Two Bibliographical Questions in Kosinski's "The Painted Bird"

Abstract

first edition of Painted Bird, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1965, was heavily censored, without the author's consent. In 1966 Kosinski used the occasion of its paperback reprinting (by Pocket Books) to restore the original text, but the casual nature of the paperback industry has obscured this intention. Although the credits to the first paperback reprinting read Pocket Cardinal Edition includes every word contained in the original, higher-priced a note following the end-paper advertisements states that The Pocket Book edition of this distinguished novel incorporates some material which did not appear in the hardcover This Pocket Books edition went through five printings, and in the third a note was added to the verso of the title page: I am very grateful to Eugene Prakapas for his editorial help and reinstating of the portions of the original text, omitted by the hard cover publishers, into this Pocket Book Therefore the 1966 edition of Painted Bird is simply a restoration of the text according to the author's original intentions. For the 1970 Modern Library edition, Kosinski did make stylistic revisions, which are repeated in a subsequent edition Professor Richter does not mention, but which is the book's most popular and available state: the 1972 Bantam Books edition. A more serious error relates directly to Professor Richter's thesis, that the dropping of the italicized epilogue in the 1966 and 1970 edi-