Posted by Steven
on 7/4/2009, 23:45:25, in reply to "Re: The Black Tulip"
76.187.98.74
The "Note on the Text" in my edition has this interesting history of two major variations of The Black Tulip:
"The publication of La Tulipe noire was announced ... on 8 November 1850. Two separate editions appeared in French in New York in 1850, and the first translation into English, by Fayette Robinson, was published there before the end of the year. Meanwhile no fewer than six separate editions, all dated 1850, of a pirated version appeared in Belgium hot on the heels of the first French edition. The Belgian edition is slightly abridged (it is approximately 5% shorter).... The first British translation, by Franz Demmler, was published in London in 1854 and was based not on the original French text but on the pirated version....
"American editions of The Black Tulip, with very few exceptions, have either reprinted or revised Fayette Robinson's translation of the first French edition. British pulishers, on the other hand, have continued to adopt or update Demmler's version--itself heavily indebted to the American translation--of the Belgian text....
"The decision [in the Oxford version] to follow Demmler and continue the British consideration is not based on historical considerations alone, but is amply vindicated on aesthetic grounds. The cuts constitute a desirable form of pruning which Dumas ... was always too busy to undertake."
Based on some footnotes it appears that most of the passages present in the French/American version but cut from the Belgian/British version are moralizing observations invoking the Almighty's concurrence with what the author has done to, or for, his characters.
With further searching I've found a "Friesian National Costume" in some catalog, but I have no idea if this was worn in the 17th Century. Rosa's dress must have had a looser neckline, or she would have strangled herself trying to hide tulip bulbs in her bodice.
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