Types of Edition

Abstract

Armed with the knowledge of how texts were actually produced in the early modern period that has been provided in the previous two chapters, let us now turn to issues relating to how these texts should be treated by modern editors. At the outset, it is worth asking: what is an edition for? The answer surely is that it has to provide something that would not otherwise be available. This may be done by giving access to an otherwise inaccessible text — for instance, by putting a manuscript into print. Alternatively, or in addition to this, it may provide a version of the text that would not otherwise exist, for instance by collating multiple versions that survive in a various forms — whether both manuscript and printed, or different versions of a printed text — or by providing a commentary on the text and its subject-matter (a simple reprint of a printed text that survives in a single witness would hardly constitute an edition, particularly now that so many early modern works are readily available in digital form through Early English Books Online, and even an unannotated transcript of a manuscript is on the periphery of the genre).