University of Virginia Library

If the third quarter of the twentieth century can be considered—as it often is—an age of editing, one of the principal reasons is the existence and influence of two American organizations: the National Historical Publications Commission (NHPC), renamed in late 1974 the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC); and the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA), succeeded in 1976 by the Center for Scholarly Editions (CSE). The NHPC (NHPRC)[1] has since 1950 given encouragement and assistance to a large number of multi-volume editions (more than four dozen) of the papers of American statesmen, especially those of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the CEAA, from 1963 through 1976, gave its official approval to volumes in fourteen editions, predominantly of the works of nineteenth-century American literary figures.[2] As a result, massive scholarly editions have been produced in an unprecedented quantity during these years; hundreds of scholars have been connected with these projects, and widespread discussion and awareness of the problems and aims of editing have been engendered. The presence of these editions has dramatically altered the scholarly landscape in American history and literature within a generation.[3]

When there is so much editorial activity directed toward material from a single country and, for the most part, a single century, one would expect a great deal of communication among the editors involved; indeed, the creation of coordinating organizations like the NHPC and the CEAA suggests a recognition of the need for such communication. However, the fact that two organizations have seemed necessary indicates that the communication has not very readily crossed the boundary lines between academic disciplines. Regrettably, but undeniably, editors of "literary" material and editors of "historical" material[4] have gone their separate ways; members of each group have discussed common problems among themselves but have remained remarkably uninformed about what was taking place in the other group. One does not have to examine many volumes to recognize a central difference between the historical and the literary editions: the historical editions in general give more attention to explanatory annotation than to the detailed recording of textual data, whereas the literary editions reverse this emphasis. It is a fact that most of the historical editions do not meet the standards for reporting textual information established by the CEAA and would therefore not qualify for the award of the CEAA emblem. Whether those particular standards are justifiable is a separate question; what is disturbing is that such different standards should prevail in the two fields. If one could argue that the material edited by historians is different in kind from that edited by literary scholars, there might be some reason to expect different approaches. Indeed, the NHPRC editors do have more occasion to deal with manuscript letters and journals than with texts which were published by their authors, and for CEAA editors the opposite situation prevails. No doubt these relationships are largely responsible for the lesser concern of historians with questions of copy-text

and textual variants and for the greater concern of literary scholars with these matters. Nevertheless, literary editors frequently must edit letters and journals, and historical editors must handle statesmen's published, as well as unpublished, works. The editing of literary and of historical material should have many more points of similarity than of difference; and a greater understanding of mutual problems, between the two groups of editors, is bound to have a salutary effect on the editing produced by both groups.

There have recently been some encouraging signs to suggest that the dangers of editorial parochialism are perhaps becoming more widely recognized. Most notable is the broadening of the scope of the Modern Language Association's committee on editions: no longer limited to editions of American authors, it now provides simply a "Center for Scholarly Editions"—editions of any kind of material from any time and place—and it has shown itself to be concerned with promoting greater contact between editors in different fields. A similar development is the careful editorial attention which has lately been given to certain philosophers: Jo Ann Boydston's edition of John Dewey (1967- ), Fredson Bowers's of William James (1975- ), and Peter H. Nidditch's of John Locke (1975- )—the first two are CEAA editions—manifest an approach to textual matters which had previously been limited almost exclusively to more clearly bellettristic or "literary" writing.[5] In 1972 Edwin Wolf, 2nd, published a timely and well-considered appeal for historians to begin applying to historical works the techniques of analytical bibliography which have long been associated with literary studies, particularly with the editing of English Renaissance drama.[6] He calls attention to the historian's lack of sophistication in dealing with printed texts by pointing out that two of the most respected editors of historical manuscripts, Julian P. Boyd and Leonard W. Labaree, "never questioned the validity of the text of only a single copy of any printed work" (p. 29). After citing some examples of variants in American printed works of the eighteenth century, he again laments the "tradition of a wall separating bibliography as applied to literary works from bibliography as

applied to historical or political works" (p. 37). Nicolas Barker has also found occasion recently to comment on this point: in one of his editorials for the Book Collector he rightly says, "Historians, even more than literary scholars, have been apt to neglect the physical form in which the evidence on which they subsist has been preserved."[7]

In many other respects, the situation in which historical editors find themselves is similar to that of literary editors. In each field there was increased recognition, in the years following World War II, of the need for new editions of basic writings. In each field there was one man whose work provided the impetus and model for further work: the first volume of Julian P. Boyd's edition of Jefferson in 1950 set the pattern for many later historical editions, and the publication of that volume was the occasion for President Truman's reactivating the NHPC (which had originally been established in 1934);[8] the first volume of Fredson Bowers's edition of Hawthorne in 1962 was influential among literary editors in showing how the editorial techniques developed for Renaissance plays were applicable to nineteenth-century literature, and soon after its publication the CEAA was formally constituted (1963).[9] In each field there is thus an agency which serves as coordinator and clearinghouse, though with some differences: the NHPRC[10] is a government

agency (part of the General Services Administration and housed in the National Archives building), which undertakes to do some research (such as locating relevant manuscripts in archives) for editors; the CEAA[11] was, and the CSE is, a committee of the Modern Language Association of America, which draws some funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities[12] and which calls attention to excellence in editing by awarding an emblem to volumes that qualify (after being requested to inspect printer's copy for those volumes by their editors). In each field there has been some controversy surrounding the new editions, though for characteristically different reasons: criticism of the literary editions has been concerned principally with textual matters, whereas the main questions raised about the historical editions have had to do with the quantity of annotation, the justification for letterpress rather than microform publication, and the choice of material to be edited in the first place.[13] And in each field the editors have found that a great many of their colleagues neither understand nor respect editorial work;[14] in both fields an attempt has been made to improve graduate training in editing and to bring about a greater interest in and acceptance of editorial projects for dissertations—though the historical field, with the various NHPRC conferences, institutes, and fellowships in editing, has been more active in this regard that the literary.[15]

Despite some differences, editors in the two fields are in similar enough positions and face similar enough problems that one would expect them not only to be conversant with each other's work but to approach each other's concerns in an understanding and constructive spirit. In fact, however, there is, in the extensive editorial literature in the two fields,[16] practically no discussion which takes up the NHPRC and CEAA editions together or which examines the textual policies of the NHPRC editions in the way those of the CEAA editions have often been examined. The most publicized article of this sort is unfortunately one which confuses the issues more than it clarifies them. Peter Shaw, writing for a general audience in the American Scholar and interested in exploring textual matters,[17] was in a position to inaugurate a period of productive interdisciplinary discussion; but the regrettable tone of some of his remarks, as well as the fact that they are sometimes uninformed and incoherent, results in an essay which cannot command respect or offer a fruitful basis for further discussion. Shaw believes that the historical editors "unquestionably have had far greater success than their literary counterparts" (p. 739) and finds the literary editors' "tragic flaw" to be "their respect for language" (p. 740). But when he then praises the historical editors' "respect for historical fact," since for them "both the text and its variants qualify as historical facts" (p. 743), one

becomes lost. His point lacks any real substance because it is based on the superficial view that a modern literary editor produces an "eclectic text" and a historical editor a "faithful transcription of a single text" (p. 739)—without examining, for instance, what kinds of texts and textual histories may lead to a literary editor's decision to be "eclectic" or what kinds of textual facts are not recoverable from many historical editors' "faithful" transcriptions. It is naïve to suggest that "the historical editor requires a literary appreciation of nuance, while the literary editor needs the historian's respect for fact" (p. 740); but one can nevertheless agree with Shaw that "each set of editors might usefully have advised the other"—though not because they have "opposite kinds of problems."

What is needed is mutual discussion of common problems, and in this spirit I should like to raise a few questions about the textual policies of some of the historical editions, in the light of what has been learned about editing by the literary editors. In order fairly to assess Shaw's assertion that the historical editors have been more successful, one must examine carefully the editorial rationale and procedures followed by those editors. A survey of the differing practices of a number of editions of letters and journals—both historical and literary—will lead, I think, to a consideration of some underlying issues—issues basic not merely to the editing of the papers of American statesmen but to documentary[18] editing in general.