This summer, research assistants Lily Elliott ‘28 and Madison McCleskey ‘28 worked together with Professor Robert DeMaria Jr. to assist with the editing and commentary of the Cambridge University Press Tatler. The Tatler is a British periodical that ran from 1709-1710 authored by Richard Steele and Joseph Addison under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff.
The course of the eight weeks may be divided into four sections: overview of scholarly editing, preparing the text, providing commentary, and beginning a bibliography. On June 8, the first day of the project, Professor DeMaria gave us a crash course in the history of scholarly editing. We discussed how its objective, founded by early editing in light of Humanism, preferred “purifying the text.” In the 17th C., the primary scholarly works were editions of Shakespeare and Milton. The literary critic Samuel Johnson, most known for his incredible Dictionary (we owe much to the 1755 edition) rejected the idea of “purifying” the text and the author. He defined the role of the editor as the aim to communicate the author’s original intention. This is the core of our approach as we prepared Nos. 241-270 of The Tatler.
The process of preparing each Tatler entailed referencing 3 texts: the octavo (8vo), which served as our copy-text (the chosen basis for the edited text), the folio (F), and the duodecimo (12mo) to note substantive differences (“changes in wording,” MLA Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions) within the second collected edition (~1710). The Tatler Vol. IV edited by George Aitken (1899) and The Tatler Vol. III edited by Donald F. Bond (1987) served as helpful models.
When collaborating with each other, one of us would read from the 8vo, F, and 12mo while the other typed. This provided great entertainment at times as The Tatler notably used character-types reflective of London circa 1710. Reading each number to each other expanded our understanding of political, religious, and social life during the reign of Queen Anne.
Your most Obedient Servants,
Lily and Madison Bickerstaff,
The Nieces of Isaac Bickerstaff.