The New Modernist Editing
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Critical Studies
Abstract
The field of modernist editing (the editing of texts from the modernist period) has changed dramatically over recent years. There are also an unprecedented number of new editions of modernist texts being published, as modernist authors' works emerge from copyright. It is, therefore, now urgently necessary to enable key figures working from a diverse range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in modernist editing to come together in person to share their experience and expertise, enhance their own practice, and disseminate this to a wider audience (for details see attached Case for Support).
We have identified the New Modernist Editing (or NME) as a concept to describe the important recent developments in scholarly and editorial practice in the preparation and production of modernist texts. These developments include:
- Scholarly awareness of the particular set of challenges and opportunities presented by the editing of modernist texts, such as preserving the spirit of fluidity and uncertainty which permeates modernist aesthetics, and taking account of the self-conscious process of revision undertaken by many modernist writers;
- Recent developments in the modernist literary critical field making necessary a thoroughgoing appraisal of the responsibilities of the editor of the modernist text, most notably the inauguration of the New Modernist Studies by the establishment of the Modernist Studies Association in 1999;
- Recent developments in textual editing more generally, including the focus on material contexts of a text's publication, but also and most notably genetic criticism which examines draft versions of the text without focussing on a 'final' text;
- Online editions: the development of new digital technologies enabling scholars to present their textual expertise and research in ways not possible through the traditional book format.
Hitherto, there have been only very limited opportunities for scholars working on the various different modernist editions underway to come together to discuss their work in this field, and none that has also included other key stakeholders such as publishers, archivists, theorists of textual editing and other makers of editions of modernist texts (such as book artists). Our project seeks to enable this exchange, establish the NME as a coherent, original and productive interdisciplinary approach to textual editing, and communicate this project to a wide audience within and beyond the academy.
This Network will explore opportunities and challenges to modernist scholarship, textual editing and publication practices offered by the NME. The Network will cross disciplinary boundaries by including scholars in the fields of modernist literature, comparative literature, textual scholarship and the digital humanities, as well as reaching beyond the academy by including representatives of traditional publishing houses, independent digital publishers, archivists, and book artists. Network participants have also been carefully selected so that a range of career stages, from postdoctoral to Professor, are represented, and to include representatives of all the major new modernist editions currently underway in the UK, as well as international participants involved in further projects. The Network will speak to the AHRC theme of Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities by integrating, as fundamental to its aims, consideration of the opportunities offered to editors of modernist texts by developments in digital technology. It will offer a series of three events organised around three key questions:
1. What is the New Modernist Editing?
2. What are its current and potential audiences?
3. How does the NME respond to the new conditions of cultural production?
All the major modernist editions currently underway in the UK will be represented - an unprecedented coming together of key editors in the field.
We have identified the New Modernist Editing (or NME) as a concept to describe the important recent developments in scholarly and editorial practice in the preparation and production of modernist texts. These developments include:
- Scholarly awareness of the particular set of challenges and opportunities presented by the editing of modernist texts, such as preserving the spirit of fluidity and uncertainty which permeates modernist aesthetics, and taking account of the self-conscious process of revision undertaken by many modernist writers;
- Recent developments in the modernist literary critical field making necessary a thoroughgoing appraisal of the responsibilities of the editor of the modernist text, most notably the inauguration of the New Modernist Studies by the establishment of the Modernist Studies Association in 1999;
- Recent developments in textual editing more generally, including the focus on material contexts of a text's publication, but also and most notably genetic criticism which examines draft versions of the text without focussing on a 'final' text;
- Online editions: the development of new digital technologies enabling scholars to present their textual expertise and research in ways not possible through the traditional book format.
Hitherto, there have been only very limited opportunities for scholars working on the various different modernist editions underway to come together to discuss their work in this field, and none that has also included other key stakeholders such as publishers, archivists, theorists of textual editing and other makers of editions of modernist texts (such as book artists). Our project seeks to enable this exchange, establish the NME as a coherent, original and productive interdisciplinary approach to textual editing, and communicate this project to a wide audience within and beyond the academy.
This Network will explore opportunities and challenges to modernist scholarship, textual editing and publication practices offered by the NME. The Network will cross disciplinary boundaries by including scholars in the fields of modernist literature, comparative literature, textual scholarship and the digital humanities, as well as reaching beyond the academy by including representatives of traditional publishing houses, independent digital publishers, archivists, and book artists. Network participants have also been carefully selected so that a range of career stages, from postdoctoral to Professor, are represented, and to include representatives of all the major new modernist editions currently underway in the UK, as well as international participants involved in further projects. The Network will speak to the AHRC theme of Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities by integrating, as fundamental to its aims, consideration of the opportunities offered to editors of modernist texts by developments in digital technology. It will offer a series of three events organised around three key questions:
1. What is the New Modernist Editing?
2. What are its current and potential audiences?
3. How does the NME respond to the new conditions of cultural production?
All the major modernist editions currently underway in the UK will be represented - an unprecedented coming together of key editors in the field.
Planned Impact
The New Modernist Editing Network will enhance understanding among cognate professionals and practitioners and among the public more widely of a) issues in contemporary textual editing, and b) the cultural and aesthetic contexts of modernist texts. It will achieve this impact in various ways:
Who?
Publishers. This impact will be achieved by having several publishing professionals as Network members and attending all three Network events: Brad Scott, an independent publisher with particular expertise in digital publications; Linda Bree, Commissioning Editor in the Humanities team at Cambridge University Press; and Jackie Jones, Editorial Director at Edinburgh University Press. Knowledge exchange between Network participants is of course fundamental to its activities, both within and between sectors and disciplines. This project will therefore generate impact on publishing houses through dissemination by these participants of the good practice and innovations developed as part of the Network's knowledge exchange activities.
Artists. This impact will be achieved by having the book artists Jane Hyslop and Nancy Campbell as Network members. Campbell and Hyslop are prominent among UK book artists with a track record of success in collaborative projects. They will be key figures in disseminating within the artistic community the Network's findings on the creative potential offered by synergies between the makers of artists' books and scholars of textual editing.
Archivists and Librarians. Fiona Courage, archivist at The Keep, is a key Network participant, and her involvement will facilitate dissemination of the Network's activities to archivists and librarians holding modernist manuscripts, enhancing future collaboration between archivists, scholars and artists in the preparation of new editions of modernist texts.
How?
Website. While initially facilitating communication between Network members, the website will eventually become an archive of the Network's activities, publicly available, becoming a means of disseminating the issues arising from the process of textual editing modernism in all its stages.
Digital edition. A key output of the Network is a digital edition of Virginia Woolf's 'Ode Written Partly in Prose on Seeing the Name of Cutbush Above a Butcher's Shop in Pentonville', a short modernist text. This digital edition will be hosted on the website of The Keep, which houses among its extensive collections the Monks House Papers (the second most important Virginia Woolf archive in the world), and will have an accompanying practice guide, outlining the processes involved in textual editing and the decisions made by scholars and publishers as the text is prepared. The Keep is a public-facing archive with a strong track record of public engagement; hosting the digital edition on their website will maximise the impact of the Network's activities on the general public. The site on The Keep will also include a prominent link to the more detailed Network website. In addition, the archivists at The Keep will benefit from the raised profile of the archive's literary special collections.
Who?
Publishers. This impact will be achieved by having several publishing professionals as Network members and attending all three Network events: Brad Scott, an independent publisher with particular expertise in digital publications; Linda Bree, Commissioning Editor in the Humanities team at Cambridge University Press; and Jackie Jones, Editorial Director at Edinburgh University Press. Knowledge exchange between Network participants is of course fundamental to its activities, both within and between sectors and disciplines. This project will therefore generate impact on publishing houses through dissemination by these participants of the good practice and innovations developed as part of the Network's knowledge exchange activities.
Artists. This impact will be achieved by having the book artists Jane Hyslop and Nancy Campbell as Network members. Campbell and Hyslop are prominent among UK book artists with a track record of success in collaborative projects. They will be key figures in disseminating within the artistic community the Network's findings on the creative potential offered by synergies between the makers of artists' books and scholars of textual editing.
Archivists and Librarians. Fiona Courage, archivist at The Keep, is a key Network participant, and her involvement will facilitate dissemination of the Network's activities to archivists and librarians holding modernist manuscripts, enhancing future collaboration between archivists, scholars and artists in the preparation of new editions of modernist texts.
How?
Website. While initially facilitating communication between Network members, the website will eventually become an archive of the Network's activities, publicly available, becoming a means of disseminating the issues arising from the process of textual editing modernism in all its stages.
Digital edition. A key output of the Network is a digital edition of Virginia Woolf's 'Ode Written Partly in Prose on Seeing the Name of Cutbush Above a Butcher's Shop in Pentonville', a short modernist text. This digital edition will be hosted on the website of The Keep, which houses among its extensive collections the Monks House Papers (the second most important Virginia Woolf archive in the world), and will have an accompanying practice guide, outlining the processes involved in textual editing and the decisions made by scholars and publishers as the text is prepared. The Keep is a public-facing archive with a strong track record of public engagement; hosting the digital edition on their website will maximise the impact of the Network's activities on the general public. The site on The Keep will also include a prominent link to the more detailed Network website. In addition, the archivists at The Keep will benefit from the raised profile of the archive's literary special collections.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Bryony Randall (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Creasy M
(2020)
Contingency, Irony Textuality: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Textual Criticism
in Modernist Cultures
Crowley R
(2020)
Modernism on the Punch Tape: Editing the 1984 Ulysses
in Modernist Cultures
Guy A
(2020)
Editing Experiment: The New Modernist Editing and Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage
in Modernist Cultures
Hulle D
(2020)
Sheherazade's Notebook: Editing Textual Dysteleology and Autographic Modernism
in Modernist Cultures
Mierlo W
(2020)
Annotation and Commentary in the Modernist Edition: A Critique
in Modernist Cultures
Randall B
(2020)
Introduction: Editing and Collaboration
in Modernist Cultures
Thomson T
(2020)
Annotating the Everyday in a Modernist Scholarly Edition
in Modernist Cultures
| Description | The most significant achievements from the award have been the formation of a sustainable and ongoing network of experts across disciplines and fields, academic and non-academic, with expertise and interest in editing modernist texts, providing a fulcrum for the sharing of good practice and therefore contributing significantly to the quality of ongoing and forthcoming editions of modernist texts. Anecdotally, attendance at these events have made it possible for editors to meet each other, and also to meet publishers, to develop and take forward proposals for editions that might not otherwise have taken place. The award objectives were all met: • We held three one-day events, at Manchester, Durham and Glasgow, each of which used a workshop format to maximise interaction between participants and the sharing of expertise and experience. • The project website provided an interactive online forum; in practice we found that this was relatively little used, but on the other hand the full records of each event were made available to Network members on the website (and an edited form made available publicly) and we found that members used these resources actively in preparing for the events. • A new digital edition of 'Ode Written Partly in Prose on Seeing the Name of Cutbush Above a Butcher's Shop in Pentonville,' a short story by Virginia Woolf, and accompanying practice guide, was formulated with input from members at Network events and subsequently by email. • This digital edition was launched by the Network PI at the Remaking the New: Modernism and Textual Scholarship Conference (originally to be called the Gender and Textual Editing in Modernist Studies conference) at Queen Mary University of London in mid-July 2017. • The journal Modernist Cultures has accepted our proposal for a special issue on the New Modernist Editing, to include seven essays from Network members drawing on their work in textual editing and informed by their Network participation, for delivery in November 2019 and publication in 2020. |
| Exploitation Route | The findings of the Network might be taken forward in the following ways (some of these steps are already being taken): • By enabling and supporting the publication of new scholarly editions of modernist texts, particularly through developing connections now made between academic publishers and scholars. • By enhancing the quality of new and ongoing editions of modernist texts. • By using the digital edition of Woolf's short fiction for teaching across a range of topics within literary study including textual editing; modernist textual culture; and the digital humanities. • By conceiving follow-on activities including further collaboration with book artists, designers and writers in response to the Network. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://newmodernistediting.wordpress.com/ |
| Description | • The participation of book artists, writers and editors in the project, who have facilitated the dissemination of our work to their professional cohorts through both informal networks and word-of-mouth, and through more formal mechanisms (such as, for example, the publication of a report from our first event in Editing Matters: the magazine of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders). Participants have reported the influence of the work of the Network on recent publications; for example, on Nancy Campbell's The Library of Ice (https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Library-of-Ice/Nancy-Campbell/9781471169311) • Building on these connections, the project PI, along with two CoIs one of whom was also an original Network member, was successful in her application for follow-on funding funding from this grant. This project began in October 2019, but even before this date, the very process of entering into discussions with new partners on the follow-on funding bid has disseminated the work of the NME among various creative and third sector organisations, primarily MyBookcase (https://mybookcase.org/), Corridor8 (https://corridor8.co.uk/) and the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall (https://www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk/) • The connections made via the Network with a number of academic publishers, resulting in a further workshop for staff and postgraduate research students at the University of Glasgow on Scholarly Publishing and Textual Editing. Here, knowledge was exchanged between publishers and academics, having an impact on scholarly publishing in its understanding and awareness of scholarly activity and its potential to be harnessed in the making of new editions, while also providing academics with a better understanding of the landscape of academic publishing, feeding into higher quality proposals with a better chance of commercial success. One outcome of this ongoing knowledge exchange has been the development of a possible proposal for a new edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short fiction from an independent scholar. • The publicity given to the digital edition produced from the Network: importantly, a link to this edition together with a description of the edition now appears on the summary page on Bloomsbury Collections of the public-facing archive which holds the manuscript on which the edition was based, facilitating public access to the digital edition (http://www.thekeep.info/bloomsbury-collections/). A blog post about the creation of the digital edition has now been added to The Keep's website: http://www.thekeep.info/a-digital-woolfian-ode/ |
| First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Economic |
| Description | Teaching materials used in MA Research Methods and Resources module, University of Durham |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Teaching materials used in Masters level Research Methodology courses, Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Teaching materials used in Masters level translation course, Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Teaching materials used in postgraduate workshop at the University of Uppsala (2021) |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Teaching materials used in research workshop at the University of Uppsala |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Imprints of the New Modernist Editing: an intermedia exploration |
| Amount | £80,618 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/T001461/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2019 |
| End | 08/2020 |
| Description | Blog post for archive website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I was asked if I would like to write a blog post for The Keep, the public-facing archive which holds the manuscript of which we produced a digital edition as part of the named Network grant outputs. I published this post in July 2018 and publicised it via social media and email channels. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.thekeep.info/a-digital-woolfian-ode/ |
| Description | Blog post on digital projects for Medium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I was invited by a board member of the Modernist Studies Association to contribute a short blog post on the New Modernist Editing, specifically the digital 'Ode' output, as part of a series of posts on medium.com which document and promote a range of literary, cultural, and archival online resources for scholarship and teaching. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://msaexhibits.medium.com/on-or-about-2020-msa-digital-exhibition-fourth-installment-a32bcaab8c... |
| Description | Digital edition of literary text |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The 'Digital edition of Virginia Woolf's 'Ode Written Partly in Prose on Seeing the Name of Cutbush above a Butcher's Shop in Pentonville', one of the outputs from the New Modernist Editing Network, was launched in 2017 as a stand-alone edition framed for the non-specialist, freely available at https://nme-digital-ode.glasgow.ac.uk/. Since the website was launched an average of 50 unique visitors have accessed the site each month. It is promoted to the public via a permanent link to the edition on the relevant page of the website of the public-facing archive at which the manuscript of the text is kept: http://www.thekeep.info/bloomsbury-collections/. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018,2019 |
| URL | https://nme-digital-ode.glasgow.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Presentation at Public Engagement event, Oxford |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Bryony Randall spoke on 'Teaching Dorothy Richardson as a Scholarly Editor' at the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project public workshop, University of Oxford, January 2019. The audience included both academics and non-academics, including members of a reading group and members of Dorothy Richardson's extended family. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://dorothyrichardson.org/society/workshop2019.htm |
| Description | Twitter feed |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We established a Twitter account for the New Modernist Editing Network soon after it was set up; we tweet about our activities and related matters of interest in modernism and in editing. As at March 2019 we have 308 followers; a significant proportion are fellow academics but many fall into other categories of audience as detailed above. Others have also tweeted about our work using the hashtag #NewModEditing. Outcomes are hard to gauge as such but the level of likes and retweets suggests that many (dozens?) of our followers have actively engaged with our work as a result of seeing our tweets. Twitter has been particularly useful in disseminating information about our PGR training event and encouraging PGRs to apply - which is why I have chosen 'plans made for future related activity' as the most likely and concrete outcome/impact so far. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017,2018,2019 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/NewModEditing |
| Description | Website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | We established a website for the New Modernist Editing soon after the award began. This website has areas specifically for Network participants, and also provides participants with a repository of information about the Network so I have chosen 'study participants/study members' above as the primary audience, although in fact the Network participants are largely themselves academics so this may not be what is intended by that option. It is hard to gauge what other audiences may have accessed the website but it certainly includes both postgraduate and undergraduate students, and very likely also professional practitioners, industry/business and third sector organisations because of the Network's contacts in those fields. The website was migrated to a more stable url, hosted by the University of Glasgow, in December 2018. As at 11th March 2019 the site had had 2166 individual visitors and 4925 views in total. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017,2018,2019 |
| URL | https://newmodernistediting.glasgow.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Writeup of Network event in professional association magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Network member Nancy Campbell published a writeup of the first New Modernist Editing Network event as 'A Meeting of Great Minds', in the May/June 2017 edition of Editing Matters: the magazine of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. The SfEP has a membership of around 2100, mostly based in the UK, who all receive copies of the magazine. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |