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FOREWORD
On December 21, 1980, the editor of these volumes, Philip L. Barbour, died in
Petersburg, Virginia. He had turned eighty-two that same day and was en
route to Williamsburg from Louisville, Kentucky, his hometown.
At the time of Mr. Barbour's death, each of the three volumes in the set
was in a different stage of editing. For reasons that need not be explained here,
Volume II had been prepared for the compositor first. By fall 1980 this
volume was in page proof, and Mr. Barbour had had a chance to make final
corrections. Volume I and Volume III had not yet been typeset, but for both
of these volumes Mr. Barbour's editorial work was basically complete. In the
case of Volume I, the manuscript had already been perused by a recognized
authority on John Smith's period, and Mr. Barbour had responded to
detailed criticisms and had been able to make appropriate changes. He had
also approved most of the copy editing that had been done on the volume.
The manuscript of Volume I, then, was entirely ready for the compositor by
the end of 1980.
Volume III had not yet been sent to an outside reader for criticism prior
to Mr. Barbour's death, nor had the manuscript been finally copy edited. It
should be emphasized, however, that in the course of preparation of the
manuscript, Mr. Barbour had been in regular consultation with editors at the
Institute of Early American History and Culture, and his work had been
scrutinized piecemeal. In consequence, neither the outside critical reading
nor the final copy editing resulted in any significant changes in the
manuscript.
The Institute did not have for Volumes I and III the benefit of Mr.
Barbour's close reading of the galley and page proof, which has been a
considerable handicap, especially in the case of the substantive footnotes. On
the other hand, the copy text of all three volumes had been prepared by Mr.
Barbour long before his death, and the faithfulness of the text presented here
to that copy text has been authenticated by multiple oral readings of the copy
text against the proofs by members of the Institute staff.
Mr. Barbour had undertaken only preliminary planning of the index
before he died. Knowing, however, that preparation of the index was a task
too massive for him at his advanced age and that page proof of Volume III
would not be available for another year, he requested, only months before he
died, that the Institute arrange to have Mrs. Alison M. Quinn take over the
job, which she was able to do.
It was Mr. Barbour's goal to have his editorial tasks completed by 1980,
the quadricentennial anniversary of Smith's birth, and happily this goal was
achieved. We are grateful, too, that Mr. Barbour thought to ensure the
financial health of the project by a provision in his will -- a complete surprise
to the Institute staff -- assigning a portion of his estate for Institute use. The
Barbour fund was critically important at the last stages of editorial and
production work.
Institute of Early American
History and Culture
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