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Notes
University Press of Virginia, 1987; this book reprints three articles previously appearing in Studies in Bibliography.
See Jack Stillinger's review (in JEGP, 85 [Oct. 1986], 550-557) of Jerome McGann's The Beauty of Inflection and Gerald Graff and Donald Gibbons' Criticism in the University. See also Hershel Parker's Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons where he argues that New Critical principles created the sense of literary art as an icon presumed to be unified and to make sense. His account of new historicism calls for development of a broader based scholarship capable of discovering what happened or what may have gone wrong in the creative process— matters of little interest to many critics who are concerned only with the "interplay between text and reader."
Review of Hershel Parker's Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons in Analytical & Ennumerative Bibliography, n.s. I (1987), 171-172.
There is no clear or universal notion about what an "established text" is or what has been established by a "scholarly" edition. Sometimes it means no more than "standard" edition, identified as such in the literary histories and general bibliographies. "Establishing" what the relevant documents are for editing a text (the bibliography), or "establishing" what relation exists between the documents and the author or other "authorizing agents," or even "establishing" what textual cruces remain problematical even after much research are all relatively straightforward concepts. But to "establish" a text, meaning to determine what words and accidentals constitute the "real" text of a work, is not very clear at all.
See particularly Tanselle's survey of "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," Studies in Bibliography, 34 (1981), 23-65. Tanselle groups these ideas slightly differently, but the point he made in 1981 remains valid, that editors tended to return to these "small number of basic problems" (p. 59). He adds, more recently, that regardless of how much they have been rehearsed, there "will be no end to debates over these issues, because they are genuinely debatable; and the process of debate is the way in which each generation of editors thinks through the questions for itself" ("Historicism and Critical Editing," Studies in Bibliography, 39 [1986], 45).
See Tom Davis, "The CEAA and Modern Textual Editing," Library, 32 [1977], 61-74, esp. 63-69; and Peter Shillingsburg, "Key Issues in Editorial Theory" Analytical and Ennumerative Bibliography, 6 [1982], 3-16.
See Lewis Mumford, "Emerson Behind Barbed Wire," (New York Review of Books, 18 January 1968); Peter Shaw, "The American Heritage and Its Guardians," American Scholar, 45 (1974-75), 733-775; and Herbert Davis' review of Studies in Bibliography, 15 in Review of English Studies 12 (1961), 324-325. See also James Thorpe's comments on the subject in Watching the P's & Q's, Editorial Treatment of Accidentals (University of Kansas, Library Series, 38, 1971), pp. 21-23.
This principle was pushed very hard by the CEAA: "Whenever possible, clear text is to be preferred, since in many editions it can then serve the interest of both scholars and general readers" (The Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures [New York: Modern Language Association, 1972], p. 8). English scholarly editions have tended to use notes at the foot of the text page, indicating, tacitly, a greater modesty about the "established" text and drawing attention more forcibly to at least some of the alternative forms of the text.
"The Treatment of Accidentals" in The Principles of Textual Criticism, pp. 131-170. Thorpe quotes confessions by the following authors to the effect that they did not know or did not care about punctuation and appealed to others, including their publishers, for help with punctuation: Thomas Gray, Wordsworth, Byron, J. F. Cooper, Charlotte Brontë, Sherwood Anderson, Timothy Dexter, and W. B. Yeats. He does not ask whether an author's plea for help in these matters is sufficient proof that the author's own system is in fact inadequate, misleading, or less preferrable than the augmented or regularized punctuation received—he merely assumes it to be so. In the same year, the CEAA Statement of Editorial Principles, assessing the same kind of evidence, also fails to discuss this question but merely assumes the opposite: "what an author wrote is to be preferred in most circumstances to what a publisher or printer imposed upon that writing" (p. 4).
It is not always simple to make categories of variants according to who is responsible for them. Corruptions, demonstrable errors, naturally need to be weeded out. Authorial revisions usually are adopted. But what is to be done with feasible variants not clearly authorial? When the evidence for their "authority" is equivocal, the variants are said to be "indifferent." In such cases editors are faced with an arbitrary decision to be explained in a way similar to this note from Edgar F. Harden's edition of Thackeray's Henry Esmond: "Although 'was numerous' can be interpreted as a compositorial misreading or correction [of 'very handsom' which is squeezed in nearly illegibly in the margin], this edition accepts the changed reading as authorial. Similarly, it accepts the change from 'her newly adopted son' to 'the newly adopted son' as authorial." There is no elaborate explanation of the reason for this decision; indeed, what would be the point? There is no overwhelming reason to choose one way or the other—only that a choice had to be made.
"The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention," Studies in Bibliography, 29 (1976), 167. He repeats this idea in "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," p. 67, where he says the aim of editing is "to emend the selected text so that it conforms to the author's intention."
McGann, for example, seems attracted to the social contract because it sidesteps the problem of authorial intention (A Critique of Modern Textual Editing [1984], pp. 28-94,
"The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention," pp. 167-211. See also Morse Peckham, "Reflections on the Foundations of Modern Textual Editing," Proof, 1 (1971), 122-155; Peter Shillingsburg, Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age (1986), pp. 31-43; and James McClaverty, "The Concept of Authorial Intention in Textual Criticism," Library, 6 (1984), 121-138.
Hershel Parker, "The 'New Scholarship': Textual Evidence and Its Implications for Criticism, Literary Theory, and Aesthetics," Studies in American Fiction 9 (Autumn 1981): 181-197.
Parker's arguments are interesting and important because of the thorough research and sheer quantity of detailed information he brings to bear on his analysis of the genesis of texts. (See, however, the thoughtful queries about his conclusions raised in Paul Baender's review, "Megarus ad lunam: Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons," Philological Quarterly, 64 [Fall 1985], 439-457.
Hans Zeller, "A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts," Studies in Bibliography, 28 (1975), 231-264.
Edmund Wilson wanted one to take in his pocket on a plane trip. Peter Shaw wanted Emerson's journals "just as they were." A reviewer of my Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age claims I don't address the question of whether "readers will be comfortable" with a multi-text edition.
The idea of multiple-texts or "versions" is not necessarily author-centric, though until recently it has been supported primarily by the argument that multiple or developing authorial intentions cannot be adequately represented in a single text. Jerome McGann, reviewing Gabler's edition of Joyce's Ulysses, ("Ulysses as a Postmodernist Text: The Gabler Edition," Criticism, 27 [Summer 1985], 283-305) calls for an additional edition that would represent the "continuous production text" of the work in a way similar to Gabler's "continuous compositional text." Gabler, in the "synoptic" left-hand page, provides a genetic record of authorial revision during composition leading up to what would be fair copy. On the facing right-hand page, he presents the "established" text, described as what should have been printed in the first edition. McGann would like to see an edition beginning with the actual first edition text and tracing the "version" created by subsequent publications.
These include Charlotte Brontë's letter of thanks to George Smith for taking care of the punctuation of Jane Eyre (C. Brontë complained of Thomas Newby's very shoddy handling of the punctuation of Wuthering Heights two months later). Byron apparently received significant and appreciated help from his publisher, John Murray. Other help in the form of editorial advice is educed either in favor of good working relations or against, depending on the writer's evaluation of the results: Maxwell Perkins' influence on Hemingway and Wolfe, George Meredith's influence on Thomas Hardy, Bulwer Lytton's influence on the ending of Great Expectations, Dickens' influence on Elizabeth Gaskell—Meredith and Dickens in these cases working as publishers.
These include John Dryden's remark, "The Printer is a beast and understands nothing I can say to him of correcting the press," Tennyson's milder remark to his publisher, "I think it would be better to send me proof twice over—I should like the text to be as correct as possible," Mark Twain's remark to W. D. Howells about a proofreader improving his punctuation, that he knew "more about punctuation in two minutes than any damned bastard of a proof-reader can learn in two centuries." (These examples are quoted by James Thorpe in Watching the P's & Q's, pp. 4-7.) Examples of nonsense readings abound in the apparatuses of most scholarly editions, though one should note that while production crews can make silly mistakes they may also make corrections. The main question here, however, is whether they have a legitimate role in suggesting or imposing revisions or "improvements."
Robert Taylor, quoting Max Beerbohm, refers to the latter when he describes the desire of book collectors to own first editions of works by authors they admire because "they give one a sense of nearness to him . . . 'this is the binding he chose—perhaps. This—perhaps —is the fount of type that he insisted on. Here certainly is a typographical error that his eye overlooked—bless his noble spirit!'" (The Common Habitation Princeton, n.d., n.p.). That is to say, the document has integrity or authority as historical relic or icon, not because of the purity or inerrancy of its text.
I have seen this argument most frequently in the writings of Donald Pizer, but I have not seen him consider the decades and centuries of readers yet to come who, perhaps, should not be forced to read mangled texts because a few decades or centuries of readers already have.
It seems to me, at least on the surface, that a lot of the appeal of these arguments derives from their high-falutin vocabulary and the quasi-philosophical high ground they assume. In fact they do not address matters that have been unknown to editors in the past, though it may be true that their importance has been misjudged.
Michael Hancher, "Three Kinds of Intention," Modern Language Notes, 87 (1972), 827-851. By "programmatic" intentions Hancher refers to the intention to have certain effects on readers, to cause them to react; by "active" intentions Hancher refers to the author's intention to mean certain things, to convey certain understandings, feelings or actions. Thus Dreiser's active intention to delineate certain sexual experiences may have been interfered with by an editor's programmatic intention not to offend.
"Meaning" may be the wrong word to use here. "Implication" may more accurately indicate the significance of design and price which is at least part of what is referenced by this argument. The social, political, and economic implications of being published by a certain publisher or in a certain series, or in a recognizable format, condition the reaction to the linguistic text for those persons able to recognize these implications.
Jerome McGann, "Theory of Texts," London Review of Books (forthcoming, 1988, [Professor McGann kindly sent a copy of proofs for this review; the remarks on Don Juan are on the third page]). I do not know by what means McGann has determined that the difference was actually caused by the physical appearance of the books and not by the moral character of the reviewers. If a single reviewer reacted differently to both editions, the case would be strong. If contemporary readers of Henry Esmond in old-fashioned Caslon type in three volumes read the book differently from those reading it in "modern" type in one volume, there is no record of it, though there were reviewers of both formats who found it immoral and others who found it a thoroughly good book.
There is not room here to go into a detailed analysis of the social forces operating on the composition and production of Esmond, but I am providing that discussion in a book, Pegasus in Harness: Thackeray and His Publishers which is nearing completion. In that analysis I argue that Thackeray, operating within the confines of these forces, produces an anti-establishment work—a wolf in sheep's clothing and that the "determining" forces of the social contract are not more restricting to authorial intention and individual meaning than the "determining" forces of genre are, for example, to the poet who "frets not in the narrow cell" of the sonnet.
Nineteenth Century English Books (1952), pp. 3-24. Ray notes, for example, the reception of Zola's works being reflected in the succession of physical formats in which they became available—from colorful, lurid paper covers to a "respectable" collected edition.
It is usually not the case that a text once available publicly is changed non-authorially in subsequent texts in ways that substantially change its meaning, such that a restoration of the originally published form would confuse a reader who expected the text to correspond to received interpretations. But two famous cases of restoring unpublished
Works such as Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (and Maxwell Perkins) and The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot (and Ezra Pound) come to mind.
Fredson Bowers, in his Presidential address to the Society for Textual Scholarship (NYC, April, 1987) discussed at some length the question of authority, but did so from the point of view of a definition he wanted everyone to apply to that word. "We shall not get very far in examining any textual proposition," he said, "unless we can come to some understanding on what is meant by authority." And then, "The moment that some agent like a typist, compositor, or copyreader interposes himself between the holograph and the disseminated document, the print, a diminution of authority occurs." Given his definition of authority, that is true; the issue now, however, is whether that definition should be the standard. (Quotations from Bowers' typescript, by permission.)
See G. Thomas Tanselle's thorough discussion of documentary, historical, and critical editing in "The Editing of Historical Documents," Studies in Bibliography, 31 (1978), 1-56; "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," Studies in Bibliography, 34, (1981), 23-65; and "Historicism in Critical Editing," Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 1-46.
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