In ‘Electronic Scholarly Editions,’ Ken Price highlights an interesting editorial choice from Wright American Fiction, a digital expansion on Lyle Wright’s 1975 American Fiction 1851–1875: A Contribution Toward a Bibliography. Both Wright himself and the editors of the digital project include Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as part of of their overview of fictional works, but we now know what Wright presumably didn’t: that Jacobs’ work is narrative nonfiction. Price claims that its inclusion here means that Wright American Fiction is “a major contribution to scholarship without being a scholarly edition per se,” as a more “scholarly” choice would be to “take a stand”—presumably by disqualifying the work from the expanded bibliography.

It seems to me, though, that the question is not what qualifies as “scholarly” editing, but what the purpose of the project is, and—drawing on Abbott & Williams—what kind of editing they’re engaging in. The choice to keep Jacobs’ work is a documentary choice: it appears in the original, so it appears in the expanded and digitized version, and also one that plays into a kind of meta-historical-bibliography work. Wright’s inclusion of Jacobs’ work tells us that at the time he was writing it was believed to be fiction, and that it was originally published as such; we could then infer that those reading it when it was new also read it as such. If the goal behind Wright American Fiction is to accurately capture what Wright considered to be the important fictional works published between 1851-1875, then can it be considered less “scholarly” to include an incorrect entry? 

An editing decision based in textual criticism, then, and one allowed by the more flexible boundaries of online publication, would be to include the citation and full text, but annotated to include the expertise that the editors possess: that the text was long believed to be a fictional account written by white abolitionist Lydia Marie Child, but was in fact a nonfictional account of Jacobs’ own life. This would serve a third purpose other than either documentary—including the work without comment—or “correcting” Wright by excising it, highlighting issues of race and recognition, as well as potentially giving citation and credit to the scholar who discovered the real authorship of the work (Jean Fagan Yellin).

First and foremost, an editor will have to decide whether she wants to engage in documentary editing or critical editing. In the former, the editor will have to decide whether she wants to use a diplomatic reprint, which preserves only the text such as the wording, spelling, punctuation, etc. An editor might also want to decide whether she wants to present the text in facsimile, including photo facsimile or make use of genetic or synoptic transcription. Lastly, also available for documentary transcription is literal transcription on facing pages and transcriptions of various states in parallel columns, as well as presenting documentary editions electronically on disks or over the Internet. With critical editing, an editor will have to decide which reading she wants to incorporate and whether to include editorial emendations that establish readings not found in any document. Specifically, an editor will have to determine which readings are authorial and contemporary with the author. Another thing to consider is whether or not the author’s intentions have changed over time. Also, has an author’s revision been made under duress, and thus is it unfaithful to an author’s intent, is a question to be determined.

            These choices shape future knowledge in a field in several ways. One way is that with documentary editing, we may simply make clear something that was unclear for many years. Also, if an author’s intent is determined during the critical editing process, we are stating what the author meant when she wrote the work, which may then have an effect on the way we view works that come afterwards, both from the author and by others in a similar field. This can be illuminating when viewed in the context of the author’s other works, but the risk seems to be that we imply meaning to the work with that was not intended.