Content area
Full Text
Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice, Third Edition, by Peter L. Shillingsburg. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1996. xviii + 188 pp. ISBN 0-472-09600-1 (alk paper); 0-47246600-5 (pbk); $42.50 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).
Peter L. Shillingsburg, a distinguished textual critic of Victorian Literature, noted especially for his work with William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray (1992), has produced a third edition of what David Greetham in his Foreword describes as "a classic" (p. vii). Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice was first published in 1984 by the Department of English, Australian Defence Forces Academy at Canberra, in an edition of one hundred copies. A 1986 trade edition followed. As Greetham indicates, Shillingsburg is a pluralist: his work is not confined to exploration in publishing history or textual editing, or to a sociological approach. The latest edition reflects the technological, and cultural shifts that have occurred in the decade since the first edition. The "chapter on desktop publishing" represents "the inevitable culmination of the combination of technological power and critical judgement espoused from the very beginning of the volume" (p. viii).
Shillingsburg's new edition reflects the impact of theoretical debates within the field of scholarly editing. Since the mid1980s a debate has taken place in which the central players have been Thomas G. Tansalle, the representative of conservatism, Peter Shillingsburg and Jerome J. McGann, the...