The present discussion is limited to special problems of editing
transcriptions made of manuscripts in a non-facsimile manner and of
recording corrections and revisions in the texts. The material on which this
study is based comprises a miscellaneous group of nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century manuscripts of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman,
Stephen Crane, and William James. No particular magic inheres to this
period or to these authors; moreover, it is fortuitous that they are
American. The manuscripts, mostly holographs together with a few
typescripts, were greatly altered in the course of inscription and often in
later rounds of independent revision. So far as can be determined, however,
the methodology I propose is equally applicable to scribal versus holograph
manuscripts and to revised typescripts. Morever, it may seem probable that
the system proposed would be applicable to many manuscripts of other
periods and languages. However, I prefer to write of what I know from
recent firsthand experience; thus I draw my illustrations (when they are not
invented for convenience, and noted as 000.00) from the autograph
manuscripts of William James, which present a useful conspectus of
problems owing to James's custom of rapid composition and extensive
revision.
Note: Two general situations exist. In the edition of
Whitman's
Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (
1860) (University of
Chicago Press, 1955) the diplomatic transcripts of the manuscripts,
accompanied by apparatus, are arranged as a parallel text on facing pages
with the 1860 printed edition. In Stephen Crane's Works (University Press
of Virginia, 1969-75) some manuscripts, as in "Literary Remains" in
volume 10, are diplomatic transcripts like the Whitman, others are ancillary
to copy-texts drawn from printed editions, as in various of the
Tales,
Sketches, and Reports (volume 8), whereas others are used as the
basis for a critical edition as in
The O'Ruddy (volume 4), or
else in
The Red Badge of Courage (volume 2) which has a
more eclectic text though using the manuscript as copy-text. The apparatus
of manuscript alterations in the editions of William
James's
Pragmatism,
The Meaning of Truth,
and
A Pluralistic Universe (Harvard University Press,
1974-76) deals with untranscribed manuscripts that are adjuncts to the
first-edition copy-texts. Most conventions I have worked out for an
apparatus are as applicable to one situation as to another, but special
problems that need special treatment are raised by manuscripts that are not
themselves the copy-texts for an edition, as in the James Works. Also
distinguished, although occurring in both situations, are the separate
problems of limited and precise entries versus the occasional necessity to
transcribe, in the apparatus itself, extensive passages of text that exhibit
alterations—a circumstance where an apparatus to an apparatus to record
them is obviously impracticable. I should mention that my understanding of
the possibilities for improving the notation has increased with experience
and that over the course of time the system employed in the earlier editions
has been refined. The apparatus for
The Meaning of Truth is
an example of a somewhat discursive method; that for
A Pluralistic
Universe is more condensed and sophisticated. Only the James
volumes illustrate what I regard as a special contribution: a system for
incorporating the description of alterations within a transcript of the finally
revised state of a manuscript, not of its original unaltered state, as has
previously been customary.
The Meaning of Truth and more
particularly
A Pluralistic Universe illustrate a flexible method
for special cases relating the description to the right of the bracket in an
Alterations entry to the lemma to the left by means of single and double
daggers, whereas
Pragmatism employed a less refined system
utilizing only a single dagger.
Page-line references are to the ACLS edition by the Harvard University
Press (1975) of
The Meaning of Truth. The earlier examples
are given in comparatively full form so that the recommended
abbreviations, which appear later, can be understood. For many situations
there exist various optional ways of dealing with the problem, many of
which are illustrated. Once an editor sees the principles behind the options
he can make choices according to his own preferences for clarity or
economy and construct his own consistent system of notation. In certain
cases a prefixed asterisk indicates the present writer's own
recommendations.
General methods of transcription divide neatly in two:
(1) Transcription of the manuscript in a so-called clear
text; that is, a reading text without internal notes or description.
Almost necessarily it is the finally revised form of the text that must be
transcribed; the function of the apparatus appended to the reading text is
then to inform the reader, first, what the original text was like before
revision and, second, what were the exact details of the revisions that
produced the transcribed final text by modifying the readings of the
original.
(2) Transcription of the manuscript in the form of a formulaic
permanent record, not in a reading text, and with all description of
the alterations placed within the transcript itself as a running commentary.
The conventional method transcribes the original form of
the text and lists the successive revisions at the spot where they occur,
keyed to arbitrary symbols. The method suggested in this paper transcribes
the final form of the text and describes revisions of original readings in a
separate apparatus. However, when in this apparatus it is occasionally
necessary to note alterations within the described text (not in still another
apparatus to the apparatus), a new system is suggested that retains the virtue
of transcribing the primary text in its latest form, not in its earliest.
