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It is customary to speak of a Work of literary art, such as Moby-Dick or Dombey and Son, as though such titles designated something definite. That they do not is easily demonstrated by asking, "If the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre in Paris, where is Hamlet?"[19] The term Work is used to classify certain objects, so that we can say "This is a copy of Moby-Dick, but this over here is a copy of Dombey and Son." The term Work and the title Moby-Dick do not refer to a thing, an object, but rather to a class of objects. We can see this by saying, "This is a copy of Moby-Dick, and this, too, is a copy of Moby-Dick." We might try to push the limits of

this insight by defining Work of literary art as that which is implied by and bounded by its physical manifestations.[20] This statement suggests both that a Work can have forms other than that of one of its physical manifestations, and that its potential forms are limited by the forms of its physical manifestations. It suggests, further, that a Work is in important ways both plural and fragmented. These are not simple or comfortable suggestions, and the reaction of some critics and editors is to limit their attention pragmatically to the physical manifestations of works, the book in hand, as if the Book and the Work were coeval and congruent. They are not interested in abstract notions of "intention" or in fragmentary forms of the work, which they would label "pre-utterance forms" or "pre-copy-text forms" or "shavings on the workshop floor." For them, the work is the book in hand. It is simple, it is practical; it is achieved by willfully ignoring certain sets of questions about the work.

But for those who stop to think that not all copies of a work are identical (which is particularly true of well-known, often reprinted, works), and that what person X says is the work (because he holds copy X in his hand) is different from what person Y says is the work (because she holds copy Y), there is a problem worth resolving, because what person X says about the work, referring to copy X, might be nonsense to person Y, checking the references in copy Y.[21] A fruitful approach to this problem is to examine the concept that the work is implied by and limited by its physical manifestations, rather than being identical with them. This examination requires that we contemplate, if only for argument, the idea that the work is an ideal or mental construct (or constructs) separate from but represented by physical forms. We can do this without arguing that the work is either the mental construct or that it is the physical form, and we need not argue that one or the other has a greater claim. Instead we might pursue the implications of defining the work as a mental construct that can be known only through its physical forms and the

effects they create or allow.[22] Note carefully that I do not mean, by this distinction, the difference between a sign and its meaning or referent. I mean instead the difference between the physical sign sequence as recorded in copies of a work and the sign sequence a user of the copy of the work takes to be the work. The latter sign sequence is a mental construction deriving from the former with the added proviso that the user may consider the physical copy of the work to be marred by error or abridgement or to be partial by reason of revisions not recorded in that copy or even by reason of inappropriate packaging.

When two or more of these physical forms of a work disagree, it is patently obvious that, if the Work is a single ideal entity, they cannot both accurately represent it. Two possible explanations for differences between two physical manifestations of the work can be suggested. The first is that one is corrupt and thus misrepresents the Work (or both copies could be corrupt in different ways). The second is that the Work exists in two (or more) Versions each represented more or less well by one of the physical copies.[23] We can think of the Work, then, as existing in more than one Version and yet be one Work. This does not, however, help to resolve the problem of whether the Work or a Version of it is accurately represented by the physical copy held by person X or person Y.

Before pursuing that problem, there are some difficulties with the concept of Version to try to clarify. First, like the term Work, the term Version does not designate an object; it, too, is a means of classifying objects. In the same way that the Work Dombey and Son is not Moby-Dick, so too a first version is not a second, or a magazine version is not a chapter in a book, or a printed version is not a version for oral presentation. The term Version in these formulations is a means of classifying copies of a Work according to one or more concepts that help account for the variant texts or variant formats that characterize them. Second, it is not just the existence of different texts of the same Work which

leads us to imagine multiple Versions of a Work. What we know about composition also suggests Versions. And to help distinguish various concepts relating to version, I would suggest the sub-categories Potential Version, Developing Version, and Essayed Version. These categories correspond to ideas we have about composition and revision. Potential Version refers to the abstract incipient ideas about the Work as it grows in the consciousness of the author. The Potential Version has no physical manifestation, but we judge from our own experience in composing that such a version exists at least in outline and we imagine this version capable of being developed, abandoned, or changed. The Potential Version is unavailable to us except as an idea. Developing Version refers to a process that does have physical outcomes. The Potential Version processed by thought and inscription produces, in the case of many authors, drafts or notes, which when added to more thought, more inscription, and perhaps some revision results in additional drafts. When the Developing Version has progressed sufficiently and been consolidated into an inscription of the whole, we have a physical representation of what I would call an Essayed Version.

The point at which the developing version reaches sufficient wholeness to be thought of as representing the first Essayed Version is, of course, a matter of opinion and, therefore, of dispute. This problem is another demonstration of the fact that the term "Version" refers to a means of classification, not to an actual stable object. The first Essayed Version can be thought about and revised and used as a basis for producing a second Version, etc. It might also be thought of as a provisional version or a finished version, but it is a version of the work in that it represents the work. Though the Essayed Version has physical embodiment in a text, it is not the physical text. We can imagine the Essayed Version in the author's imagination as more perfect than his or her ability to record it in signs which require compromise and are liable to inscription error. Even if there is only one physical copy of the Work, one could not say that the Version it embodied was the Work, for as soon as a new Version appeared the distinction between Version and Work would become necessary again.

We should pause for a moment here, suspended in the ethereal realm of ideal forms, to observe that the idea that "a Work is implied by a series of Versions" is based on ideas about composition, revision, and editorial interventions. That is, I have developed these ideas by imagining the processes of composition, not by starting with finished copies of the Work and inferring the processes "backward" from them. To think in this way about a work entails also believing that each new version has integrity or "entity" as an Utterance of the Work. If two copies of a work

differ in ways that are explained by "infelicities in transmission" then one does not need a concept of Version to explain the differences. But if each is thought to be desirable or "authoritative" in its own way, then the concept of Version is useful for classification. One could think of a Version, then, as the conception or aim of the Work at a point of Utterance. But Version is a very complex and slippery concept I will define and discuss in detail later. Where there is a well-established convention for using the term Work to distinguish between Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre, there is not an established convention for distinguishing Versions of Vanity Fair.

Of the problems concerning the concept of Versions which must be discussed in detail later there are two which should be mentioned before moving on to definitions of Text and making clearer the connections between ideal concepts of works and their physical manifestations. The first is the problem of determining when the Essayed Version has stopped being the Developing Version so that it can be thought of as coalesced into a Version that can be identified and read as such. The second is the problem of determining if and when a second version has coalesced that should be considered as separate from the first. To discuss these problems we need several related concepts I will develop later: Time, Content, Function, and Material. One should also note that concepts of Intention and Authority are crucial to the idea of Versions; neither of these concepts is simple.[24] Needless to say, I think the idea of Versions is a very useful one, in spite of its problems.