"An Error in Chemistry": The Final Typescript

Abstract

The version of “An Error in Chemistry” we read today in the Vintage International edition of Knight’s Gambit is the same one readers of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) encountered in the June 1946 issue. In setting the type for the first edition of Knight’s Gambit in 1949, Random House simply used tearsheets from EQMM, and every subsequent edition of this collection, featuring Gavin Stevens’s detective work, uses the text as copyedited by Frederic Dannay. Along with his cousin Manfred Bennington Lee, Dannay began writing popular detective fiction in 1928 under the pen name Ellery Queen. However, Dannay alone edited EQMM, which was established in 1941. I present here an edition of “An Error in Chemistry,” based on the copyedited typescript, that restores, as nearly as possible, Faulkner’s final prepublication intentions for this story. Although Dannay was an important advocate for Faulkner’s fiction and introduced Yoknapatawpha County to a large postwar audience, the changes he made to “An Error in Chemistry” during copyediting point to why a scholarly edition of Knight’s Gambit would sharpen our understanding of a key moment in Faulkner’s career (following World War II but before Faulkner wins the Nobel Prize) when his critical reputation had ebbed. The story of Faulkner’s connection to EQMM, as well as a fuller textual history of “An Error in Chemistry,” form part of the larger narrative of how Faulkner entered the canon of American literature. In the third week of September 1945, Faulkner sent his agent, Harold Ober, a revised 28-page typescript of “An Error in Chemistry” for publication in EQMM. This final typescript of the story, part of the Frederic Dannay Papers at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library,