HIUS 401: Creating Historical Editions for the Electronic Media


The Editing of Historical Documents

G. Thomas Tanselle

Notes

1. In what follows I shall use "NHPRC" when referring in general to the editions produced with the assistance of the Commission from 1950 on; but for historical accuracy "NHPC" will be used in those instances where the reference is clearly to events preceding late 1974.

2. A comprehensive list of "Documentary Works Planned, in Progress, and Completed in Association with the National Historical Publications Commission" appears in Oliver W. Holmes, Shall Stagecoaches Carry the Mail? (1972), pp. 93-108; many of the editions are also listed in the Brubaker and Monroe articles mentioned in note 10 below. Earlier lists form the appendix to "Let every sluice of knowledge be open'd and set a flowing": A Tribute to Philip May Hamer. . . (1960) and Appendix B to the NHPC's 1963 Report (see note 8 below). Most of the CEAA editions are mentioned in the CEAA's Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures (rev. ed., 1972), pp. 22-23, and in Studies in Bibliography, 25 (1972), 43-44; all of them are listed in The Center for Scholarly Editions: An introductory Statement (1977), pp. 7-8.

3. Bernard Bailyn, for instance, states that the Jefferson edition "introduces a new era in the history of American documentary publications" ("Boyd's Jefferson: Notes for a Sketch," New England Quarterly, 33 [1960], 380-400 [p. 380]). He also refers to the "series of massive documentary publications launched since World War II" and calls it "a remarkable movement in modern American letters" ("Butterfield's Adams: Notes for a Sketch," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 19 [1962], 238-256 [pp. 239-240]). Edmund S. Morgan proclaimed in a 1961 review of the Adams edition that "a new kind of scholarship has begun in the United States" ("John Adams and the Puritan Tradition," New England Quarterly, 34 [1961], 518-529 [p. 518]); and Esmond Wright, in another review of the Adams project, declared that this "age of the editor" is "transforming the methodology and character of American history" ("The Papers of Great Men," History Today, 12 [1962], 197,213)

4. I shall not continue to place "literary" and "historical" in quotation marks but wish to make clear that these adjectives are used here only to refer to the fact that some persons are generally thought of as literary figures and some as historical figures, the adjectives are not meant to imply that there is any firm dividing line between material of literary interest and material of historical interest or that material cannot be of interest in both ways simultaneously. (In fact, all documents are of historical interest, and I trust that it will be clear when--as in the title--I use "historical" in this more basic sense. See also note 18 below.)

5. Interest in editing scientific manuscripts is increasing also, as evidenced by a Conference on Science Manuscripts in Washington on 5-6 May 1960; one of the papers presented was Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., "Editing a Scientist's Papers," Isis, 53 (1962), 14-19, which takes Benjamin Franklin as its principal example.

6. "Historical Grist for the Bibliographical Mill," Studies in Bibliography, 25 (1971), 29-40. Cf. the way P. M. Zall begins his article on "The Manuscript and Early Texts of Franklin's Autobiography," Huntington Library Quarterly, 39 (1976), 375-384: "How odd it is that even in this bicentennial year we should know more about the texts of Shakespeare's plays than we do about the text of Franklin's Autobiography--especially since Shakespeare's manuscripts are nowhere to be found, while the original manuscript of the Autobiography lies open to the public in the gallery of the Huntington Library."

7. "Morgan & Brown," Book Collector, 25 (1976), 168.

8. The principal official statements of the position of the new NHPC are A National Program for the Publication of the Papers of American Leaders: A Preliminary Report . . . (1951); A National Program . . . Report . . . (1954); and A Report to the President . . . (1963). See also Philip M. Hamer, The Program of the National Historical Publications Commission (1952). The 1954 report states that the NHPC,s "primary responsibility, in addition to that of planning, is to cooperate with and assist other organizations or individuals in their work on parts of the national program" (p. 30); the brief section on "Editorial Policies" (pp. 32-33) stresses the importance of presenting uncensored texts of both sides of a correspondence.

9. The CEAA's position was officially set forth in 1967 in a Statement of Editorial Principles; this booklet was revived in 1972 as Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures.

10. The history of the NHPRC--and of previous historical editing in America as background to it--has been expertly recounted in a number of essays (which also inevitably express opinions on what standards are desirable in editing). See, for example, Clarence E. Carter, "The United States and Documentary Historical Publication," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 38 (1938-39), 3-24; L. H. Butterfield, "Archival and Editorial Enterprise in 1850 and in 1950: Some Comparisons and Contrasts," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 98 (1954), 159-170; Waldo G. Leland, "Remarks," Daedalus, 86 (1955-57), 77-79: Julian P. Boyd, "`God's Altar Needs Not Our Pollishings,'" New York History, 39 (1958), 3-21; Butterfield, "Historical Editing in the United States: The Recent Past," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 72 (1962), 283-308; Philip M. Hamer, "`. . . authentic Documents tending to elucidate our History,'" American Archivist, 25 (1962), 3-13; Leland, "The Prehistory and Origins of the National Historical Publications Commission," American Archivist, 27 (1964), 187-194 (reprinted, revised, as "J. Franklin Jameson and the Origin of the National Historical Publications Commission," in I. Franklin Jameson: A Tribute, ed. Ruth Anna Fisher and William Lloyd Fox [1965], pp. 27-36); Lester J. Cappon, "A Rationale for Historical Editing Past and Present," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 23 (1966), 56-75; Butterfield, "Editing American Historical Documents," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 78 (1966), 81-104; Robert L. Brubaker, "The Publication of Historical Sources: Recent Projects in the United States," Library Quarterly, 37 (1967), 193-225; H. G. Jones, "The Publication of Documentary Sources, 1934-1968," in The Records of a Nation: Their Management, Preservation, and Use (1969), pp. 117-133; Haskell Monroe, "Some Thoughts for an Aspiring Historical Editor," American Archivist, 32 (1969), 147-159; Walter Rundell, Jr., "Documentary Editing," in Pursuit of American History: Research and Training in the United States (1970), pp. 260-283; E. Berkeley Tompkins, "The NHPRC in Perspective," in the proceedings of the Iowa conference on The Publication of American Historical Manuscripts, ed. Leslie W. Dunlap and Fred Shelley (1976), pp. 89-96. The Brubaker and Monroe essays include detailed surveys of the critical reception of NHPRC editions. Historical accounts also appear in the NHPC's 1951, 1954, and 1963 reports (see note 8 above); more recent developments can be followed in the NHPRC's newsletter, Annotation (1973--).

Earlier discussions are J. Franklin Jameson, "Gaps in the Published Records of United States History," American Historical Review, II (1905-6), 817-831; and Worthington Chauncey Ford, "The Editorial Function in United States History," ibid., 23 (1917-18), 273-286. Some analyses of earlier American editing are Fred Shelley, "Ebenezer Hazard: America's First Historical Editor," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 15 (1955), 44-73; Lee Nathaniel Newcomer, "Manasseh Cutler's Writings: A Note on Editorial Practice," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47 (1960-61), 88-101; L. H. Butterfield, "Worthington Chauncey Ford, Editor," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 83 (1971), 468; and Lester J. Cappon, "American Historical Editors before Jared Sparks: `they will plant a forest . . .,'" William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 30 (1973), 375-400.

A few other general comments on the NHPRC or recent documentary editing are worth mentioning: Dumas Malone, "Tapping the Wisdom of the Founding Fathers," New York Times Magazine, 27 May 1956, pp. 25, 32, 34, 37, 39; Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., "Editors and Great Men," Aspects of Librarianship, No. 23 (Winter 1960), pp. 1-8; Adrienne Koch, "Men Who Made Our Nation What It Is," New York Times Book Review, 21 February 1960, pp. 1, 22; David L. Norton, "The Elders of Our Tribe," Nation, 192 (1961), 148-150; Koch, "The Historian as Scholar," Nation, 195 (1962), 357-361; John Tebbel, "Safeguarding U.S. History," Saturday Review, 45, no. 25 (23 June 1962), 24-25, 52; Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., "The Federal Government and History," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 47 (1963-64), 47-49; John F. Kennedy and Julian P. Boyd], "A White House Luncheon, June 17, 1963," New York History, 45 (1964), 151-160; James C. Olson, "The Scholar and Documentary Publication," American Archivist, 28 (1965), 187-193; Richard B. Morris, "The Current Statesmen's Papers Publication Program: An Appraisal from the Point of View of the Legal Historian," American Journal of Legal History, 11 (1967), 95-106.

11. For the history and background of the CEAA, see William M. Gibson and Edwin H. Cady, "Editions of American Writers, 1963: A Preliminary Survey," PMLA, 78 (1963), 1-8 (September supp.); Willard Thorp, "Exodus: Four Decades of American Literary Scholarship," Modern Language Quarterly, 26 (1965), 40-61; Gibson, "The Center for Editions of American Authors," Scholarly Books in America, 10 January 1969), 7-11; John H, Fisher, "The MLA Editions of Major American Authors," in the MLA's Professional Standards and American Editions: A Response to Edmund Wilson (1969), pp. 20-26 (cf. "A Calendar," pp. 27-28, and a reprinting of Gibson's 1969 article, pp. 1-6); and Don L. Cook, "Afterword: The CEAA Program," in American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1972,

12. The CEAA allocated NEH funds to the individual associated editions; the CSE draws NEH funds only for its own operation, and the award of NEH grants to particular editions is made directly by the NEH.

13. A history and analysis of the controversy over the CEAA editions is provided by G. T. Tanselle in "Greg's Theory of Copy-Text and the Editing of American Literature," SB, 28 (1975), 167-229; some of the criticism of the NHPRC editions is found in the articles cited in notes 81, 82, 83, and 84 below, and some commentary on that criticism in the paragraph to which those notes are attached.

14. For example, Julian P. Boyd has said, "I deplore the fact that these [editorial] enterprises, despite the labors of J. Franklin Jameson and others, arose on the edge of the profession, beyond it, or even on occasion, in spite of some obstacles thrown up from within it"; see "Some Animadversions on Being Struck by Lightning," Daedalus, 86 (1955-57), 49-56 (p. 50). He also has stated, "That a mastery of the techniques and uses of scholarly editing is not now regarded as part of the indispensable equipment of the academic historian and as being a recognizable aspect of his duty is beyond question," and he points out that many people regard "the editorial presentation of documents as being almost mechanical in nature"; see "Historical Editing in the United States: The Next Stage?", Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 72 (1962), 309-328 (pp. 314-315). Lester Cappon, in "A Rationale" (see note 10 above), also speaks of "the academic historian's prejudice against editing as a second class pursuit"--a view in which the editor "appears to be a lone wolf, a kind of `sport' detached from the mainstream of teaching, engaged in a task that is useful but nevertheless expendable" (pp. 58-59). Walter Rundell, in Pursuit of American History (see note lo above), summarizes, "Traditionally, academic historians have not held the function of documentary editing in especially high regard" (pp. 262-263). And Paul H. Bergeron--in "True Valor Seen: Historical Editing" American Archivist, 34 (1971), 229-264--says, "Only occasional efforts are made to breach the wall of prejudice that separates historians and editors" (p. 259). Cf. Stanley Idzerda, "The Editor's Training and Status in the Historical Profession," in the Dunlap and Shelley volume (see note 10 above), pp. 11-29. Such comments as these could be applied to the literary field as well; on the general lack of understanding of editing, see also note 80 below. Occasionally one hears the opposite point of view: Leo Marx, in "The American Scholar Today," Commentary, 32 (1961), 48-53, is bothered by "a suspicion that the scholar-editor is in fact the type we encourage and reward beyond all others" (p. 49); but his misunderstanding of editing is revealed by his labeling the editor a "humanist as-technician" (p. so). In the historical field, it may be noted, there has been a greater tradition of the full-time editor, independent of academic responsibilities, than in the literary field.

15. Editing has also perhaps been the subject of scholarly meetings more often in the historical field. Examples are the "Symposium on the Manuscript Sources of American History: Problems of Their Control, Use, and Publication" at the American Philosophical Society in November 1953 (see its Proceedings, 98 [1954], 159-188, 273-278); the session on "Publishing the Papers of Great Men" at the 1954 meeting of the American Historical Association (see Daedalus, 86 [1955-57], 47-79) the discussion of "Historical Editing in the United States" at the 150th annual meeting of the American Antiquarian Society in October 1962 (see its Proceedings, 72 [1962], 283-328); the session on the "Publication of Historical Source Materials" at the AHA meeting in December 1964; the series of "Special Evening Gatherings on the Writing, Editing, and Publishing of American History" at the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1964-65; and the session on "Historical Editing" at the 1974 AHA meeting.

16. The literature of the NHPC has been recorded by Oliver W. Holmes in "Recent Writings Relevant to Documentary Publication Programs," American Archivist, 26 (1963), 137-142--supplemented by an October 1971 typewritten list prepared by NHPC. Relevant materials can also be located in the checklists of archival scholarship which have appeared annually in the American Archivist since 1943. The literature of the CEAA (and related editions) is surveyed in an essay, "Relevant Textual Scholarship," appended to the CEAA's Statement (see note 2 above), pp. 17-25, and in The Center for Scholarly Editions: An Introductory Statement (1977), pp. 5-19. A few checklists of material also appeared in the CEAA Newsletter (1968-75).

17. "The American Heritage and Its Guardians," American Scholar, 45 (197516), 733, 751 [i.e. 37-55].

18. Although all written and printed artifacts are documents of historical interest (as pointed out in part III below), I am using "documentary" and "document" to refer particularly to private papers, such as letters, diaries, notebooks, rough drafts, and the like.

19. The method was also summarized by Lyman F. Butterfield in "The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Progress and Procedures in the Enterprise at Princeton," American Archivist, 12 (1949),131-145. The early planning of the edition is reflected in Boyd's Report to the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission on the Need, Scope, Proposed Method of Preparation, Probable Cost, and Possible Means of Publishing a Comprehensive Edition of the Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1943).

20. Except that the "place and date line, the salutation, and the complimentary close in letters will also be retained in literal form," though "the date-line is uniformly placed at the head of a letter" (p. xxx). It is somewhat surprising that these features of letters are singled out to be rendered with greater fidelity than the bodies of the letters.

21. More liberties are taken with "documents not in Jefferson's handwriting" if the punctuation makes a passage "misleading or obscure"; but if more than one meaning is possible, the punctuation is not altered and the problem is discussed in a note (p. xxx). The trouble with such an approach is that if only one meaning is possible the reader does not really need the editor's intervention in the punctuation in order to find it.

22. When such passages are not conjecturable, they are indicated by spaced periods within brackets if `one or two words or parts thereof" are missing; if a larger amount is missing, "a note to this effect will be subjoined."

23. There may of course be some versions with no claim to authority. But a distinction should be made between those copies which it is essential to collate--even for an "ordinary" document--and those which can safely be dismissed. (In a later article ["Some Animadversions"--see note 14 above], Boyd says, "We insist upon collating every text available" [p. 52].)

24. Of course, judgment is involved, even in a literal presentation, in deciding what is in fact present in the original text; but that is a different application of judgment from the one which results in altering what is in the text. (This distinction is commented on further in part III below.)

25. The identical situation occurs again at 338.25.

26. Some further remarks on Boyd's method in such texts are made by St. George L. Sioussat in American Historical Review, 56 (1950-51), 118-127--in one of the few reviews of an NHPRC edition to pay close attention to textual matters.

27. Carter had earlier made the same points in his article, "The Territorial Papers of the United States,' American Archivist, 8 (1945), 122-135.

28. A few years later, Carter made the case even more forcefully, in "The Territorial Papers of the United States: A Review and a Commentary," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 42 (1955-56), 510-524. Every aspect of a document, he says there, is "part and parcel of the intellectual climate of an era. Editorial tampering with punctuation, spelling, paragraphing, and the like, which means the introduction of textual corruptions, is anathema" (p. 516).

29. The only departure he condones is in regard to spacing: "unusual spacing should not be reproduced" (p. 17), he says, and all paragraphs should begin with indentions and (surprisingly) all salutations run in with the first lines of texts. It would be more in keeping with Carter's respect for documentary evidence not even to allow these alterations. Spacing can of course be regarded as a nontextual matter; but Carter's desire to "avoid undue expanses of blank paper" seems a trivial justification for changing the way a writer sets off a salutation or complimentary close.

30. Citations below are to subsection and paragraph numbers of the 1954 edition; the identical passages can easily be located in the 1974 edition, where the paragraph numbers remain the same (the subsections are not numbered but readily identified). The only significant revision in 1974 is the alteration of the opening paragraph to include references to five more recent discussions of editing, including Carter's.

31. Besides, the arbitrary limit of four letters is illogical, since there could well be instances of more missing letters in which the intended word was equally obvious.

32. The final sentence of this rule makes the odd suggestion that a clerk's marginal glosses in "court and similar records" may "either be omitted, or used as subheadings to save expense." If they are so unimportant that they can be omitted entirely, it seemS strange that an alternative is to give them a prominent place in the text itself--so prominent as to impose upon the text the sense of its structure envisioned by the clerk.

33. Incidentally, the rule on such designations (III.3) states, "Points after monetary abbreviations are superfluous." But a previous rule (III.5) tells what to do if an abbreviation is "still obscure after superior letters are brought down and a point added," as if the addition of the point is a factor in producing clarity. Whether abbreviations are written with or without periods is a matter of convention; determining whether or not a period is "superfluous" does not normally involve considerations of meaning.

34. Another statement which offers valuable advice occurs in the preliminary subsection: "In reprinting a document it is better to prepare a fresh text from the manuscript or photostat; for if an earlier printed edition is used as the basis, one is apt to repeat some of the former editor's errors, or maybe add others of one's own" (I.9). The last seven words should of course be eliminated: an editor can naturally make mistakes of his own, but this danger is present whether he is working from the original or a printed edition.

35. A superficial reason is also given for not being literal in quotations cited in secondary works: in these cases "the Expanded Method is far preferable to the literal, since the latter clashes unnecessarily with a modern text and makes readers pause to puzzle over odd spellings and abbreviations." (The Expanded Method here sounds very similar to the Modernized.) For some reason bracketed explanations are disapproved of in such quotations, though appended footnotes are not.

36. Just before the end it is stated that every text "should be compared word for word with the original, or with a microfilm or photographic copy," as if comparison against a photocopy could be substituted for comparison against the original. Many later historical editors do in fact comment on having taken their texts from photostats, microfilms, and the like, seemingly unaware of the dangers involved; literary editors more frequently remark on the necessity for the collation of transcriptions against the original manuscripts. For an excellent statement explaining why photograph ic reproduction can be "the most dangerous thing of all" for persons who have "a touching faith in the notion that `the camera does not lie,'" see pp. 707 of Arthur Brown's article cited in note 97 below.

37. "Report on Editing Historical Documents," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research [University of London], I (1923-24), 6 25: 3 (1925-26), 13-26

38. "It is customary to adopt modern methods of punctuation, and cases are few in which departure from this procedure is advisable. The editor should, however, be careful not to alter the sense of a passage in altering the punctuation" (3, 22).

39. Two still earlier statements have much in common with the later ones. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in "The Printing of Old Manuscripts," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 20 (1882-83), 175-18_, complains about the practice of reproducing manuscript abbreviations in print and believes that fidelity to a manuscript text "can be carried to fanaticism" (p. 182), though he does recognize that at least "the scholarly few" may wish to preserve the "complexion, as it were, of the period to which the book belongs." In "Suggestions for the Printing of Documents Relating to American History," Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1905, 1:45-48, the position is taken that a manuscript should be printed "in the form which it would have borne if the author had contemporaneously put it into print" (p. 47), with obvious mistakes corrected, abbreviations expanded, and some punctuation clarified--though with certain cancellations recorded, as offering "some indication of the mental process of the writer." A more recent discussion by Edith G. Firth, "The Editing and Publishing of Documents," Canadian Archivist Newsletter, No. 1 (1963), 3-12, makes clearer the reasons for not modernizing and recognizes that much modernization in any case results from "underestimating Everyman's ability" (p. 4). A similar point of view was cogently set forth thirty years earlier by Hilary Jenkinson, in "The Representation of Manuscripts in Print," London Mercury, 30 (1934), 429-438 (which also comments on the relation between historical and literary editing).

40. My brief comments on the editorial policies of these editions are not meant to be comprehensive; many other features, both praiseworthy and regrettable, could be discussed in addition to those I select as relevant illustrations here. Most of the editions, for instance, place in brackets editorial conjectures for illegible or missing words or letters, and most report variants or canceled readings on a selective basis, but these practices are generally not referred to. Citation of page numbers in each case, unless otherwise specified, refers to the first volume of an edition.

41. On the history and editing of Franklin's papers, see Francis S. Philbrick, "Notes on Early Editions and Editors of Franklin," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 97 (1953), 525-564; William E. Lingelbach, "Benjamin Franklin's Papers and the American Philosophical Society," ibid., 99 (1955), 359-380; Leonard W. Labaree and Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., "The Papers of Benjamin Franklin: A Progress Report," ibid., 101 (1957), 232-234; Labaree, "The Papers of Benjamin Franklin," Dardalus, 86 (1955-57), 57-62, and "The Benjamin Franklin Papers," Williams Alumni Review, 59 (February 1967), 11. P. M. Zall's article (see note 6 above) illustrates the kind of work which remains to be done on the textual history of Franklin's Autobiography, even after the appearance of the Yale edition.

42. Cf. his generalization, in "Scholarly Editing in Our Times," Ventures, 3 (Winter 1964), 281, that recent editors "may make concessions . . . to modern usage in such matters as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, but they reproduce to the utmost of their ability the phraseology of the original" (p. 29).

43. Labaree follows Boyd's system of printing significant canceled passages in footnotes for ordinary documents and recording cancellations within the text for important documents. A few criticisms of the textual policy of the Franklin edition appear in J. A. Leo Lemay's review of the eighteenth volume in American Historical Review, 81 (1976),

44. See also his "Editing the Henry Clay Papers," American Archivist, 20 (1957), 231-238.

45. For general accounts of the papers, see L. H. Butterfield, `The Papers of the Adams Family: Some Account of Their History," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 71 (1953-57), 328-356 (abridged as "Whatever You Write Preserve" in American Heritage, 10 [April 1959], 26-33, 88-93); Butterfield, "The Adams Papers," Daedalus, 86 (1955-57), 62-71; and Wendell D. Garrett, "The Papers of the Adams Family: `A Natural Resource of History,'" Historical New Hampshire, 21, no. 3 (Autumn 1966), 28-37. All three include some historical comments on the editing of the papers. See also Butterfield in Holland: A Record of L. H. Butterfield's Pursuit of the Adamses Abroad in 1959 (1961), with comments by Julian P. Boyd and Walter Muir Whitehill; and The Adams Papers: Remarks by Julian P. Boyd, Thomas B. Adams, L. H. Butterfield, the President of the United States (1962).

46. There is thus the same difficulty here with interpreting canceled matter placed in angle brackets, when there is no symbol for interlineations: one cannot always tell whether the cancellation was made at the time of inscription or possibly later.

47. This edition (1954-59), in some 600 reels, has been influential in the movement to make manuscript collections available in microfilm form. For historical and evaluative comments on it, see L. H. Butterfield, "`Vita sine literis, mors est': The Microfilm Edition of the Adams Papers," Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 18 (1960-61), 53-58; Merrill Jensen, Samuel Flagg Bemis, and David Donald, "`The Life and Soul of History,'" New England Quarterly, 34 (1961), 96-105; and Wendell D. Garrett, "Opportunities for Study: The Microfilm Edition of The Adams Papers," Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, n.s., 5 (1962), 26-33.

48. And, on the nontextual side, to provide historical annotation.

49. Whether critical texts are more appropriate for some kinds of material than others is a separate question, as is the desirability of a record of all emendations in critical texts.

50. In an earlier article on "The Papers of Alexander Hamilton," in the Historian, 19 (1956-57), 168-181, Syrett and Jacob. Cooke say that the Hamilton editors "expect to rely heavily on the precedent set by the Jefferson papers." See also Syrett, "Alexander Hamilton Collected," Columbia University Forum, 5, no. 1 (Spring 1962), 24-28.

51. For a history of the early work on this edition, see William H. Runge, "The Madison Papers," American archivist, 20 (1957), 313-317.

52. One troublesome aspect of the punctuation in the Fr‚mont is the treatment of the accent in Fr‚mont's name. The editors have decided that the name can appear both with and without the accent; but they will not then allow it to appear both ways within a single document.

53. Jackson has described the process of getting an edition underway (drawing on his experiences with his more recent edition of George Washington's papers) in "Starting in the Papers Game," Scholarly Publishing, 3 (197112), 28-38. (He also comments on "The Papers of George Washington" in Manuscripts, 22 [1970], 2-11.)

54. See also Rogers's "The Papers of Henry Laurens," University of South Carolina Magazine, 1 (1965), 5-8.

55. The next sentence reads, "In the few instances where excessive editorial license was practiced, that fact has been noted." Surely the editor does not find his own alterations excessive; what is presumably meant is that some alterations are too great to go unnoted. But the reader has no way of knowing where the line has been drawn between silent and reported emendations.

56. See also Burl Noggle, "A Note on Historical Editing: The Wilson Papers in Perspective," Louisiana History, 8 (1967), 281-297.

57. See also Graf, "Editing the Andrew Johnson Papers," Mississippi Quarterly, 15 (1962), 113-118.

58. For a survey of the history and reception of this edition, see Haskell Monroe, "The Grant Papers: A Review Article," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 61 (1968), 463-481. In connection with the editorial archives amassed by the staff of the Grant edition, Simon has discussed the interesting question of the policy that should be established regarding access to such material, in "Editorial Projects as Derivative Archives," College and Research Libraries, 35 (1974), 291-294.

59. See also Pete Daniel and Stuart Kaufman, "The Booker T. Washington Papers and Historical Editing at Maryland," Maryland Historian, 1 (1970), 23-29; and Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, "The Booker T. Washington Papers," ibid., 6 (1975), 55-59.

60. Johnson, incidentally, exactly reverses Boyd's practice regarding "ye" and "&c.": the former he retains and the latter he changes to "etc."--"to conform to modern usage and typography."

61. See also his "The Papers of Daniel Webster," Source, I (1971), 6-8.

62. Cf. Robert E. Cushman, "A Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the First Ten Amendments," Quarterly Legal Historian, I (March 1962), 3-6.

63. Lewis has commented on "Editing Familiar Letters" in the Listener, 49 (1953), 597-598--reprinted in Daedalus, 86 (1955-57), 71-77--and on "Editing Private Correspondence" in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 107 (1963), 289-293 (where he confuses the issue by asserting that any editor who favors literal transcriptions of eighteenth century documents should also "wear a wig while at work and give up cigarettes for snuff").

64. As in Butterfield's "Historical Editing . . . The Recent Past," in Rundell's "Documentary Editing" (see note 10 above), or in Labaree's "Scholarly Editing" (see note 42 above). See also Butterfield's comments in The Letters of Benjamin Rush (American Philosophical Society, 1951), p. lxxvii.

65. See also his "Twenty Thousand Voltaire Letters," in Editing Eighteenth-Century Texts, ed. D. I. B. Smith (1968), pp. 7-24.

66. Precisely the opposite policy (correcting any accents present according to modern practice, but not supplying accents when they are omitted) is applied to the French in the sixth volume (1967) of The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. Thomas W. Copeland et al. (Cambridge University Press and University of Chicago Press, 1958--).

67. Although, it is fair to add, none of the editions' with a CEAA or CSE emblem can be classed in this category.

68. For references to two similar statements of his, see notes 27 and 28 above. His earlier edition of The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage (Yale University Press, 1931-33) is characteristically careful but does not contain an analogous announcement of textual policy.

69. Johnson's spelling is of particular interest, too: "I have respected Johnson's spelling. It was worth while to show that the great systematic lexicographer did not in his own practice achieve a consistent orthography, and was conspicuously careless about proper names" (p. x). See also Chapman's "Proposals for a New Edition of Johnson's Letters," Essays and Studies, l: (1926), 47-62.

70. Cf. her "Editing the Coleridge Notebooks," in Editing Texts of the Romantic Period, ed. John D. Baird (1972), pp. 7-25.

71. It is surprising, however, given this policy, that she regularizes Coleridge's "careless apostrophes" (p. xxxii)--especially in view of the variable placement of apostrophes which occurs even in printed matter in the nineteenth century.

72. Examples of editions in these years which present manuscript texts almost, but not entirely, in "verbatim" or "literal" form are The Letters of William Gilmore Simms, ed. Mary C. Simms Oliphant, Alfred Taylor Odell, and T. C. Duncan Eaves (University of South Carolina Press, 1952-56); and Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (Clarendon Press, 1956 71). Both these retain the original spelling and punctuation but silently eliminate such slips as repetitions. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler et al. (Rutgers University Press, 1953), silently corrects typographical errors in printed texts but brackets all emendations in manuscripts; Basler feels, however, that Lincoln's "habitual dash at the end of a sentence or following an abbreviation" must be altered to a period.

73. Such as closing parentheses and quotation marks. Although Cooper's use of a dash for a period is respected, sentences are nevertheless made to begin with capital letters.

74. Pochmann, as general editor of the Irving edition, was instrumental in formulating the policy for editing the journals; the volume editor for the first volume (1969) is Nathalia Wright and for the third (1970) Walter A. Reichart. William H. Gilman has said that the Irving editors "have spelled out their answers to problems [of journal editing] in more detail than any other conscientious and sophisticated editors I know of" (see his important review, cited in note 105 below).

75. Cancellations are thus included in the text, but there is also a list of þ'Details of Inscription" at the end, making clear the stages of revision at each point.

76. Harold Williams's edition of The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (Clarendon Press, 1963-65) also prints the texts with "exact care," preserving "variants in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation" (p. xviii), including the period dash combination at the ends of sentences; and Elvan Kintner's edition of The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846 (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969) similarly presents a literal text, indicating insertions with arrows and allowing sentences to end with dashes and without periods. Some generally successful editions of these years do, however, include a small amount of modernization or normalizing. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall's edition of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1965--) follows the spelling and punctuation of the original but expands some abbreviations. Chester L. Shaver's The Early Years (Clarendon Press, 1967) and Mary Moorman's The Middle Years (1969) in the revised edition of The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth preserve the spelling and punctuation of the originals, but they inexplicably expand ampersands. Sentences are allowed to end with a dash and no period, but the "frequent ampersands have been changed to `and' for the convenience of the reader, (Moorman, p. ix); it is difficult to see how ampersands constitute a sufficient inconvenience to warrant alteration in any case, but particularly when other potentially more troublesome practices are not altered. M. R. D. Foot and H. C. G. Matthew's edition of The Gladstone Diaries (Clarendon Press, 1968--) follows the original punctuation and spelling "as closely as can be" (p. xxxviii) but expands some abbreviations and alters dashes to periods or commas "as the sense requires.', The policy of the second volume of the "Research Edition,' of The Yale Edition of The Private Papers of James Boswell is to normalize capitals and periods for sentence openings and closings and to ignore insignificant deletions, but to report any alterations of punctuation to "relieve ambiguities,, and any corrections of "patent inadvertencies" in spelling; see Marshall Waingrow's edition of The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the "Life of Johnson" (McGraw-Hill, 1969), pp. lxxix-lxxxiii. (Cf. Frederick A. Pottle, "The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell," Ventures, 2 [Winter 1963], 11-15.)

77. See also Reiman's "Editing Shelley," in Editing Texts of the Romantic Period, ed. John D. Baird (1972), pp. 27-45

78. See also her "Letters and Journals of Fanny gurney: Establishing the Text," in Editing Eighteenth-Century Texts, ed. D. I. B. Smith (1968), pp. 15-43.

79. Another example of the kind of significance which punctuation can have is offered by Desmond Pacey, in "On Editing the Letters of Frederick Philip Grove," in Editing Canadian Texts, ed. Francess G. Halpenny (1975), pp. 49-73; Grove placed slang words in quotation marks, and Pacey retains them "since they indicate something of his stiffness of character" (p. 72). (Pacey, however, favors silent emendation of spelling errors, expansion of abbreviations, and regular italicization of titles.)

80. Reiman (see note 77 above) comments on the "dearth of knowledge and standards of judgment of editing . . . among those who review such publications [editions] in learned journals" (p. 37). And L. H. Butterfield, in "Editing American Historical Documents" (see note lo above), says, "It is in fact shocking to find how low the threshold of tolerance sometimes is for poorly edited materials among those who should know better" (p. 98). Examples of the praise bestowed on the editorial practices of some of the historical editions, without a serious analysis of those practices, are the following: the Jefferson edition is said to be provided "with every ingenuity of typographical suggestion of the state of the manuscripts" (Times Literary Supplement, 6 April 1951, p. 206); the Jefferson practices are called "so satisfactory as to require only minor modifications to adapt them to each later project" (American Archivist, 25 [1962], 449); the Clay edition reflects "the precision that has come to distinguish the science of historical editing at its mid-twentieth century peak of perfection" (Journal of Southern History, 26 [1960], 238); "Boyd and his fellow editors have perfected techniques of research, skills of analysis, and modes of presentation" (Louisiana History, 8 [1967], 282).

81. Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 49 (1962-63), 504 6; Journal of American History, 51 (1964-65), 299-301. The first refers to "the editorial imperialism and compulsiveness that characterize these volumes"; the second comments on "monumentally trifling footnotes" and "fantastically detailed annotations" and finds the editors "making the profession of editing look purely pedantic."

82. Writing on "Horace Walpole at Yale" in the New York Review of Books, 5, no. 4 (30 September 1965), 9-10, Plumb objects to publishing "every scrap of writing committed to paper by one man" (which demands "little more than industry and accuracy") and asserts that Wilmarth Lewis started "a new and dangerous form of historical activity" which has "spread among historical and literary scholars like measles among the Aztecs, and as disastrously." Similarly Esmond Wright, in "Making History," Listener, 68 (1962), 803-804, names five ways in which the editions threaten the historian; one of them is the scale of the editions, for all the facts "blur rather than reveal."

83. In "The American Revolution Bicentennial and the Papers of Great White Men: A Preliminary Critique of Current Documentary Publication Programs," AHA Newsletter, 9, no. 5 (November 1971), 7-21 (p. 9). "The present publications program," Lemisch believes, "should be seen in part as a vestige of the arrogant nationalism and elitism of the `fifties" (p. 11), and he suggests other kinds of papers worthy of attention, such as the records of ordinary and "inarticulate" people which would provide materials for studying popular protest, racism, sexism, and so on. Some correspondence relating to his article appeared in the same journal in May 1972 (10, no. 3, 25-28). The article was later excerpted in the Maryland Historian, 6 (1975), 43-50, followed by a new article in which Lemisch states that little progress has been made since 1971 in editing the papers of undistinguished persons: "The Papers of a Few Great Black Men and a Few Great White Women," pp. 60-66.

84. For example, Gerald Gunther, reviewing the Adams papers in the Harvard Law Review, 75 (1961-65), 1669-80, argues that "the present emphasis on multi-volume publication projects" is the "slowest and costliest" way to make manuscripts accessible; he believes that the NHPC has inadequately identified "the purposes of publishing manuscript collections," confusing publication with printing, and that more use should be made of microfilm (esp. pp. 1670-76). Steven R. Boyd, in "Form of Publication. A Key to the Wide-spread Availability of Documents," AHA Newsletter, lo, no. 4 (September 1972), 24-26, also favors microfilm, asserting that the NHPC letterpress program "is failing to make documentary sources generally available" and that "no new letterpress projects should be begun at this time." General discussions of alternatives are Charles E. Lee, "Documentary Reproduction: Letterpress Publication--Why? What? How?", American Archivist, 28 (1965), 351-365; and Robert L. Zangrando, "Alternatives to Publication," Maryland Historian, 7 (1976), 71-76 (which suggests that historians in general should give more consideration to forms of publication other than letterpress).

85. Some accounts of these programs can be found in Fred Shelley, "The Presidential Papers Program of the Library of Congress," American Archivist, 25 (1962), 429-433; Wayne C. Grover, "Toward Equal Opportunities for Scholarship," Journal of American History, 52 (1965-66), 715-724; L. H. Butterfield, "The Scholar's One World," American Archivist, 29 (1966), 343-361; Frank B. Evans, "American Personal Papers," Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 24 (1967), 147-151; and Shelley, "The Choice of a Medium for Documentary Publication," American Archivist, 32 (1969), 363-368.

86. It should also be recognized that even photographic reproductions can distort the originals. Cf. note 36 above.

87. For example, see Boyd, "Some Animadversions" (see note 14 above), p. 51, and "`God's Altar . . .'" (see note lo above), p. 21; Cappon, "The Historian as Editor," in In Support of Clio: Essays in Memory of Herbert A. Kellar, ed. William B. Hesseltine and Donald R. McNeil (1958), pp. 173-193, and "A Rationale" (see note 10 above), pp. 72-73. The debate over the role of the editor as an interpretive historian is further examined by Cappon in "Antecedents of the Rolls Series: Issues in Historical Editing," Journal of the Society of Archivists, 4 (1970-73), 358-369.

88. Even in these cases, however, a manuscript rather than a printed edition may be chosen as the proper copy-text.

89. Robert Halsband, editor of The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortleg Montagu (Clarendon Press, 1965-67), remarks, "It seems paradoxical that political and social historians--who, one would think, are sticklers for exactness--should prefer normalized texts, whereas literary historians strive for exact transcription"; and he conjectures that to the former "the facts are paramount," whereas the latter are concerned also with "nuances of style" (pp. 30-31). See his discussion of "Editing the Letters of Letter-Writers," SB, II (1958), 25-37--a useful survey of the problems involved (although it favors partial normalization and selective recording of deletions). Another general survey is James Sutherland's "Dealing with Correspondences," Times Literary Supplement, 26 January 1973, pp. 79-80 (in a special issue on "Letters as Literature").

90. In his review of Lois Mulkearn s edition of the George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1954), Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 74 (1955), 113-114. Cf. Julian Boyd's reply in "Some Animadversions" (see note 14 above), p. 50.

91. Reuben Gold Thwaites, early in the century, recognized the literary interest in essentially nonliterary materials in his edition of the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, `804-/806 (Dodd, Mead, 1904-5); he prints the texts of successive drafts because "in a publication of original records it appears advisable to exhibit the literary methods of the explorers" (p. lvii).

92. The 1951 and 1954 reports of the NHPC (see note 8 above) include the names of literary figures in the lists of papers which need to be edited; the 1963 report comments, "American literature also presents a picture of compelling need. With few exceptions, no scholarly and acceptable texts of the works of any national figure in the field of American letters are available" (p. 28), and adds that it is prepared to give to literary editions "such assistance and encouragement as may be within its power."

93. Reingold approaches this point in his letter to the American Scholar when he acknowledges that occasionally "historical editors may reprint publications or present the texts of unpublished writings intended for print."

94. One of the best assessments of the importance of this practice is made by Timothy L. S. Sprigge in his edition of The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (University of London Athlone Press, 1968--): "Special mention must be made of Bentham's habit, even in his letters, of writing alternative words and phrases above the line without deleting the final form whenever it is posted. The writer is under no constraint to conform to any particular convention in these writings, except to the extent that he hopes a letter will be comprehensible to its recipient. Any idiosyncrasies in them--however contrary to the standards for published works--are an essential part of their character.

95. I have commented on this matter in "The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention," SB, 29 (1976), 167-211 (esp. pp. 183-191); cf. SB, 28 (1975), 222-227.

96. A cogent statement of this position is Hershel Parker's "Regularizing Accidentals: The Latest Form of Infidelity," Proof, 3 (1973), 1-90, which also contains an excellent summary of the arguments against "full' or "partial" modernization. See also Joseph Molden-hauers comments in his edition of Thoreau's The Maine Woods (Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 399-400

97. See, for example, W. W. Greg's strong statement of the position in The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (2nd ed., 1951), pp. l-liii; and Fredson Bowers, "Old-Spelling Editions of Dramatic Texts," in Studies in Honor of T. W. Baldwin, ed. D. C. Allen (1958), pp. gels (reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing [1975], pp. 289-295 [esp. pp. 191-193]). A standard exposition of many of the arguments for and against modernization is found in two essays of 1960: John Russell Brown (favoring modernization), "The Rationale of Old-Spelling Editions of the Plays of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries," SB, 13 (1960), 49-67; and Arthur Brown (opposing modernization), ". . . A Rejoinder," ibid., 69 76.

98. As Samuel Schoenbaum says, "Surely the illusion of quaintness fades very quickly as the reader settles down to the material at hand" (p. 23); see "Editing English Dramatic Texts," in Editing Sixteenth Century Texts, ed. R. J. Schoeck ( 966), pp. 12-24. A curious fact is that the feature of manuscript letters most frequently discussed and altered by editors is a dash (with or without other punctuation) at the end of a sentence (or even within sentences). Changing the dash to a period (or, within sentences, to some other appropriate mark) is usually regarded not as modernization but as the correction of an error; any practice that has been so widespread in private writing over so many years, however, is more sensibly regarded as a standard custom than as an error. (Of course, even if it were an idiosyncrasy--"error"--of a particular writer, that fact would not be a reason to alter it.)

99. The case against partial modernization of a published work has been most effectively stated by Fredson Bowers (who calls it "basically useless and always inconsistent") in his review of the second volume (1963) of The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, which modernizes capitalization (and the italicization of quotations) but not spelling and punctuation; see "The Text of Johnson," Modern Philology, 61 (1964), 298-309, reprinted in his collected Essays, pp. 375-391 (esp. pp. 378-381). Hershel Parker (see note 96 above), surveying a number of comments, says that partial modernization "has been all but hooted out of textual circles" (p. I).

100. The point has been succinctly put by Hershel Parker (see note 96 above): "Normalizing to satisfy an editor's instinct for tidiness or to make smooth the way of a reader is ultimately demeaning for the editor and insulting to the reader" (p. 19).

101. Some responsible editions, as noted earlier, do incorporate certain minor categories of correction--not modernization--into the text and indicate exactly what has been done in notes. If these categories are carefully defined, their presence in the text may not seriously interfere with the aim of maintaining the texture of the original. It is dangerous to argue, however, that nothing is lost just because all the evidence is available in the notes; there is an important difference in emphasis between a reading which is chosen to stand in the text and one which is relegated to a note or a list.

102. There are practical advantages to this system, also, in the case of works likely to be reproduced photographically for widespread distribution by commercial publishers. For further discussion, see G. T. Tanselle, "Some Principles for Editorial Apparatus," SB, 25 (1975), 41-88 (esp. pp. 45-49).

103. One of the reasons for their importance is suggested by Boyd when he refers to "those revealing deletions and first thoughts that so often unmask the writer's true feelings or motives" ("Some Animadversions" [see note 14 above], p. 52). Even when they are not revealing in this way, they are still part of the characterizing roughness of the document and are indicative of the writer's process of composition.

104. Methods of transcribing manuscripts in clear text (with apparatus) or in descriptive form (with symbols in the text) are carefully described by Fredson Bowers in "Transcription of Manuscripts: The Record of Variants," SB, 29 (1976), 212-264.

105. Of course, a text with several kinds of brackets in it (and other symbols such as arrows) will be more awkward to quote in secondary works, and this practical consideration may, in the case of a few important texts likely to be widely quoted, cause the editor to choose clear text and record all deletions in notes; it is questionable, however, whether what is gained from a practical point of view really justifies the loss incurred. Generally, in any case, there is no more reason to regularize or modernize a quoted excerpt than the complete text itself. The problem of the quoter as his own editor, along with many other considerations affecting the extent of editorial intrusion in private documents, is taken up by William H. Gilman in an excellent and thorough discussion (occasioned by the appearance of the first volume of the Irving Journals), "How Should Journals Be Edited?", Early American Literature, 6 (1971), 73-83.

106. This point was not recognized by Lewis Mumford in his famous review of the Emerson Journals, "Emerson Behind Barbed Wire," New York Review of Books, 18 January 1968, pp. 3-5, which objects to the inclusion of cancellations and editorial symbols. (See also the related correspondence in the issues of 14 March, pp. 35-36, and 23 May, p. 43.)

107. Shaw (see note 17 above) objects to the "essentially subjective basis for editorial revisions" (p. 741) in the critical-text policies of the CEAA editions and regards the attempt to "recapture `the author's intention'" as opening "the door to chaos" (p. 740). He fails to acknowledge the subjectivity and concern for "intention" which are a part of all editing, even the transcription of a single manuscript text.

108. This "eclectic" approach is thoroughly discussed in Fredson Bowers's "Remarks on Eclectic Texts," Proof, 4 (1975), 316 (reprinted in his collected Essays, pp. 488-528). See also the various writings on Greg's rationale of copy-text; many are mentioned by G. T. Tanselle in SB, 28 (1975), 167-229.

109. A difficult category consists of semifinished manuscripts of the kinds of works normally intended for publication: the manuscripts of some of Emily Dickinson's poems and of Melville's Billy Budd are prominent examples. From one point of view they are private documents, and their nature can best be represented by a literal transcription showing cancellations and insertions in the text; from another point of view they are simply unfinished literary works and ought therefore to be printed in a critically established dear text, the form in which one normally expects to read poems and fiction. The solution which Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., reach in their edition of Billy Budd (University of Chicago Press, 1962) is to print a "genetic text" accompanied by a "reading text." For some comments on the general problem and on Dickinson's poems in particular, see Tanselle's "The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention" (see note 95 above), esp. pp. 205-207.

110. Shaw says, "With an eclectic text, the problem of variants is solved at the expense of making them disappear from view" (p. 739)--as if there is something about an eclectic text which prohibits the recording of variant readings.

111. Including at least the substantive variants in post-copy-text editions and the treatment of ambiguous line-end hyphens, along with a textual essay and discussions of problematical readings. For further explanation of the CEAA requirements, see the CEAA Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures (rev. ea., 1972).

112. Shaw's argument for the Freudian significance of errors (pp. 742143) is actually a more telling criticism of most of the NHPRC editions than of the CEAA editions; when a CEAA editor does correct an error, he reports that fact in a list of emendations, whereas NHPRC editors often make corrections without notifying the reader where these corrections occur. Shaw objects to the CEAA editor who "rewrites usage, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and hyphenation" (p. 741) and misleadingly implies that this practice is in contrast to that of NHPRC editors; actually, changes of this kind occur with greater frequency in the NHPRC editions--and are often not recorded in any way. At another point Shaw seems to take a different position on the question of errors: "It would be unfair to the author literally to transcribe his manuscript without correcting his obvious oversights" (p. 74þ).

113. One of the reasons the CEAA editions are not "definitive," Shaw says, is "the physical impossibility of comparing and recording all the variants as demanded by copy-text theory" (p. 748). Presumably any respectable theory would require an editor to compare texts and locate variants; the CEAA policy for recording variants, however, has nothing to do with theory--obviously a text edited according to Greg's theory of copy-text would remain so edited whether or not it were accompanied by any apparatus. It is true that CEAA editions do not always record all variants (neither do the NHPRC editions); but the important point is that CEAA editions clearly define what categories of variants are to be recorded and record all that fall within those categories, whereas NHPRC editions normally record variants selectively on the vague basis of "significance." Therefore, if the word "definitive" must be used, it would seem to fit CEAA apparatus but generally not NHPRC apparatus. The objection has been well put by Bowers, who says of the Johnson edition (see note 99 above) that the reader "has no way of knowing whether he is or is not accepting in ignorance any of the extensive editorial silent departures from the copy-text features" (p. 379).

114. Shaw is incorrect in saying that CEAA editions "include no plans to publish authors' letters" (p. 748). The opening of the same sentence is also incorrect: "Unlike the historical editions, most of them are selected, not complete, editions." It would be more accurate to say that most of the CEAA editions are planned to be complete, not selective, and that many of the NHPRC editions are in fact selective (leaving out the texts of certain less important documents and instead summarizing them or mentioning their existence in a calendar of manuscripts).

115. "Bibliography and the University," University of Pennsylvania Library Chronicle, 15 (1949), 37-51 (p. 37); reprinted in his collected Essays, pp. 3-14.


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