Over the past twenty years, the field of scholarly editing has expanded and altered immeasurably. In Editing Documents and Texts Beth Luey has compiled for the first time 900 references from nearly 200 journals and books that explain how scholarly editors do their work and the theories behind their editing. Bridging the traditional gap between historical and literary editing, Luey surveys the relevant scholarship in all editorial fields and presents a thorough picture of the state of the discipline. Anyone interested in the editing of documents and texts--whether an undergraduate or graduate student, instructor, or a beginning or experienced editor--will find Editing Documents and Texts an indispensible reference.

Traditional critical editing, defined by the paper and print limitations of the book, is now considered by many to be inadequate for the expression and interpretation of complex works of literature. At the same time, digital developments are permitting us to extend the range of text objects we can reproduce and investigate critically - not just books, but newspapers, draft manuscripts and inscriptions on stone. Some exponents of the benefits of new information technologies argue that in future all editions should be produced in digital or online form. By contrast, others point to the fact that print, after more than five hundred years of development, continues to set the agenda for how we think about text, even in its non-print forms. This important book brings together leading textual critics, scholarly editors, technical specialists and publishers to discuss whether and how existing paradigms for developing and using critical editions are changing to reflect the increased commitment to and assumed significance of digital tools and methodologies.

This volume is aimed both at more experienced editors, who may wish to skip over the advice offered in the introduction, as well as at those who are new to the craft and want to know how to begin work on publishing historical documents of interest to them.

This volume of essays addresses the practical implications of theoretical issues in a variety of texts from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde.

This volume presents the state of the art in digital scholarly editing. Drawing together the work of established and emerging researchers, it gives pause at a crucial moment in the history of technology in order to offer a sustained reflection on the practices involved in producing, editing and reading digital scholarly editions—and the theories that underpin them. The unrelenting progress of computer technology has changed the nature of textual scholarship at the most fundamental level: the way editors and scholars work, the tools they use to do such work and the research questions they attempt to answer have all been affected. Each of the essays in Digital Scholarly Editing approaches these changes with a different methodological consideration in mind. Together, they make a compelling case for re-evaluating the foundation of the discipline—one that tests its assertions against manuscripts and printed works from across literary history, and the globe. The sheer breadth of Digital Scholarly Editing, along with its successful integration of theory and practice, help redefine a rapidly-changing field, as its firm grounding and future-looking ambit ensure the work will be an indispensable starting point for further scholarship. This collection is essential reading for editors, scholars, students and readers who are invested in the future of textual scholarship and the digital humanities.

Volume 15 continues to offer international perspectives on textual scholarship, including contributions by Adrian Armstrong, Ronald Broude, Danielle Clarke, A.S.G. Edwards, Neil Fraistat and Steven E. Jones, David Leon Higdon, Chris Jones, John Jowett, Barbara Oberg, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, Manuel Portela, Damian Judge Rollison, Helen Smith, Dirk van Hulle, Andrew van der Vlies, and H.T.M. van Vliet, on topics ranging from the textuality of Thomas Jefferson to the gendering of the Early Modern British book trades. Items under review include The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, Vol. 1, edited by Robert Adams, Hoyt N. Huggan, Eric Eliason, Ralph Hanna III, John Price-Wilkin, and Thorlac Turnville-Petre; Material Modernism, by George Bornstein; Textual Transgressions and Theories of the Text, by David Greetham; Electronic Texts in the Humanities, by Susan Hockey; Problems of Editing, edited by Christa Jansohn; From Author to Text, edited by Caroline Levine and Mark W. Turner; Text und Edition, edited by Rüdiger Nutt-Koforth, Bodo Plachta, H.T.M. van Vliet and Heermann Zwerschina; Thomas Hardy: A Textual Study of the Short Stories, by Martin Ray; The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, Vol. 2, edited by Thorlac Turnville-Petre and Hoyt Duggan; and editions of Georg Büchner, Theodore Dreiser, Edmund Spenser, and Oscar Wilde. W. Speed Hill is Professor of English, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

A practical introduction to the aims, controversies, and procedures of scholarly editing