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Edward William Garnett (5 January 1868 – 19 February 1937) was an English writer, critic and literary editor, who was instrumental in the publication of D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.
He worked as an editor and reader for the London publishing houses of T. Fisher Unwin, Gerald Duckworth and Company, and then Jonathan Cape. He brought together in 1898 Joseph Conrad, an Unwin author to whom he acted as a mentor as well as a friend, and Ford Madox Ford; they collaborated in the first few years of the twentieth century. Garnett befriended D. H. Lawrence, and for a time influenced him in the direction of realist fiction. In preparing Sons and Lovers for publication by Duckworth, Garnett went through the manuscript, censoring some passages and cutting others until the novel was ten per cent shorter; he did not negotiate these changes with Lawrence, but sent the manuscript direct to the printers. The changes including replacing ′hips′ with ′body′ and ′thighs′ with ′limbs.′ He removed the word ′natural′ from ′He could smell her faint natural perfume.′″ Sons and Lovers, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 3,4. This was the first unexpurgated edition. Lawrence accepted the changes, saying ″It's got to sell, I've got to live.″ Sons and Lovers, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 3.
Garnett also had a role in getting T. E. Lawrence's work published. One of his oversights was to turn down for Duckworth James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in 1915. He was a strong supporter of John Galsworthy, and The Man of Property in The Forsyte Saga was dedicated to him. He also championed American writers Stephen Crane and Robert Frost and Australia's Henry Lawson, and helped the Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty.
His play The Breaking Point was not allowed a licence for dramatic performance in London under the censorship system of the time (Lord Chamberlain's Office). Its publication was permitted, and in 1907 Garnett published the play, which dealt with an single parent, together with an open letter to the censor. The letter was in fact written by the critic William Archer. This was one battle in a campaign being waged at the time, under the leadership of Bernard Shaw, to free the stage.
Garnett lived at The Cearne, Crockham Hill, near Edenbridge in Kent. His London address was 19, Pond Place, Chelsea. Kent & Sussex Courier, Friday 23 April 1937, p.10
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