Chapters 2-4, level 14 (Corrections of Misprints)

JJA 50:
 290
 291
 292
 293
 294
Buffalo VI.H.4.b-1:
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6

The so-called “Buffalo errata” are corrections made by Joyce with the aid of Paul Léon in Summer 1940, on unbound pages of the first edition of Finnegans Wake. The corrections were typed in duplicate, and the list of corrections was printed in July 1945 and first distributed by Viking Press in New York and Faber and Faber in London as a pamphlet (identical save for imprints) free to purchasers who requested it. It was subsequently bound in with printings of Finnegans Wake from the March 1947 American printing (the fifth) until beginning with the eighth printing (1958) the changes were incorporated into the Viking hardcover and Compass paperback edition. The Faber edition of 1946 (reset) incorporated some of the corrections into the text and omitted them from the Corrections list, included in the 1946 and subsequent printings. See  John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, A Bibliography of James Joyce [1882-1941] (New Haven: Yale UP, 1953), pp. 59-62, 66, and Peter Spielberg, James Joyce's Manuscripts & Letters at the University of Buffalo: A Catalogue (Buffalo: University of Buffalo, 1962), pp. 150-151. The unbound pages (VI.H.4.a) and both copies of the typescript (VI.H.4.b,c) are at Buffalo.

There are, apart from spacing differences (single space for double space, etc.) three differences, within chapters 2-4, between the typed corrections list and the list as printed and bound in with the fourth through seventh printings, two of the changes being finally corrected in the eighth and subsequent printings to accord with the printed version of the list. At FW: 74.08 the typescript misspells “credidisti” as “credidsti”. At FW: 83.26 the typescript instructs “after 'patch' delecte comma” and the list prints “after 'patch' delete exclamation mark”, which is correct since the exclamation point was in the early printings. The third change is a little different. At FW: 90.01 the typescript instructs “for 'son-yet-son!' read 'son-yet-son?'”, and this is printed as “for 'son-yet-sin!' read 'son-yet-sun?'”. Since the early printings read “son-yet-sun!”, the typescript erred with “son-yet-son” and the printed list with “son-yet-sin”, but the always-intended change, from “!” to “?”, was accomplished.