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An Often-Tumultuous Saga Of Books And Book-Places In The World: A Review, Dayne Sherman

E-JASL 1999-2009 (Volumes 1-10)

Book review of Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History. W.W. Norton, New York, NY, 2003. $24.95.

Excerpt:

Library: An Unquiet History dignifies the work of librarians as a profession, something needed more now than ever before, as we encounter this chaotic Communication Age. It tells us why we are here toiling in the library by telling us how we arrived as keepers of books and guardians of democracy.

The Canons Of Selection, John Y. Simon

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Although the article touched on many issues of concern to historical editors, I propose to focus on the scope of documentary editions and to explore the issue of selection of documents for printing, hoping to discover whether this can be analyzed as more than a struggle between editors and government officials eager to distribute federal funds more broadly.

Sotheby's Sale Of John Marshall Letters, Charles F. Hobson

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Recently the John Marshall Papers project accessioned a series of nine autograph letters signed from the chief justice to Bushrod Washington, written between 1814 and 1821. Let me state at the outset that the letters disclose no secret loves, no shady financial dealings, no bizarre personal habits. Candor also obliges me to confess that their discovery was not the result of years of painstaking research, of pursuing leads that brought me ever closer to the trunk in the attic of a decaying Virginia mansion. The story behind the acquisition of the letters is not without interest, however, and even a …

What We Would Have Done Differently Now That It Is Too Late, Louis R. Harlan, Raymond W. Smock

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

We might as well begin on a note of candor by admitting the worst error we ever made, for of all the things that we would have done differently this surely heads the list. On the errata page of volume 8 appears the note: "Volume 4, p. 309, n. 1. The man wrongly identified as Robert Brown Elliott [a black man] was actually William Elliott, a white man. The letter to BTW, Apr. 25,1898, was from Rev. G. M. Elliott of Beaufort, S.C." Not only had we confused a black man with a white man and another black man, but …

The Editor's Responsibility, John P. Kaminski

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

What is done during this time? Generally speaking project directors on documentary editions spend less time in editing documents than do the other editors on the staff. Senior editors are forced to devote varying amounts of their time to administration, fund-raising, and different kinds of public relations. If an editor also teaches, those responsibilities take up time: preparation of lectures, classroom time, consultations with students, and reading, critiquing, and grading papers. Editors also have other responsibilities such as committee work, responding to inquiries, consulting with other projects and individuals, assisting the federal funding agencies in reviewing proposals and projects, cartographic …

"What Good Are They Anyway?": A User Looks At Documentary Editions Of Statesmen's Papers, Daniel Feller

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Historical editing has come far in recent years. Editors now have their own organization; they have an ever-stricter set of standards and, as of this year, a handbook codifying those standards. What was once an avocation has become a profession. Yet one cannot overlook that documentary editions have failed to meet some of the expectations first held out for them. The "bloodless revolution in American history" promised us a quarter-century ago from the publication of great statesmen's papers has so far proved not only bloodless but undetectable. Ironically, just as that revolution was being proclaimed, a very different-and far from …

Articles In The First 25 Volumes Of Documentary Editing And Reviews In The First 25 Volumes Of Documentary Editing

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

If Documentary Editing were a grown child celebrating its 25th birthday, its parents, concerned with their offspring's professional welfare and future, would remember fondly earlier times and might well ask questions about plans for life after graduate school. Clearly, the journal of the Association for Documentary Editing is different from a child, although, over the years, many people have left their imprint on Documentary Editing and much has changed since the publication's beginning in 1979. Unlike an adult on the verge of complete emersion into professional life, however, Documentary Editing cannot look back and reflect on the course of the …

Documentary Editing, Volume 25, Number 3, Fall 2003--Front Matter

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Cover--25, Association of Documentary Editing, 1979-2003--Title page--Publication page--Contents--Contributors

"The Most Important Scholarly Work": Reflections On Twenty Years Of Change In Historical Editing, Michael E. Stevens

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Twenty years ago, at the first annual meeting of the Association for Documentary Editing in Princeton, New Jersey, Arthur Link stated that documentary editing is "the most important scholarly work being done in the United States, and, if well done, it will be the most enduring." Last year, the distinguished historian Edmund S. Morgan echoed Link when he wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the 154 volumes produced by the Founding Fathers editions "stand as the single most important achievement of American historical scholarship in this century."

Despite this high praise, Link's and Morgan's opinions are not universally held. …

Adolescent Journals Of Caroline Healey Daii, Helen R. Deese

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912), Boston-born reformer, lecturer, author of books, freelance journalist, memoirist, and occasional preacher, began her apprenticeship as a writer at the age of nine with the keeping of a journal. While still a child, however, she destroyed her earliest journal when she discovered her father reading it. For some time thereafter, she ceased her journal keeping. But soon finding herself unable to quell the need to express herself on paper, she resumed the habit. The journals of this second period, which ran for several years, survived until Dall was in her seventies. Then she also destroyed them, …

Announcement--In Celebration Of The 25th Anniversary Of The Association For Documentary Editing, A Cumulative Index For Documentary Editing, Spanning The Years Of 1979-2003, Appears In The 2003 Winter Issue

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

No abstract provided.

Ade Committees 2002-2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Officers--Committees

Documentary Editing, Volume 25, Number 3, Fall 2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

No abstract provided.

Mary Robinson Hunter: Reminiscences Of Her Life In Brazil, Evelyn M. Cherpak

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

As a Latin Americanist with a specialty in Women's History, I was eager ft to edit a diary kept by an American woman in South America, so I was pleasantly surprised when I called the Newport Historical Society and spoke to the curator of manuscripts who told me that the Mary Robinson Hunter diaries in their collection covered her residence in Brazil fromi 1835 to 1848. I promptly visited the Historical Society, read the journals, found them fascinating, and began my part-time editing project.

The diaries consist of six volumes in which Mary Hunter wrote nearly every day. Each entry, …

Documentary Editing, Volume 25, Number 2, Summer 2003--Front Matter

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Cover--Photo of Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illnois, November 1934--Title page--Publication page--Contents--Contributors

From Note To Independent Research Project: The Case Of Lauretta Hitchcock Jenney (1808-1833), William M. Ferraro

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

My quest after Lauretta Hitchcock and the family connections that shaped her values and beliefs began in 1989, when I came across this young woman at the Salmon P. Chase Papers. John Niven, editor of the Chase Papers, took little notice of Lauretta Hitchcock because the project focused on Salmon P. Chase's rise as an anti-slavery lawyer and political leader. Out of four letters between 1826 and 1827 from Chase to Lauretta or members of her family and seventeen letters between 1826 and 1832 from Lauretta or her relatives to Chase, Niven chose only one for publication in the select …

Documentary Editing, Volume 25, Number 2, Summer 2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

No abstract provided.

North Country Stories: Written And Oral Texts Of A Family History, Susan E. Gray

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Because the diaries that brought me to Camp Edit were those of a husband and a wife, I understood from the beginning the essential multi-vocality of my project. But I had no idea that what I then ,envisioned as a dialogue for me to orchestrate between the Reverend George Nelson Smith and his wife, Arvilla Powers Smith, would become a lively, sometimes heated, multi-generational family conversation where we are a privileged audience. Nor could I have known that the written texts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would be joined by other records, including oral ones from the present. …

Recent Editions--Summer 2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

This quarterly bibliography of current documentary editions published on subjects in the fields of American and British history, literature, and culture is generally restricted to scholarly first editions of English language works.

Articles In The First 25 Volumes Of Documentary Editing

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Following is a complete listing of contributions to Documentary Editing. The article listing includes a variety of entries, articles in the strict sense of the professional journal genre and also addresses and talks; it excludes reviews, however, an important regular feature of Documentary Editing. For the readers' convenience all entries are numbered consecutively (in the left-hand column) in chronological order of publication; the publication date is also in the left-hand column; the names of the author and the titles of the articles make up the center column; and there is room for comments.in the right-hand column.

Ade Committees 2002-2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Officers--Committees

Is There A Story In Those Notes?, Ann D. Gordon

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Is there a story in those notes? Let me answer that in the affirmative. Drawing on the Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, I can tell you that there are many, many stories in those notes. But I should explain the question. Certainly there are stories behind the notes: the serendipitous moments of discovery, the slogging through barren sources, or the comeuppance when a research strategy proves terribly wrong. Stories behind the notes also encompass stories that are left behind, chipped off or sanded away as the editor trims her knowledge down to precisely the kernel …

Documentary Editing, Volume 25, Number 1, Spring 2003--Front Matter

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Cover--Photo of Indiana War Memorial Hall, 1934--Title page--Publication page--Contents--Contributors

The Civil War Writings Of A "Literary Colonel": Review Of The Complete Civil War Journals And Selected Letters Of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Edited By Christopher Looby, Steven F. Miller

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Higginson came to his military career as a man of letters, as well as a militant abolitionist. Before the war, he had earned a reputation as an antislavery lecturer and written pieces for the Atlantic Monthly and other journals on topics including natural history, masculine health, and slave insurrections. He took a hiatus from writing for publication during his tenure with the First South Carolina; to do otherwise, he believed, would be "a sort of profaning this experience & mixing incompatible lives" . But he kept a journal of his wartime experiences, which he began editing and mining for articles …

Documentary Editing, Volume 25, Number 1, Spring 2003.

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

No abstract provided.

Recent Editions--Spring 2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

This quarterly bibliography of current documentary editions published on subjects in the fields of American and British history, literature, and culture is generally restricted to scholarly first editions of English language works. In addition, Internet addresses are provided for the editorial project or the publisher.

Ade Committees 2002-2003

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

Officers--Committees

A Democracy Of Knowledge, Henry Wiencek

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

I am very honored to speak to this group today. l owe an enormous debt to the work that you do and I very sincerely thank you for it. Documentary editing has, for me, an almost priestly connotation. I went to a Jesuit high school where my toughest teacher was Fr. Alphonse Yumont, who taught Latin. Every night we had to pore over a long section of Vergil, and the next morning had to translate it aloud in class. Errors were not allowed. And by "errors" I mean any deviations whatever from a precisely literal translation. We were not allowed …

A Patient's Point Of View Nineteenth-Century Syphilis Treatment, Linda A. Fisher

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

This article focuses on the diary's account of one particular episode of illness, but the manuscript in its entirety contains information of greater significance: Mersman's story illustrates the development of the middle class in nineteenth-century America.3 In 1849, when he was twenty-five, Mersman moved to St. Louis, where he and John Clemens Nulsen (1824-1906) established a business and became prominent members of the German-American community (see illustrations p. 17). They rectified whiskey and imported cigars. Nulsen & Mersman bought raw whiskey wholesale, distilled it a second time to increase the alcohol content and remove impurities, added coloring and flavoring, and …

The Beleaguered Widowof West Bilney: Review Of The Remembrances Of Elizabeth Freke. Edited By Raymond A. Anselment. Camden Fifth Series., Aki Chandra Li Beam

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011)

The manuscripts of Elizabeth Freke's reminiscences are contained in two commonplace books held by the British Ubrary. The larger "white vellum" volume, which includes the earlier reminiscence, also contains letters, recipes, snatches of poetry and history, a survey of the West Bilney estate, and some inventories. The second "brown wallpaper" volume, begun some ten years after the first, also contains copies of rental agreements, land deeds, and financial transactions. These two manuscripts were donated to the British Ubrary in 1941 by Lady Mary Carbury, a descendant by marriage of Elizabeth Freke. Early in the twentieth century, Carbury published the only …