The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies
Scholarly Editing and Book History

Reflects on and re-imagines the role of the scholarly edition and its reader in the twenty-first century.

Paul Eggert (Author)

9781108724494, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 July 2021

252 pages, 9 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm, 0.38 kg

'… The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies is the most substantial book I am aware of today to lay out the land of literary study on foundations of documented transmission of works of literature: works and the texts that adumbrate them, written and re-written, read and re-read, and ever safeguarded by the manifold agencies of authors, scribes, typists and typesetters, digital key-strokers, publisher's editors, book historians, commercial or scholarly editors, and ever and ever again readers. The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies forms an important point of entry to re conceptualisings of literary study.' Hans Walter Gabler, Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS)

By the late 1980s the concept of the work had slipped out of sight, consigned to its last refuge in the library catalogue as concepts of discourse and text took its place. Scholarly editors, who depended on it, found no grounding in literary theory for their practice. But fundamental ideas do not go away, and the work is proving to be one of them. New interest in the activity of the reader in the work has broadened the concept, extending it historically and sweeping away its once-supposed aesthetic objecthood. Concurrently, the advent of digital scholarly editions is recasting the editorial endeavour. The Work and The Reader in Literary Studies tests its argument against a range of book-historically inflected case-studies from Hamlet editions to Romantic poetry archives to the writing practices of Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence. It newly justifies the practice of close reading in the digital age.

Preface
List of illustrations
1. Introduction: the book, the work and the scholarly edition
2. Reviving the work-concept: music, literature and historic buildings
3. The digital native encounters the printed scholarly edition called Hamlet
4. The reader-oriented scholarly edition
5. Digital editions: the archival impulse and the editorial impulse
6. The work, the version and the Charles Harpur Critical Archive
7. Book history and literary study: the late nineteenth century and Rolf Boldrewood
8. Book history and literary study: Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence
9. Adaptation, folklore and the work: the Ned Kelly story
10. Conclusion: what editors edit, and the role of the reader
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]