The phenomenon of the collected edition has made a vital contribution to the construction of authorship, the history of reputation and the formation of the canon. Discussing a range of authors and subjects from Ben Jonson to the internet, this collection of essays brings together the disciplines of Literary and Cultural Criticism, Textual Criticism, Bibliography, Book and Publishing History, to ignite debate on the influence of famous editions of the past and the significance of present-day collected editions.

First full-length study of collected editions

List of Plates List of Figures Notes on the Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: The Culture of Collected Editions: Authorship, Reputation, and the Canon; A.Nash PART ONE: AUTHORIAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES Collecting Ben Jonson; I.Donaldson Dividing and Conquering Milton; P.Lindenbaum 'For Who so Fond as Youthful Bards of Fame?' Pope's Works of 1717; J.McLaverty Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture; M.Anesko The Collected Editions of Hardy, James, and Meredith, with Some Concluding Thoughts on the Desirability of a Taxonomy of the Book; S.Gatrell Henry James and the Cultural Frame of the New York Edition; P.Horne 'The Dead Should Be Protected From Their Own Carelessness': The Collected Editions of Robert Louis Stevenson; A.Nash Contested Districts: Synge's Textual Self; W. Gould PART TWO: EDITORIAL AND MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVES 'Much They Ought Not To Have Attempted': Editors of Collected Editions of Shakespeare from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries; G.Ioppolo Shakespeare Goes to College: Oxford and Cambridge Collected Editions; A.Murphy The Life in Death of Editorial Exchange: the Bollingen Collected Coleridge; J.C.C.Mays Romantic Collected Editions: Varieties of Editorial Experience; D.H.Reiman An Editorial Assessment of The Complete Works of George Orwell ; P.Davison What Bowers Wrought: An Assessment of the Center for Editions of American Authors; M.J.Bruccoli Textonics: Literary and Cultural Studies in a Quantam World; J.J.McGann Index