Publishing Scholarly Editions
Archives, Computing, and Experience

This Element argues that editing is computational, and that such 'computations' enable new methods of publishing, reading, and experiences.

Christopher Ohge (Author)

9781108720182, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 December 2021

75 pages
17.8 x 12.5 x 0.7 cm, 0.15 kg

'Ohge foregrounds minimal computing as one way to navigate the dilemma pitting editing against publishing. But his objective in this engaging and thought-provoking book - one necessary for our juncture in time - is to raise questions more than to offer answers (certainly not easy ones). Indeed, the last chapter raises a question that is critical to the future of scholarly editing: 'What, then, is the meaning and function of the publisher in the digital age?' (116). In reality, this question is essential to the future of humanistic scholarship generally, and Ohge's probing exploration of it is one of the most important dimensions of his book.' Geoffrey Turnovsky, Textual Cultures

Publishing Scholarly Editions offers new intellectual tools for publishing digital editions that bring readers closer to the experimental practices of literature, editing, and reading. After the Introduction (Section 1), Sections 2 and 3 frame intentionality and data analysis as intersubjective, interrelated, and illustrative of experience-as-experimentation. These ideas are demonstrated in two editorial exhibitions of nineteenth-century works: Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, and the anti-slavery anthology The Bow in the Cloud, edited by Mary Anne Rawson. Section 4 uses pragmatism to rethink editorial principles and data modelling, arguing for a broader conception of the edition rooted in data collections and multimedia experience. The Conclusion (Section 5) draws attention to the challenges of publishing digital editions, and why digital editions have failed to be supported by the publishing industry. If publications are conceived as pragmatic inventions based on reliable, open-access data collections, then editing can embrace the critical, aesthetic, and experimental affordances of editions of experience.

Introduction
1. The Author
2. The Data
3. The Edition
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Technology: general issues [TB], Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS]