewriting what was very nearly perfection must have a great fondness for soap operas and should stick with romance novels instead. Not only are there additional passages inserted that were never written by Conrad Richter, there are also altered meanings of existing passages that totally change the flavor and the original intent. There are so many instances in all three volumes that I don't even know where to begin with examples. This is by far the most appalling reprint of an award-winning piece of historical fiction I have ever witnessed. You would do better to find a used copy from the original publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.”[1]

Posted on January 14, 2011, under the title, “Overzealous publisher,” awarding two stars, this review by user “Zolasattic” appears under each of the novels in The Awakening Land trilogy published by Ohio University Press and sold through Amazon. Although the Ohio University Press editions appeared by special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1991, Knopf first published the three novels, The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) individually, and then collectively as The Awakening Land in 1966. The novels tell the story of Sayward Luckett and her family, who settle in the Ohio Valley in the late 18^th century, and focus on Sayward’s experiences as the family establishes itself in the wilderness and eventually becomes part of a modern town, Americus, in the mid 19^th century. The last novel in the trilogy won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1951. David McCullough asserts that the trilogy “ranks among the finest of all American works of historical fiction.”[2] What did Ohio University Press do to this monumental work?

This talk will answer that question - which took me down a rabbit hole that raises larger questions about online reviews, authorial revision, and publication history.