No family in three generations has contributed so much to American history as the Adamses. John, John Quincy, and Charles Francis, despite periods of doubt, knew that history, if not their contemporaries, would recognize their accomplishments. When the Adams Papers series is complete, the writings of these three statesmen will have been examined thoroughly.

Aside from the "Legal Papers of John Adams," published in 1965, these two volumes are the first in Series III: General Correspondence and Other Papers of the Adams Statesmen. Volumes 1 and 2 of the "Papers of John Adams" include letters to and from friends and colleagues, reports of committees on which he served, his polemical writings, published and unpublished, and state papers to which he made a contribution.

All of Adams' newspaper writings, including 'A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law, ' are in these two volumes. In addition to being a condemnation of the Stamp Act, the "Dissertation" is shown to be one of the building blocks of the theory of a commonwealth of independent states under the king, which reaches complete statement in the Novanglus letters. For the first time, all thirteen of these letters appear in full with annotation.

The period September 1755--April 1775 covers Adams' public service in Braintree and Boston town meetings, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the First Continental Congress, and the First Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. During this time his political future was being shaped by circumstances not always of his choosing. He hesitated at first at the threshold of a public career, political ambition in conflict with concern for his family's well--being. But asthe confrontation with Great Britain sharpened, the crisis became acute; no choice remained. For Adams there was no shirking the path of duty.

First published in 1987 and widely acclaimed, "A Guide to Documentary Editing" is now available in a new and completely revised edition. Drawing on the experience of dozens of editorial projects, the author details every step of the editing process as now practiced in the electronic information age--planning a project, organizing materials, evaluating and transcribing texts, applying textual and editorial conventions, and preparing the edition for the publisher. The author even makes cautious predictions about future forms of electronic documentary publication: CD-ROMs, locally available text bases, and Internet sites. In addition, the author brings up to date her survey of literature in areas such as document selection, annotation, and non-verbal sources. Editors of such historical and literary documents as correspondence, journals, diaries, financial records, professional papers, and unpublished manuscripts will find this book an indispensable companion.

For more than twenty years, "A Guide to Documentary Editing" has proven an invaluable tool for scholarly editors, editors-in-training, readers of documentary editions, and other students of American history and literature. This new, extensively revised edition of the "Guide" arrives in the midst of great change in the field. In addition to exploring fully the increasingly central role electronic technology plays in the editing process, this edition provides the most current treatment of the craft's fundamental issues. These include locating and collecting sources, transcribing source texts, conventions of textual treatment, dealing with nontextual elements, and preparing editions for publishers. The documentary-editing environment is more vibrant than ever, and the authors draw on this wealth of activity to include numerous examples of the "Guide"'s principles in practice.

The most innovative aspect of this latest edition of the "Guide" is a new digital component. Users may access the entire contents online through a dedicated Web site. In addition to offering the convenience of easy online access, this Web edition will include hyperlinks to relevant literature and will act as an archive for material from earlier editions. Most important, it will be periodically revised and updated, to ensure a "Guide" that is always current with best practice. The online edition is available at http: //gde.upress.virginia.edu.

Each edition of the "Guide" has become the standard text for scholarly editors, whether their focus is correspondence, journals, diaries, financial records, professional papers, or unpublished manuscripts. This print/digital edition presents this essential guide in its most dynamic and useful form yet.

"Published in association with the Association for Documentary Editing"