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EDITORIAL METHOD>
The editor's goal throughout has been to present the texts of Smith's works as
faithfully as possible. The changes introduced are of two kinds, systematic and
ad hoc. All ad hoc changes have been recorded meticulously by page and line
number in the sections entitled "Textual Annotation" that follow each of
Smith's works. More will be said below about the guiding principles behind
these ad hoc changes. The systematic changes, most of which are merely
typographical, have been introduced silently in accordance with the
following rules.
Where necessary, "i" and "u" have been altered to represent vowel
sounds exclusively; "j" and "v" have been altered to represent consonants
exclusively. The makeshift "vv" has been changed to the modern "w," and
the old forms of "s" have been changed to the modern "s."Contractions have been expanded throughout: "Master" for "Mr.,"
"Captain" for "Cap[t].," "Sir" for "Sr," "lordship" for "Lp," etc.; "the,"
"that," etc., have been substituted for "ye," "yt," etc. ("y" was a graphic
variant of the runic letter thorn, still used in modern Icelandic, with the value
of "th"); "and" replaces the ampersand; and "etc." replaces "&c." The tilde
(a graphic variant "m" or "n" often reduced to a macron or short superior
line) has been replaced by expanding the word, as in "them" or "then" for
"thẽ," or "assistance" for "assistãce."The numerous italicized words in the first editions (mostly proper
names) have here been set in roman, except in the case of poetry, where we
have followed the original mixture of italics and roman exactly. Otherwise,
we have confined the use of italics to ships' names, Indian words (other than
proper nouns) that do not appear in standard English dictionaries, and a few
obscure foreign words and phrases. In one or two cases, such as the lists of
immigrants and their occupations, italics have been retained or added for the
sake of typographical clarity.Almost all changes in punctuation are recorded in the Textual
Annotation, except for a few additions or deletions of commas or full stops in
the marginalia, which was often erratically typeset, and the silent addition of
end-of-line hyphens that in certain obvious cases had been inadvertently
dropped by the seventeenth-century compositor (e.g., a line ending after
"pit" with the next line beginning "ched").Speeches and other direct quotations, which normally were not set
off by inverted commas in the seventeenth century, have been recognized in
this edition by the introduction of a line space above and below the extract
material.The original running heads have been discarded along with the
paging of the seventeenth-century editions. Page breaks are indicated by a
double vertical rule (||), and the original folio is set in boldface in brackets in
the margin. All page references to Smith material in these volumes are to these boldface
folios, not to the modern pagination. The catchwords have also been dropped.
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6.
All other adjustments of the text, whether of punctuation, spelling, or
word order, are listed in the Textual Annotation. It is perhaps necessary to
comment a little on the editorial philosophy underlying these ad hoc
alterations. First of all, obvious misprints have been corrected. Although in
Smith's time the degree of standardization now prevailing in matters of
orthography and punctuation did not exist, enough agreement existed to
enable us to identify actual printer's errors as such. Correction of typographical
mishaps such as inverted letters, triple consonants, and repeated
words need no defense, but, in addition, we have made alterations in the copy
text when it appeared logical to assume that if either Smith or his printers had
noticed the "error," it would have been corrected. On the other hand,
hundreds of "misspellings" in the modern sense have not been touched
because they were common (or even uncommon) variants at the time.
However, even though the editor has been extremely chary of making any
changes at all in spelling, in a number of cases sound editorial considerations
have justified some alterations. Since every one of these is listed in the Textual
Annotation appended to each work of Smith's, the reader is free to check and,
if so desired, reverse the editor's decision.
With regard to changes in punctuation, the same rules have been
applied. When the text could easily be misunderstood by, or even be
unintelligible to, the modern reader, we have altered the punctuation, based
on our best judgment of how it would have been done if the compositor had
minded his type. Here, too, the Textual Annotation will serve as a check and a
resource for the specialist. Generally, no matter how peculiar the
punctuation, if the text is comprehensible we have let it stand. The
punctuation has been altered, then, only in cases of unusual ambiguity or
obscurity. It has never been changed solely in the interest of modernizing or
standardizing.
The Textual Annotation following each work of Smith's includes also
two lists pertaining to the problems posed by words hyphenated at the end of
the line. The first list records those words that in the copy text were
hyphenated at the end of the line, thus raising for the editor the question of
whether the hyphen should be retained when the same word fell in the middle
of a line in the present edition. In deciding whether a word is normally
word division, the editor has been guided by what he took to be Smith's
typical usage. Since a decision on hyphenation is a form of emendation not
unlike the correction of a supposed typographical error, the reader can use
this first hyphenation list as a means of reconstructing the text as it was before
editing. The second hyphenation list records those words hyphenated at the
end of the line in the present edition for which the hyphen should be retained
when transcribing from this edition. In other words, it corrects for the
ambiguity that is often present when a word is divided at the end of the line.
One does not know if it is word division brought about by the number of
spaces left in the line or if the word is one that is to be hyphenated no matter
where it falls in the line. The second list, then, does not reflect editorial
discretion; it simply records that the word in question was hyphenated in the
copy text and was found that way in the middle of a line.
Before concluding, a word must be said about the copy texts for this
edition. The compositor was supplied with xerographic or printed facsimiles
of Smith's works on which certain editorial changes had been made, as
indicated above. The facsimiles were chosen for readability and availability,
and in some cases two or three different copies of Smith's books were used. In
consequence, in most instances no single library copy of a Smith work can be
cited as the copy text. However, in all cases we have worked with the first
editions of Smith's publications; there are no historical reasons for using any
later editions under the assumption that Smith himself corrected or altered
material for subsequent editions. The one partial exception to this rule is as
follows: Since the Generall Historie is in some respects a compilation or reprint
of some of Smith's earlier books, we have occasionally used that 1624
publication as a standard. All textual changes based on the Generall Historie
are so indicated in the Textual Annotation, and many footnotes make
comparisons between different versions of the same material in various of
Smith's works. We have not found it necessary, on the other hand, to collate
systematically the extant copies of Smith's works. There are variations from
copy to copy, but these are invariably extremely minor, and after a century or
so of Smith studies, no one has yet turned up a single important variation of
this kind from copy to copy. Many years of research into John Smith's life and
writings has brought to the editor's attention a number of these minor
variations; these are noted in the Textual Annotation by the addition of the
phrase "in some copies," without any further specificity.
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