A brief history of the Northwestern-Newberry edition

G. Thomas Tanselle; Meaghan Fritz

doi:10.1353/lvn.2019.0020

A brief history of the Northwestern-Newberry edition

G. Thomas Tanselle, Meaghan Fritz

Writing Program

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	9-13
Number of pages	5
Journal	Leviathan
Volume	21
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2019.0020
State	Published - 2019

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Literature and Literary Theory

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10.1353/lvn.2019.0020

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@article{0a8effc245d04f48b48f7e1d4369e6c4,

title = "A brief history of the Northwestern-Newberry edition",

author = "Tanselle, {G. Thomas} and Meaghan Fritz",

note = "Funding Information: available only in the major libraries, and is in any case not textually reliable; its textual principles are indeterminate, and no effort was made to find and follow Melville{\textquoteright}s own intentions—spelling, for example, was completely Anglicized. At present, scholars, along with classroom teachers and the common reader, must piece together Melville{\textquoteright}s works from a motley assortment of uncertainly reliable separate editions. The respectably scholarly editions among them were prepared on various textual principles and are not in any case readily identifiable by nonspecialists. Teachers are likely unwittingly to assign a bowdlerized Typee, an abridged Moby-Dick, or a garbled Billy Budd.” Official word of the award of a grant to the Melville edition from the United States Office of Education (in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) came in early 1965. (The CEAA{\textquoteright}s first grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities did not arrive for another year; and because the Melville edition had already received funds, it was not included among the eight editions, involving 150 scholars and eight university presses, to which the $300,000 grant was allocated: those for Crane, Emerson, Hawthorne, Howells, Irving, Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Whitman.) With a grant in hand, the Melville edition could proceed under the editorial team Hayford had already established. He was to be General Editor, assisted by two of his former students: Hershel Parker as Associate General Editor and G. Thomas Tanselle as Bibliographical Editor. Hayford had recently completed (in 1962) a complex editorial project with Merton M. Sealts, Jr., a landmark edition of Billy Budd, Sailor that included the first careful transcription of Melville{\textquoteright}s uncompleted manuscript; he and Parker had already started work on the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick (which was published in 1967); and Tanselle had begun research and writing on American publishing history, descriptive bibliography, and editorial theory.",

year = "2019",

doi = "10.1353/lvn.2019.0020",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "21",

pages = "9--13",

journal = "Leviathan",

issn = "1525-6995",

publisher = "John Wiley & Sons Inc.",

number = "2",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - A brief history of the Northwestern-Newberry edition

AU - Tanselle, G. Thomas

AU - Fritz, Meaghan

N1 - Funding Information: available only in the major libraries, and is in any case not textually reliable; its textual principles are indeterminate, and no effort was made to find and follow Melville’s own intentions—spelling, for example, was completely Anglicized. At present, scholars, along with classroom teachers and the common reader, must piece together Melville’s works from a motley assortment of uncertainly reliable separate editions. The respectably scholarly editions among them were prepared on various textual principles and are not in any case readily identifiable by nonspecialists. Teachers are likely unwittingly to assign a bowdlerized Typee, an abridged Moby-Dick, or a garbled Billy Budd.” Official word of the award of a grant to the Melville edition from the United States Office of Education (in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) came in early 1965. (The CEAA’s first grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities did not arrive for another year; and because the Melville edition had already received funds, it was not included among the eight editions, involving 150 scholars and eight university presses, to which the $300,000 grant was allocated: those for Crane, Emerson, Hawthorne, Howells, Irving, Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Whitman.) With a grant in hand, the Melville edition could proceed under the editorial team Hayford had already established. He was to be General Editor, assisted by two of his former students: Hershel Parker as Associate General Editor and G. Thomas Tanselle as Bibliographical Editor. Hayford had recently completed (in 1962) a complex editorial project with Merton M. Sealts, Jr., a landmark edition of Billy Budd, Sailor that included the first careful transcription of Melville’s uncompleted manuscript; he and Parker had already started work on the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick (which was published in 1967); and Tanselle had begun research and writing on American publishing history, descriptive bibliography, and editorial theory.

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A brief history of the Northwestern-Newberry edition

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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