TEXT:

Henry Hardy, Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP.

* Previous Chapter 1 now split into two and completely rewritten. Altogether better structured and, I think, more entertaining (e.g. the account of Darwinian evolution). There have been a few minor changes to the revised new Chapters 1 & 2 which you have already received. Reduced from 109 to 76 pages.

* Chapter 3 (2 in old numbering) Much tighter, with less repetition. Reduced from 42 to 31 pages.

* Chapter 4 (3) pruned and more concentrated. Reduced from 39 to 25 pages.

* Chapter 5 (4) pruned and tightened. Also enriched in certain respects. Reduced from 48 to 37 pages.

* Chapter 6 (5) completely restructured, I think for the better. The moral axe being ground throughout the book is now stated far more plainly (too plainly ?), especially in Chapters 6 & 9. I hope your worries about 'sexism' may be allayed here. Reduced from 44 to 33 pages.

* Chapter 7 (6) condensed slightly, but largely unchanged. Reduced from 63 to 55 pages; very crammed typing from previous version, sorry.

* Chapter 8 (7) much condensed, better structure, less repetition. Cosmology pruned and now set in a pleasing location. Reduced from 53 to 38 pages.

* Chapter 9 (8). Prologue and Intervals pared to the bone to make the purpose as clear as possible. Play's plot re-worked to great advantage and also, surely, to great appeal to current feminist sympathies. I have attempted to use heroic verse and I know more work needs to be done on this, but I hope that the object of the exercise is now apparent. If not, well maybe the whole thing's been a ghastly mistake, I don't know. Reduced from 37 to 27 pages.

* Overall, there has been a great deal of tightening up of detail and sub-plots.

* Total reduction in length from 435 to 322 pages, at roughly the same average words/page ratio. Even allowing an extra 5 pages for futher insertions (see note on frontpiece), this represents a cutting of about 25 percent, well in excess of the suggestion in your letter of 30th July '85 and I admit, a good deal more than I had thought possible. Further cutting, I believe, would now be seriously detrimental.

* Finally, a subtitle. Not the sort of thing you were looking for I guess, but I rather like it.

A. M.

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