Proofs of Genius : Collected Editions From The American Revolution To The Digital Age

• Main Author: Gailey, Amanda
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 2015
• Series: Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism
• Subjects: American literature; Appreciation; Authorship; Biography, Literature and Literary studies; Canon (Literature); Editing; Editions; Editions - United States - History; History; Language & Literature; LITERARY CRITICISM; Literary theory; Literature; Literature and Literary studies::D Biography; Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism; Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSA Literary theory; Literature publishing; Literature: history and criticism; Semiotics & Theory; thema EDItEUR; thema EDItEUR::D Biography; 20th century; 1830-1886; 19th century; 1819-1892; United States
• ISBN: 0472900099; 9780472900091; 9780472072750; 0472052756; 9780472052752; 0472072757
• DOI: 10.3998/etlc.13607061.0001.001

Proofs of Genius: Collected Editions from the American Revolution to the Digital Age is the first extensive study of the collected edition as an editorial genre within American literary history. Unlike editions of an author’s “selected works” or thematic anthologies, which clearly indicate the presence of non-authorial editorial intervention, collected editions have typically been arranged to imply an unmediated documentary completeness. By design, the collected edition obscures its own role in shaping the cultural reception of the author. In Proofs of Genius, Amanda Gailey argues that decisions to re-edit major authorial corpora are acts of canon-formation in miniature that indicate more foundational shifts in the way a culture views its literature and itself. By combining a theoretically-informed approach with a broad historical view of collected editions from the late eighteenth century to the present (including the rise of digital editions), Gailey fills a gap in the textual scholarship of the editing history of major figures like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman and of the American literary canon itself.