Textual Transmission, Reception and the Editing of Early Modern Texts¹

Abstract

Beginning with one particularly compelling Civil War manuscript -a collage of manuscript notes and printed pages torn from books, assembled by Sir John Gibson in Durham Castle in the 1650s -this article examines the circulation of texts in seventeenth-century England. In particular, it explores the malleability of early modern texts in both manuscript and print, in order to suggest that certain entrenched ideas about early modern print, manuscript, authorship and readers might be revised. The article concludes by suggesting that editorial practice might respond to these ideas by rethinking the ways in which early modern texts are presented to contemporary readers.

Editing Early Modern Women’s Manuscripts: Theory, Electronic Editions, and the Accidental Copy‐Text

“…For example, in his 2004 article ‘Textual Transmission’, Adam Smyth raised the issue of the lack of an editorial principle for early modern compilation texts, arguing that to exclude such highly characteristic 17th‐century manuscript texts such as miscellanies perpetuates ‘the author‐centric assumptions’ that these very texts deconstruct. Smyth’s interest is textual variants as they reveal the ‘consumption’ of texts by readers circulating the material and as records of how early readers transform manuscript and printed materials.…”

“…Even as critics such as Smyth and Marotti call for social editions, there are some features embedded in current models of editorial theory as applied to early modern manuscripts that seem to me to stand in their way. The late 1980s and 1990s formed an important period in terms of editorial theory, especially as it relates to manuscript materials referred to as ‘records’ or ‘documents’ as opposed to ‘literary’ texts and the relationship of manuscript sources to printed, edited versions of them.…”