Nicholas Culpeper

Nicholas Culpeper (1616 – 1654) was a physician, herbalist, botanist, and astrologer. He was radical for his time because he believed in using common herbs, examining patients for free and using astrology to help poor people back to health.  His book The English Physician, was purposefully sold cheaply and incidently was used by the colonists in North America. His book The Complete Herbal, is in print to this day.

Nicholas believed medicine was a “public asset” rather than a commercial one. His work and books had a significant social impact on the people of London.  Culpeper’s his outspoken remarks about physicians, priests and lawyers, lead to him being accused of witchcraft by the Society of Apothecaries.  This resulted in him joining a local military unit as a battlefield surgeon during the English Civil War (1643). Unfortunately he sustained a serious chest injury and returned to London. 

His first medical book A Physical Directory, or a Translation of the London Directory - translation of the Pharmacopoeia Londonesis of the Royal College of Physicians was published in 1649.  The 1651 edition, printed by Peter Cole, at the sign of the Printing Press in Cornhill near the Royal Exchange is available online through a Digital Humanities project by the Hathi Trust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435018075440;view=1up;seq=8 .  This book provided a comprehensive list and instructions for medicines made by apothecaries for physicians.  The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership has actually transcribed the book into modern terms. This can be accessed at this URL http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A35390.0001.001

It is rather ironic that a man who has been dead for over 360 years composed books that are available and at least one remains in use to this day.  His works improved the lives of common people in both England and America.  Physical printers have continued to make these books available through the centuries and online ‘printers’ have made them even more accessible.  As I have not actually examined many of the editions available, I cannot comment on the credibility and reliability of textual materials.  But I do find it fascinating that due to his extensive research and desire to help his fellow man, we are able to read and interact with his works.

Biographical information - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Culpeper

Diane Culpin

The Arden _Hamlet_

Because I am an early modernist, it seems that my edition is obvious, but I chose the Arden edition of Hamlet edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. This edition weighs in at just over 600 pages and fulfills most of the MLA guidelines. 137 pages of material precede the play's text, which itself contains lengthy footnotes of explanatory content as well as "notes documenting alterations and variant readings" on each page. The text of the play itself is followed by 134 pages of appendices that comment on textual variations among versions of the play and this editions editorial principles as well as discussing the early modern production practices surrounding this play. The construction of this edition seems very thorough, but it is very clearly an edition put together with the scholar in mind. I compared it to the Folger Shakespeare Library's edition of Hamlet edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. The Folger edition contains an editor's preface that serves to guide you through the features of the edition; general information about Shakespeare's life, works, and theatre; and an introduction to this particular text. The text of the play itself contains glosses on each facing page and is followed by textual notes, a "modern perspective essay, and some recommendations for further reading. The Folger has far less complexity is than the Arden, and while both editions take pains to explain editorial decisions, the Arden seems to come with an assumption that the reader will have the tools or ability to use the complex textual elements included in the edition. The Arden seems more complete, but this completeness almost causes obfuscation or at the least serves as a form of gate-keeping whereas the Folger seems to be striving to bring a critically rendered edition of the text to a more general audience.

Ariel

The 1965 edition of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel—while certainly not a scholarly edition in function or appearance—poses quite a few interesting challenges to the MLA Guidelines on Scholarly Editions that evoke complicated questions regarding authorial and editorial intent, and which I think are well worth discussing. In a book review provocatively titled “The Way She Wanted It,” Lev Grossman states that on the morning that Plath killed herself, “she left behind two children, an estranged, adulterous husband, a note for the baby sitter and a neat black binder containing 40 poems” (107). Those poems would later form Ariel, though controversially neither in the order nor the number that they originally appeared in the black binder on that morning of February 11, 1963. 

Plath’s husband Ted Hughes reordered and “dropped about a third” of the poems, raising questions of the editor’s true intention, as Ariel “contains a great deal of pain and sorrow and rage directed at Hughes” (Grossman 107). In this week’s readings, Tanselle argues for the creative rights of the editor to transform the manuscript—which he insinuates is more of a historical document than an author’s “final” intention—into an edited piece of “literature” (152). What happens when such a historical document falls into the hands of a related and potentially biased editor, and which so often does in the editorship of posthumous works? In the case of Hughes editing Ariel, the line between objectivity and subjectivity becomes increasingly ambiguous, since many of the poems do concern him.  

Perhaps I would have more trust in Hughes as an editor if he were transparent and explicit in his decisions to remove/reorder certain poems; the 1965 edition, however, bears no evidence of his hand at all. The introduction is by Robert Lowell, and there are no notes or footnotes of any kind. In fact, the only mention of Hughes’s name is in small text on the copyright page. Despite this edition not posing as scholarly in any way, it is arguably an outright defiance of the MLA Guidelines.

Grossman, Lev. “The Way She Wanted It.” Time 164.23 (2004): 107. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. Harper Perennial, 1965.

Tanselle, Thomas G. “The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention” [1976], Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing, Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1990, 139-155.

Lyrical Ballads 1789 and 1800

While I was reading the assigned articles and the MLA guidelines for editors and scholarly editions, I realized that most of these issues that were presented mainly reflected the consistent alteration of the work by the authors specifically by William Wordsworth. The book I am presenting is not a typical version of the poems, but it is a scholarly edition that brings to discussion two editions of the work. What makes this edition unique is that it brings everything an academic reader needs in order to understand its reception at time of publication and nowadays. The book starts with an introduction that stimulates the readers’ eagerness to read the book through. “Reckoned as Nothing” raises many questions as subtitle. Are the editors referring to the Lyrical Ballads?  How come they say such a thing about a well-known work? Therefore, the readers with defensive mood would start reading with attentive mind to find an erroneous in the logic of the writers. From there the editor “Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter” would take the readers in a journey to discover how Wordsworth and Coleridge appeared in the map of romantic literature by answering a variety of inquires that draws a picture to how these two iconic figures met, decided to work together and what happened to their friendship. The edition includes massive footnotes that explain everything a reader might need to form an idea about the poems presented. Moreover, the editors add some maps that mapped the poems. Although, the book does emphasis what versions of the work were used, it did not say exactly who published the versions used. At the end, I want to raise this inquire, which I hope we could discuss in the class, where are we supposed to find all the information about the edition if it is not stated in the beginning of the book?     

The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift

In the Norton Critical Edition of The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift, the "promise of reliability" (as introduced in the MLA guidelines) is kept well enough to warrant the title of scholarly edition. The editor's approach to best-text editing stems from an interest in both reception and production; in the preface they explain their methodology behind the inclusion and exclusion of certain texts, and the introduction gives an abundance of historical context, including a detailed genealogy of transcriptions.

The book's editors, Claude Rawson and Ian Higgins, dictate in the preface: "Our selection aims in particular to provide a wider representation of his work as a poet and as an Irish political writer than is usually found in one-volume collections." They justify their decisions by suggesting there exists a prevailing lack of recognition for Swift's work in general, as well as arguing the need to "increase awareness of his importance in the literary and political history of Ireland." These claims are supported by an in-depth historical account of Swift's life and work, and of the significant social impact his writings had on all of Europe.

"A Note on the Texts" provides a detailed genealogy of previous editions used in the reproduction of the text, and a reference to the various modernizations of spelling and punctuation. Changes made to the text, as well as definitions and supplementary information can be found in the notations. A significant bibliography including primary works consisting of individual works, collections, biographies, criticisms, and essays are included.


-Troy Evans

The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

The edition that I want to examine in class is a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray edited by Nicholas Frankel. This edition does not challenge but clearly enforces the MLA standards. It includes a general introduction to the text, a textual introduction giving a basic overview of the different versions of the text, copious annotations surrounding the text on both sides including illustrations, textual notes discussing the substantive changes that the original editor of the text (J.M. Stoddart) made, an appendix showing “accidental changes” introduced into the text by J.M. Stoddart, and notes on other versions and editions of the novel. While all of this is incredibly interesting, what I find most pertinent to our readings is the practicality of the layout of this edition and what Frankel chose to use as his copy-text. The rationale Frankel gives for this edition is that “The present edition marks the first time Wilde’s typescript has been published…” (21). As his copy-text Frankel uses the original typescript that Wilde sent in to Lippincott’s magazine for publication. Most editions work from the 1890 version of the Lippincott’s printing after Stoddart edited the typescript, or the 1891 version further amended by Wilde. I would like to discuss what we think of this seemingly Tanselle-ian approach to this edition of Wilde’s novel. Frankel is only interested in presenting the Typescript in full, and mentions several times that this is the closest we can get to the original work. He is also very concerned with reception though, mentioning how the typescript was greatly amended by Stoddart and later Wilde because of its explicit decadent, sexual, and homosexual content. Some of these revisions might even constitute what Tanselle would call “vertical revisions”. If we are examining “textual pluralism” and substantive revisions, is this edition of the typescript of The Picture of Dorian Gray another version of the text or another work entirely? 

Bald's Leechbook

14 September 2016
Diane Culpin

I focused my research on a manuscript written in the mid-10th century entitled Bald’s Leechbook.  The special collections area of our UNT Library in Willis has Bald's Leechbook (British Museum Royal manuscript 12D; with an appendix by Randolph Quirk Xvii) Edited by C. E. Wright.

https://iii.library.unt.edu/search~S12?/Xbald%27s+leechbook&SORT=D&m=&searchscope=12/Xbald%27s+leechbook&SORT=D&m=&searchscope=12&SUBKEY=bald%27s+leechbook/1%2C2%2C2%2CB/frameset&FF=Xbald%27s+leechbook&SORT=D&m=&searchscope=12&1%2C1%2C  However, this book is only available during daytime hours. 

Utilizing advances in digital technologies, I found the manuscript online at the British Library in London.  http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_12_D_XVII  The digital version contains 279 images of the Royal MS 12 D XVII. The manuscript cover charms, medical remedies, diagnoses, and prognostic text written in Old English and Latin. 

Using the MLA Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions, I found the manuscript home page demonstrated some of the MLA key principles, sources and orientations.  The content section of the home page describes the subjects covered in the 3 books and some characteristics associated with the books.  The book was written for Bald by Cild. The site provides a reliable text via the high definition images of the manuscript itself.  However, there is no textual apparatus or notes associated with the images.  You have to be able to read Old English and Latin in ‘square minuscule’ script as well.

Source material considerations are documented in the Physical Description and Ownership sections on the manuscript home page. I found it fascinating that the manuscript was

written by the same scribe as the copyist of the Old English Bede in Cotton MS Otho B XI and as the third scribe of the A version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, who copied the annuals from 924 to 946 and years to 955…

A useful bibliography completes the home page.

The British Library’s editorial decision to digitize this manuscript makes it freely available for anyone to view and study this treasure via an internet connection.  The ability to scale the images improves the interactive experience.  While it is not the same as actually going to the British Library and examining the manuscript in person, the digital version is an excellent facsimile.

The American by Henry James

My text, The American by Henry James, is a Norton Critical Edition. It is edited by James W. Tuttleton, and was first published in 1978. The contents page is prefaced by a bibliography containing different copyrighted texts, and bits printed with permission. An example of this is "Henry James and the Millionaire", which is printed after the text of the American, and is used with the permission of Irving Howe. After the contents page, there is a preface to the New York Edition of The American which was printed in 1907. Following is a note on the text, textual variants, editor's emendations, and etc. In this edition of The American, there are two hundred pages of supplemental information. The text itself has many footnotes. The footnotes contain information ranging from descriptions of different places mentioned in the text, such as the Louvre, to the meaning of different words, such as “combien”, which means how much. Information provided by the footnotes primarily covers meanings of words, places, and different information that the reader will not initially understand, rather than directing the way the audience reads the text. Along with the text The American, my book is full of supplemental materials that aid the reader in understanding the book better. A personal favorite bit of supplemental material, is the chapter that includes installments of The American appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, as well as an original page that was revised by Henry James in 1906. This facsimile is not easily read, but is fascinating nonetheless because it’s hand written notes made by Henry James in which he is critiquing himself. Along with the revised page, this chapter includes textual variants also included in the footnotes, but in one handy place. Further into the supplemental material, is contemporary reception of James’ work, as well as notes from Henry James to other figures regarding their opinions on this novel. Due to all of the above factors, I would argue that this version of The American by Henry James fits the MLA guidelines as a scholarly edition.

The Pale King

Examining David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel (compiled after Wallace’s death by his longtime editor, Michael Pietsch) as a work of scholarly editing.

The Pale King includes an introduction detailing the age and breadth of the materials, their source, and the methods applied to compiling it. The novel also includes a section of endnotes, and these present Wallace’s notes chapter by chapter, followed by Wallace’s notes regarding overall structure. While historical notes are eschewed, this is likely because the copy-texts were compiled between 1997 and 2008, and the copy itself was taken directly from the author’s office (The Pale King was published in 2011). Alterations to the text are mentioned in the introduction (via an explanation of methodology) but not detailed throughout, as the novel is ostensibly presented for the casual reader. Within two minutes, however, I was able to locate a link to facsimile copies of Wallace’s drafts, along with further discussion from his editor (http://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15878coll20#nav_top). Another minute, and I was able to locate an interview with Pietsch regarding his editorial methods (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/04/the-pale-king-david-foster-wallaces-editor-on-the-books-path-to-print/236925/).

Given that the MLA guidelines ask us to consider the format of the “scholarly edition” in question, I might argue that the Internet serves as a constant format/background against which print editions may be set.  I might also argue that Pietsch’s approach to editing The Pale King is no more or less accurate than scholarly approaches to editing Dickinson or Shakespeare as outlined in De Grazia/Stallybrass and Tanselle (respectively). Authorship, dates, and sources are clear and reliable, and Pietsch is working without the problematic interventions of time. He is also working directly from the author’s manuscripts, without the possibility of errors introduced by the release of multiple editions. Pietcsch considers authorial intention, draws on his direct work with Wallace over the previous decade, and creates the likeliest version possible. Ultimately, while questions of proofreading and schematics cannot be directly assessed by the copy in hand, I believe The Pale King does adhere to MLA Scholarly Guidelines, even if it does so more in spirit than in practice, and with an eye toward a general/commercial audience.

Shakespeare's "Works"

Catalogue record for the 1968 Norton facsimile edition of The first folio of Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman. http://iii.library.unt.edu/record=b1032472~S12

Short demonstration of the Hinman collator in a video on the Shakespeare first folio copies in the Folger Shakespeare library: https://www.britannica.com/topic/First-Folio/images-videos/A-discussion-of-the-First-Folio-edition-of-William-Shakespeares/202760