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II
A brief survey of some of the historical editions which followed, beginning in 1959 with the Franklin, Calhoun, and Clay editions, will illustrate how similar their characteristic position is to that of one or more of the three statements of the early 1950s.[40] Leonard W. Labaree, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale University Press, 1959- ),[41]
The same year, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun (University of South Carolina Press, 1959- ), Robert L. Meriwether took a different position from Labaree, arguing that printed texts could be treated more freely than manuscript texts because Calhoun was not responsible for printed reports of speeches and the like; yet the freedom employed— involving the silent revision of capitalization and punctuation and the breaking up of paragraphs—seems excessive, especially in view of the fact that Calhoun probably revised the reporter's accounts in some cases (p. xxxv). In manuscript texts, the editor does not allow Calhoun to employ two marks of punctuation together (one is chosen), and dashes at the ends of sentences are silently changed to periods. The most confusing device in this edition is the use of roman type in square brackets to represent both editorial restorations and authorial cancellations. W. Edwin Hemphill, taking over with the second volume (1963), makes explicit reference to the Expanded Method of the Harvard Guide (p. xxvii). By contrast, The Papers of Henry Clay (University of Kentucky Press, 1959— ), edited by James F. Hopkins,[44] says little about editorial method and nothing about punctuation, except that the lowering of superscript letters sometimes affects the punctuation. Presumably punctuation is otherwise unaltered, and the "original spelling and capitalization have been retained" (p. ix), so that this edition may come closer to offering a literal treatment than the others of 1959—although "typographical errors" in printed texts are silently corrected. The problem of variant texts, frequently slighted in historical editions, is at least commented on here: "When several contemporary copies, but not the original letter of delivery, have been discovered, that which most closely approximates the form identified with the sender has been used. When there are several versions of a manuscript in the inscriber's hand, that which most closely represents his final intent has been accepted." This statement shows no awareness of the intricacies of textual criticism. The first sentence does not recognize the possibility of constructing an "eclectic"
In 1961 two more large editions began publication. One was The Adams Papers (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)—which, like the Jefferson and Franklin editions, had been designated a priority project by the NHPC.[45] Lyman H. Butterfield, describing his editorial method in the first volume of The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, praises those other two editions, and it is clear that his procedures closely resemble those of the Jefferson edition (with which he had earlier been associated).[46] He aims at a "middle ground between pedantic fidelity and readability" (p. lvi) and adds that scholars who are "concerned with the ultimate niceties of a critical passage" can "resort" to the microfilm edition of the Adams papers.[47] It is true that the availability of the papers on microfilm makes it earsier for a scholar to check readings in the manuscripts, but that fact has no bearing on the editor's responsibility for producing a sound text in a letterpress edition. The reason for undertaking a letterpress edition of material available on
As with many other historical editions, the determination here not to emend from a variant text is in odd contrast to the leniency with which the selected text is handled. Relevant texts are collated and "significant" differences are recorded; however, Butterfield says, "Whatever version is found in the manuscripts being edited has perforce been considered the 'basic' text in the present volume" (p. lix). Two years later, in the opening volume of Adams Family Correspondence, a supplementary editorial discussion marks a notable departure from this practice: the comparison of copies, it is said, can call attention to clarifications of grammar, corrections of spelling, and the like, and such changes are adopted silently (p. xlv). The fact that their immediate source is another document makes this an "eclectic" procedure, and the statement is a welcome recognition of the possibility of editing a text rather than a document. The Adams edition, unlike many of the literary editions of published works, does not fully carry this approach through; but it has gone farther than most of the historical editions in enunciating the principle on which the establishment of critical texts rests.[49]
The other edition beginning in 1961, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Columbia University Press), edited by Harold C. Syrett,[50] places even more stress on modernization: not only are punctuation and capitalization altered "where it seemed necessary to make clear the sense
Some of the other editions of the late 1960s follow the same path. The goal of The Papers of Henry Laurens (University of South Carolina Press, 1968- ), edited by Philip M. Hamer (and, later, George C. Rogers, Jr.),[54] is to follow "with some deviations" the Expanded Method of the Harvard Guide. Although the object is "not only an accurate but a readable text," the word "accurate" here cannot refer to punctuation, and modernization seems to take first place: "The flavor of the eighteenth century . . . has been maintained where clarity would not be sacrificed" (p. xxxi). The editorial function is conceived of as the accurate conveyance of "meaning" rather than of a text: "Superfluous commas may be omitted or reduced in number, and commas will be added when they will assist the reader, but no punctuation will be changed unless it is clear to the editors that no change of meaning will result." What is clear to one informed person, of course, may not be so to another, and it is debatable whether the "readability" gained is worth the price of not knowing what is in the original; reporting the evidence would not settle the question whether modernization is desirable, but it would make the situation more tolerable. The Correspondence of James K. Polk (Vanderbilt University Press, 1969- ), edited by Herbert Weaver, also modernizes for "clarity," including grammar in what can be altered. "These changes have generally been made silently," Weaver says, "rather than risk cluttering the pages with editorial props that divert attention from the meaning or spirit of the writers" (p. xii)[55] —though the alterations themselves have already done that to some extent.
Not all the editions of the late 1960s, however, conform to the prevailing pattern. One is pleasantly surprised to find that Arthur S. Link's edition of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton University Press, 1966- )[56] makes very few—and clearly defined—silent emendations
Most of the historical editions which followed in the 1970s unfortunately did not imitate these three editions but continued in the familiar pattern of partial modernization and selective recording of evidence. Robert A. Rutland's edition of The Papers of George Mason (University of North Carolina Press, 1970) states that it is following Boyd's Jefferson; while it retains inconsistent spellings, it silently regularizes the punctuation of sentence-endings, reduces Mason's capitalized pronouns to lower case, and inserts periods "in place of many a semicolon or colon that the writer obviously intended to function as a break rather than a pause" (p. xxii). Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., and James T. McIntosh, in The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Louisiana State University Press, 1971- ) also silently emend punctuation according to modern standards, sometimes "correcting" a colon to a comma or a period; but, oddly, they do not insert what they regard as needed punctuation where no punctuation is present in the manuscript, representing the lack instead by an extended space. The Papers of Joseph Henry (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972- ), edited by Nathan Reingold, takes the Adams edition as its model and incorporates canceled matter in angle brackets if of "historical, psychological, or stylistic significance" (it is hard to
Louis R. Harlan, in the second volume (1972) of The Booker T. Washington Papers (University of Illinois Press, 1972- ),[59] describes his policy of silently correcting "typed and printed errors" and regularizing some punctuation, "except in semi-literate letters, which are reproduced exactly as written in order to avoid an inordinate amount of editorial intrusion into the document." A more valid reason for printing them as written is that the documents are more revealing unemended—an argument which could be applied to a much wider range of material. The first volume of this edition, containing Washington's published autobiographical writings, illustrates the way in which editors who primarily work with single manuscript texts sometimes fail to report adequately on multiple printed texts. Harlan's brief textual comment on Up from Slavery, for instance, merely says that the first book edition is used as copy-text in preference to the serialization in the Outlook because the magazine "did not include all that later appeared in the book version" and because "Negro" is spelled with a capital, as Washington wanted it, in the book but not in the magazine. Nothing is said to characterize the material added to the book or to explain the relation of the book text in other respects to that of the magazine, and no lising of variants is provided. The two texts do differ occasionally in punctuation and spelling ("coloured" in the book vs. "colored" in the magazine, for example), but the question of which text better reflects Washington's practice in these respects is never addressed.
In E. James Ferguson's The Papers of Robert Morris (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973- ), slips of the pen and "casual or incorrect punctuation" (p. xxxiv) are corrected: "Dashes and commas randomly distributed in the manuscripts are silently removed." Herbert A. Johnson's The Papers of John Marshall (University of North Carolina Press, 1974- ) also silently emends some punctuation but interestingly confuses the author's intention with standards of correctness for a published work: sentences are supplied with opening capitals and closing periods "as necessary to preserve the original intention of the writer" (p. xxxvi). Apparently printed texts are reproduced with greater fidelity than manuscript texts, if that is what is meant by saying that dashes at the
Enough has been said to show the characteristic textual practices of the NHPRC editions and other editions modeled on them. But I do not wish to imply that "historical" editions are the only ones which have indulged in partial modernization and selective reporting of emendations and have in general taken a superficial view of textual matters. A number of editions of the letters of literary figures—not particularly influenced by the modern practice of historians—are equally unsatisfactory. The influence, in fact, may go the other way, because The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence (Yale University Press, 1937- ), edited by Wilmarth S. Lewis,[63] was the first of the modern
Similar problems arise in many other literary editions. Theodore Besterman's edition of Voltaire's Correspondence (Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1953-65)[65] is famous because of its enormous size; the completion of an edition of 21,000 letters is indeed an accomplishment, to say nothing of bringing it out a second time in a revised "definitive edition" (Correspondence and Related Documents, 1968-76). Although Voltaire's alterations are recorded in notes, the treatment of the main text is disappointing: the first edition reports that apostrophes are inserted and "a minimum of capital letters and punctuation, where lacking" (p. xiii), and the revised edition follows the same policy (pp. xvii-xviii; Besterman says, "without attempting to modernize, I have introduced a measure of regularity"). The edition offers an example of the kind of inconsistency which partial modernization almost invariably leads to: "When Voltaire used an accent it has been reproduced even if
The same approach continues to appear in literary editions of the 1960s and 1970s. Harry T. Moore, in The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence (Heinemann, 1962), comments on some of Lawrence's seeming deficiencies of punctuation and states, "rather than belabour the reader by calling attention to these peccadilloes I have quietly done what was needed" (p. xxi). Rupert Hart-Davis silently emends spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and paragraphing in The Letters of Oscar Wilde (Hart-Davis, 1962). Wilde's habitual dashes, he says, "make the letters difficult to read, and I have re-punctuated normally as the sense seems to demand" (p. xi). Wilde also liked to capitalize words beginning with "t" and "h," "presumably because he enjoyed making those particular capitals more than their lower-case equivalents." Hart-Davis believes that "to perpetuate this whim would only irritate the reader," and he has "followed the standard usage wherever the capital clearly has no significance." But he has just told us what significance those two capitals have. Why should a writer not be allowed to indulge his
I do not wish to prolong this litany unnecessarily. I have merely tried to cite a sufficient number of examples to show that there is a considerable body of editors whose approach to the editing of letters and journals is in the spirit of the policies set forth in Boyd's Jefferson and the Harvard Guide. And it is by no means only the historians who fall into this group. While it is true that most of the NHPRC editions—with only a few exceptions—are of this type, there are certainly a great many literary editors whose practice coincides with that of the NHPRC editors.[67] Most of the editions mentioned are praiseworthy in many respects: most of them reflect thorough research and exemplary annotation. But their treatment of the actual texts is relatively casual and unsophisticated by comparison. It is clear, from this survey, that one widely followed approach to editing documents assumes that some modernization is essential and that a silently modernized or corrected text can serve most purposes of historical study. The assumption is made, however, without adequate consideration of the role which such features as spelling and punctuation play in private documents and the extent to which they constitute part of the total body of evidence that the historian needs to have at his disposal. What I have said about these editions can perhaps begin to indicate why their textual policies are bound to seem unsatisfactory to anyone who has given careful thought to textual matters and the nature of written communication.
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