Selected Publications
Malcolm Lowry
A Companion to Under the Volcano
A Companion to Under the Volcano (with Lawrence J. Clipper). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984. A detailed item-by-item annotation of Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece, Under the Volcano (1947). Some 1600 entries, each keyed to the original Reynal & Hitchcock (New York) and Jonathan Cape (London) editions. Many details were drawn from holdings at the UBC Special Collections (Vancouver), but others based on field-work in Mexico, Ontario, Los Angeles, Liverpool, Cambridge, Paris and Granada. These provided the basic materials (subsequently updated, augmented and illustrated) for the Under the Volcano website.
"Plenty of Obscure Points": A Supplement to Under the Volcano
“Plenty of Obscure Points”: A Supplement to Under the Volcano. Waterloo, Ont.: The Malcolm Lowry Review [Wilfrid Laurier University], 2002. The final double-issue of the Lowry Review (MLR #49& 50, 2002), ed. Paul Tiessen. I guest-edited this volume, largely devoted to my 400 or so further entries and updates (and, alas, corrections) of the 1984 Companion, reflecting the Lowry scholarship of the previous two decades, and again presenting materials for the later website. The cover depicts the tomb of Lallah Rookh, a watercolour (Plate #50) by Major Edward Molyneux for Francis Younghusband’s Kashmir (1909), attributed by the Consul to his mother.
Bridge
The Bridging of Troy
The Bridging of Troy, London: Gollancz, 1986. Subtitled ‘’Tales from the Trojan Tournament’, the 24 episodes recount the doughty deeds of the heroes of ancient days, on the green baize tables of a bridge battle. Each relates a tangled tale at the table to its like in Homer, from the finesse by Paris of Helen to the fall of King Priam and the lamentable tragedy of the Trojan women. It has become a Classic of bridge literature, i.e., unread by most but appreciated by a favoured few. A digital copy is available on my Projects page.
A History of the Otago Bridge Club
A History of the Otago Bridge Club, Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1996. A history of the club from its founding in 1936 until its sixtieth anniversary, with its 372 pages and 200+ photographs and illustrations moving from a mere record of results and facts to create a social microcosm of the times and personalities (the more scurrilous stories are smuggled into the footnotes), as well as the curious hands and plays that make bridge so much more than a pastime. Bridge has been good to me; this goes some way towards repaying the debt. A digital copy is available on my Projects page.
Demented Particulars and Obscure Locks: annotating Beckett’s fiction
Demented Particulars: the Annotated Murphy
Demented Particulars: the Annotated Murphy. First published Tallahassee, Fl: Journal of Beckett Studies Books (1998); and as a dedicated double-issue (7.1 & 7.2) of the Journal; revised & reprinted, 2004; reprinted (minor corrections) Edinburgh: U Edinburgh P, 2010. An intensive introduction to the publishing history, and of Beckett’s reading; then 250+ pages of page-by-page annotation that trace the “Cartesian Catastrophe” (also an Atomist jest) from its absurd beginning to its inglorious end.
Obscure Locks, Simple Keys: the Annotated Watt
Obscure Locks, Simple Keys: the Annotated Watt. First published Tallahassee, Fl: Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2005; and as a dedicated double-issue (14.1 & 14.2) of the Journal; reprinted Edinburgh: U Edinburgh P, 2010. A larger (296 pp.) and more complex (as compared with the Murphy text) work, with some similarities to genetic editing of the immense archival material, and with a more entangled compositional and publishing history. The “ugly duckling” of Beckett’s early fiction, its fractured account of Watt’s disintegration from ratiocination through absurdity to the asylum makes it in the opinion of many the funniest and most cherished of Beckett’s fictions.
Watt
Watt, which I edited for Faber in 2009. Given the notorious textual history, the challenge was to produce the best text possible under complex conditions: complicated manuscripts; a missing final typescript; an appalling first edition from Olympia Press; and the persistence of so many errors throughout the previous Grove Press and Calder editions.
The Grove Press and Faber Companion
The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett
The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett (with Stan Gontarski). New York: Grove Press, 2004. An original limit of 300 pages, these quickly expanding to 1300+, before being ruthlessly cut back to a final 686 +xxvii; attempting (and on the whole succeeding) to offer a clear but reliable guide to all (most) of Beckett’s works, productions, life, and themes, with a goodly smattering of demented particulars. There are errors, of course, and various critical nerves were pinched by what was said (or not said); but as a whole, more than two decades down the track, it stands up tolerably well.
The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett
The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (with Stan Gontarski). London: Faber and Faber, 2006. Essentially a negotiated agreement with Grove Press for the U.K. and European rights; but as such a little disappointing as the writers were designated as editors, the text copied wholesale with no adjustment for English or Irish quirks (American spelling and all), on less than optimal cheap paper and ditto binding. All this outweighed, of course, by the honour of being published by Faber.
Trivial Pursuits
Passing Strange: the Deaths of the Authors
Passing Strange: the Deaths of the Authors. A ‘Deathschrift’, ed. Chris Ackerley (Dunedin: English Dept., U Otago, 2000), in honour of the retirement of my friend and colleague, the late Bill Dean: alcoholic, chain-smoker, atheist, nihilist, and all-round great guy, still a legend at Otago. About forty of his friends and colleagues submitted entries, the intent being (usually with irony and affection, but not always) to match the circumstances of the writer’s passing with something congruous, touching or absurd in the life or writings. This was the matrix of my Deaths of the Authors project on this website.
John Millington Synge, Riders to the Sea
John Millington Synge, Riders to the Sea, ed. Chris Ackerley (Dunedin: English Dept., U Otago, 2000), with Introduction and Annotations. Used in my teaching of Anglo-Irish literature for several years. Not a weighty publication, but one I’m rather fond of.
Sweets of Sin: Ulysses in Limericks
Sweets of Sin: Ulysses in Limericks (Auckland: The Pear Tree Press, 2015. Reprinted from ‘Sweets of Sin’, James Joyce Quarterly 51.1 (2015), 173-76; Joyce’s novel in limerick form, one for each chapter. One should suffice for now:
10. Wandering Rocks
Proud Ruby, Fair Tyrants, and Venus in Furs,
The Awful Disclosures of stale whore-d’oeuvres,
’Twould tempt the Archbishop
The way that they dish up
Heaving embonpoint and opulent curves.
T. S. Eliot
Literature Insights: ‘Prufrock’ and The Waste Land
Literature Insights: ‘Prufrock’ and The Waste Land. Humanities eBooks, Literary Insights series, ed. Charles Moseley (2007). A shorter version of the Introduction first appeared in Four Poems by T. S. Eliot, ed. Robert Dean (Lakewood, Col: Micawber Fine Editions, 2002), 73-224.
The Later Lowry
Swinging the Maelstrom: a Critical Edition
Malcolm Lowry, Swinging the Maelstrom: a Critical Edition, ed. Victor Doyen, with annotations (55-101) by Chris Ackerley. Ottawa: U Ottawa P, 2013. An edition arising out of our joint teaching sessions of the post-graduate Western Canadian Deans’ Short Course: The Malcolm Lowry Collection (UBC, May 14-21 1987), so 26 years in the making.
In Ballast to the White Sea: a Scholarly Edition
Malcolm Lowry, In Ballast to the White Sea: a Scholarly Edition, ed. Patrick A. McCarthy with annotations by Chris Ackerley (242-430). Ottawa: U Ottawa P, 2014. Lowry’s “lost” novel, a major editing / annotation project that has thrown considerable new light on Lowry’s life (notably the Norwegian connection) and his pre-Mexico writings of the 1930s.
The 1940 Under the Volcano: a Critical Edition
Malcolm Lowry, The 1940 Under the Volcano: a Critical Edition, ed. Paul Tiessen & Miguel Mota, with annotations (245-446) by Chris Ackerley & David Large. A project arising from The Malcolm Lowry Review, the mélange of the poetic sublime and the bloody awful both a beacon of hope and a dire warning to any aspiring writer.
The Later Beckett
Textes pour rien / Texts for Nothing: Annotations
Samuel Beckett’s ‘Textes pour rien / Texts for Nothing: Annotations’, Édition critique par Chris Ackerley et Llewellyn Brown. Paris: Classiques Garnier [Series Lettres Modernes Minard #5], 2018. A bilingual edition, my notes in English primarily directed at the English texts, LB’s in French at the French texts, but each cognizant of the other.
Comment c’est / How It Is: Édition critique
Comment c’est / How It Is, Édition critique par Chris Ackerley, Llewellyn Brown et Anthony Cordingley. Paris: Classiques Garnier [Series Lettres Modernes Minard #9], 2024. A bilingual edition, my notes in English primarily directed at the English texts, LB’s in French at the French texts; AC as editorial consultant. The (unexpectedly) most challenging annotation that I have ever undertaken (the Three Novels lie ahead).
Miscellaneous Annotative Adventures
'Homage to Joyce: Beckett’s 110 Aspirins'. For 'Ulysses at 100', in the James Joyce Literary Supplement 36.1 (2023), #41.
МАРФИ, уредници издања Срђан Ваљаревић Флавио Ригонат, Напомене и коментари Chris J. Ackerley, “Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy”, 2004 [Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, Serbian trans. Flavio Rigonat. Belgrade: Lom, 2020; my notes, 217-75].
'"Hva vet vi?": In Ballast and the Weighting of Evidence'. In Remaking the Voyage: New Essays on Malcolm Lowry and In Ballast to the White Sea, ed. Helen Tookey & Bryan Biggs. Liverpool: U Liverpool P., 2020. 119-33. [Notes about Lowry’s 1931 trip to Norway to meet Nordahl Grieg].
[with Patrick A. McCarthy] 'Annotating Malcolm Lowry's In Ballast to the White Sea'. In Making Canada New: Editing, Modernism, and Digital Media [in association with EMiC (Editing Modernism in Canada)], ed. Dean Irvine, Vanessa Lent & Bart Vautour. Toronto: U Toronto P, 2015, 236-55.
'"primeval mud impenetrable dark": Towards an Annotation of Samuel Beckett's Comment c'est / How It Is.' Modernism / modernity 18.4 (2011): 789-800 [a blueprint of the later book].
'Samuel Beckett and Annotation: The Distinct Context of Relevant Knowledge'. In Beckett and Phenomenology, ed. Matthew Feldman & Ulrika Maude, London: Continuum Books, 2009, 194-207 [in which a theory of “validity in annotation” is addressed].
'"Ever Know What Happened?": Shades and Echoes in Samuel Beckett's Plays for Television'. Journal of Beckett Studies 18.1 & 2 (2009): 136-64 [or, how to annotate ethereal echoes].
'Demented Particularity, or, the Art of Annotation'. The Beckett Circle 30.1 (Spring 2007): 13-16.
'The Agony of Consciousness: The Persona(l) Element in T. S. Eliot's Early Dramatic Verse.' In Four Poems by T. S. Eliot, ed. Robert Dean. Lakewood, Col.: Micawber Fine Editions, 2002. 73-224.
'"Tutti è sciolto": An Operatic Crux in Joyce's Ulysses'. James Joyce Quarterly 38.1 & 2 (Fall 2000 & Winter 2001): 197-205 [how the understanding of a tiny detail can trigger a paradigm shift].
'Afterword' to Oscar Wilde's Salomé, trans. Jeannine Hiester, illustrated by Jay Paul Apodaca & Chris Handloser, ed. Robert Dean. Lakewood, Col: Micawber Fine Editions, 1998, 182-201.
'"Do Not Despair": Samuel Beckett and Robert Greene'. Journal of Beckett Studies n.s. 6.1 (Autumn 1996): 119-24 [my best discovery, the source of Beckett’s “shape of ideas”].
The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry, ed. & introduced by Kathleen Scherf, with explanatory annotation by Chris Ackerley. Vancouver: U British Columbia P, 1992, 227-315 [detailed annotations of all of Lowry’s published verse].
'Notes towards Lowry's Screenplay of Tender is the Night'. Malcolm Lowry Review,29 & 30 (Fall 1991 & Spring 1992): 31-50 [aspects of Lowry’s creativity not previously examined].
'T.S. Eliot's Superfetation of 𝛕𝛐 𝛆𝛎'. Notes and Queries n.s. 38.3 (Sept. 1991): 341-42.
'Under the Volcano and the Spanish Civil War'. Malcolm Lowry Newsletter 14 (Spring 1984): 4-25.
'Barbarous Mexico and Under the Volcano'. Notes and Queries n.s. 31.1 (March 1984): 81-83.
'Eliot's The Waste Land and Shackleton's South'. Notes and Queries n.s. 31.4 (Dec. 1984): 514-15.
'The Kashmiri Elements of Under the Volcano'. Notes and Queries n.s. 30.4 (Aug. 1983): 331-33.
'Some Notes towards Under the Volcano'. Canadian Literature 95 (Winter 1982): 185-90.
'Under the Volcano: Four Notes'. Malcolm Lowry Newsletter 11 (Fall 1982): 13-16.