Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The. Pre-publication galley proof titled THE MUTE.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
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Pre-Publication Galley Proof
Titled “The Mute”
McCullers, Carson. The Mute. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940.
Tall 8vo.; 7 x 11 ½ inches; typescript label on verso of upper panel; maroon cloth backstrip; blue wrappers; small chip to upper tip; white printed label; creasing and soiling to covers and first few leaves. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Pre-publication galley proof of the first edition of Carson McCullers’s literary debut bearing the novel’s original title, The Mute, which has been crossed out, with a manuscript note beneath in ink: “Title changed to The Heart is Lonely Hunter.” A typescript label inside the upper panel reads “Houghton Mifflin Company / Park Street / Boston Mass,” giving a “tentative price” of $2.50 and a “tentative pub. Date” of 3/20/40, which has been crossed out in red pencil and replaced with 6/4/40. Previous owner’s signature, “Mrs. G.F. Cheever” – likely an early reader – in ink on the first text page. Though an early outline for the book has been published (Virginia Spencer Carr, The Lonely Hunter, NY: Doubleday, 1975) and the discarded title is known, this is the only example of a proof copy we can trace.
The galley proof and the published version of the book are nearly identical (the title excepted); there is at least one change to the text, however, found in the following line, which has been expanded considerably with an interesting detail about Antonapoulos, who would soon be sent away to an asylum, leaving his friend, the deaf-mute John Singer, alone:
“The months went on and these habits of Antonapoulos grew worse.” (galley p. 2)
“The months went on and these habits of Antonapoulos grew worse. One day at noon he walked calmly out of the fruit store of his cousin and urinated in public against the wall of the First National Bank building across the street.” (published p. 7)
That it is only after Antonapoulos’s departure that Singer moves to the boarding house and begins to meet the other characters in the novel suggests that McCullers considered this new detail of Antonapoulos’s mental decline integral to propelling the plot forward.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was first published on June 4, 1940, and the haunting story of John Singer brought instant acclaim to the twenty-three old author. Tennessee Williams declared that McCullers was “the greatest prose writer that the South produced.”
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