In the last decade, editorial theory and practice have begun to generate some of the most interesting issues and problems in the humanities. The discovery of plagiarism in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dissertation and debates over editions of James Joyce's Ulysses appeared on the front pages of newspapers. The practice of editing has challenged our conceptions both of works themselves and of the principles by which art, meaning, and tradition are constituted.

Palimpsest is the first volume to consider the impact of the new editorial work and theory on a wide range of humanistic disciplines. It assembles an extraordinarily distinguished group of leading practitioners and theorists, who examine editing in a variety of contexts: literature, music, art, history, religion, and correspondence.

Contributors: Betty Bennett, George Bornstein, Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Clayborne Carson, David Noel Freedman, Hans Walter Gabler, Philip Gossett, David Greetham, Jerome J. McGann, Barbara Oberg, Peter Shillingsburg, Gary Taylor, Ralph G. Williams, and James E. G. Zetzel.

George Bornstein is Professor of English, University of Michigan. He is the author of several books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and is the editor of W. B. Yeats: The Early Poetry, Vol. 1[and (with Hugh Witemeyer) of Yeats’s Letters to the New Island.

Ralph G. Williams is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan, and is the editor of Marcus Hieronymus Vida: De arte poetica.