The modern published editions in which we read the great literary works of the distant and recent past almost invariably embody the work of a textual editor. Recent literary theory has called into question most of the assumptions on which the practice of textual editing has historically depended. Notions of authorial intention, authority, the status of annotation and commentary, the relationship between 'literary' and non-literary works (such as letters and dictionaries), and hence the concept of literature itself, are central to this debate. This volume of essays, written by practising textual editors and scholars, addresses the practical implications of these theoretical issues, taking a variety of texts as examples for the particular editorial problems they pose. The works of authors as various as Shakespeare and John Clare, Samuel Johnson and D. H. Lawrence, Milton and Oscar Wilde are invoked to demonstrate the practical basis of an editorial discipline which requires theoretical sophistication but resists reduction to any single theory.

A scholarly edition of poetical works by Christopher Smart. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This book is a new edition of Christopher Smart's massive verse translation of the Psalms. Alhough the Psalms are much less well-known than his Song to David or Hymns and Spiritual Songs, the translation was intended as the centerpiece of a project devoted to poetically reforming the liturgy. In this work he aimed to meet the demand, expressed by many in the mid-18th century, for a new Anglican metrical psalter for regular use in the divine service written in the spirit of Christianity'. The editor's introduction and commentary include discussion of the Christianizing tendencies of Smart's Psalm translations, comparison of Smart's methods with those of earlier Psalm versifiers, demonstration of the connections in idea and expression between Smart's Psalms and mid-eighteenth-century Anglican Evangelicalism, and the use in the Translation of New Testament themes and images.

The eighteenth century was a period when the modern Novel emerged through the work of writers such as Laurence Sterne (1713-68), Richardson, Defoe, Fielding and Johnson. However, the writing of Sterne is recognized as influencing modern writing from Joyce and Woolf onwards more than any of the other eighteenth century novelists. In the last twenty years Sterne's work has become a focus for a flourishing body of work and significant debates in many new and developing areas of literary theory which include gender, sexuality, postmodernism, and deconstruction. Sterne's major novel 'Tristram Shandy' is regarded as deploying a range of 'post-modern literary devices' expected to be found in late twentieth century work rather than in work written in the 1700s. KEY TOPICS: This is a critical reader, made up of a collection of essays, which combines the most interesting and stimulating recent critical thinking about Sterne. These essays represent recent theoretical and critical debates surrounding Sterne's writing and are grouped thematically MARKET: For readers interested in literary criticism and 18th century literature.

The first developments in the editing of English literary texts in the eighteenth century were remarkable and important, and they have recently begun to attract considerable interest, particularly in relation to conditions and constructions of scholarship in the period. This study sets out to investigate, rather, the theoretical and interpretative bases of eighteenth-century literary editing. Extended chapters on Shakespearean and Miltonic commentary and editing demonstrate that the work of pioneering editors and commentators, such as Patrick Hume, Lewis Theobald, Zachary Pearce, and Edward Capell, was based on developed, sophisticated and often clearly articulated theories and methods of textual understanding and explanation. Marcus Walsh relates these interpretative theories and methods to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anglican biblical hermeneutics, and to a number of key debates in modern editorial theory.

The eighteenth century was a period when the modern Novel emerged through the work of writers such as Laurence Sterne (1713-68), Richardson, Defoe, Fielding and Johnson. However, the writing of Sterne is recognised as influencing modern writing from Joyce and Woolf onwards more than any of the other eighteenth century novelists.In the last twenty years Sterne's work has become a focus for a flourishing body of work and significant debates in many new and developing areas of literary theory which include gender, sexuality, postmodernism, and deconstruction. Sterne's major novel 'Tristram Shandy' is regarded as deploying a range of 'post-modern literary devices' expected to be found in late twentieth century work rather than in work written in the 1700s. This volume combines the most interesting and stimulating recent critical thinking about Sterne and represents recent theoretical and critical debates surrounding Sterne's writing.

The move to a new publisher has given The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual the opportunity to recommit to what it does best: present to a wide readership cant-free scholarly articles and essays and searching book reviews, all featuring a wide variety of approaches, written by both seasoned scholars and relative newcomers. Volume 24 features commentary on a range of Johnsonian topics: his reaction to Milton, his relation to the Allen family, his notes in his edition of Shakespeare, his use of Oliver Goldsmith in his Dictionary, and his always fascinating Nachleben. The volume also includes articles on topics of strong interest to Johnson: penal reform, Charlotte Lennox's professional literary career, and the "conjectural history" of Homer in the eighteenth century. For more than two decades, The Age of Johnson has presented a vast corpus of Johnsonian studies "in the broadest sense," as founding editor Paul J. Korshin put it in the preface to Volume 1, and it has retained the interest of a wide readership. In thousands of pages of articles, review essays, and reviews, The Age of Johnson has made a permanent contribution to our understanding of the eighteenth century, and particularly of Samuel Johnson, his circle, and his interests, and has also served as an outlet for writers who are not academics but have something important to say about the eighteenth century.   ISSN 0884-5816.

The modern published editions in which we read the great literary works of the distant and recent past almost invariably embody the work of a textual editor. Recent literary theory has called into question most of the assumptions on which the practice of textual editing has historically depended. Notions of authorial intention, authority, the status of annotation and commentary, the relationship between 'literary' and non-literary works (such as letters and dictionaries), and hence the concept of literature itself, are central to this debate. This volume of essays, written by practising textual editors and scholars, addresses the practical implications of these theoretical issues, taking a variety of texts as examples for the particular editorial problems they pose. The works of authors as various as Shakespeare and John Clare, Samuel Johnson and D. H. Lawrence, Milton and Oscar Wilde are invoked to demonstrate the practical basis of an editorial discipline which requires theoretical sophistication but resists reduction to any single theory.

The first developments in the editing of English literary texts in the eighteenth century were remarkable and important, and they have recently begun to attract considerable interest, particularly in relation to conditions and constructions of scholarship in the period. This study sets out to investigate, rather, the theoretical and interpretative bases of eighteenth-century literary editing. Extended chapters on Shakespearean and Miltonic commentary and editing demonstrate that the work of pioneering editors and commentators, such as Patrick Hume, Lewis Theobald, Zachary Pearce, and Edward Capell, was based on developed, sophisticated and often clearly articulated theories and methods of textual understanding and explanation. Marcus Walsh relates these interpretative theories and methods to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anglican biblical hermeneutics, and to a number of key debates in modern editorial theory.