Editorial Interventions

Our fluid-text edition of Walden is based on Ronald Clapper’s updated, electronic (MS Word) version of his original 1967 dissertation, The Development of Walden: A Genetic Text. Clapper’s update introduced some new editorial decisions; unfortunately, it appears to have introduced, as well, the occasional typographical error.

The digitization of the Walden manuscript at the Huntington has made it possible for us to compare the manuscript to both the original dissertation and the later, electronic version. As a result, we are in a position to make three kinds of editorial interventions in the fluid-text TEI:

• Corrections to typographical errors.
• Reversions to the original, print dissertation in cases where the dissertation captures more accurately, or in better detail, the changes evident on the manuscript surface.
• New readings, absent from both the original dissertation and the electronic update, in cases where the evidence of the manuscript clearly departs from both, or where important manuscript content is missing from both.

We have no plans at present to undertake a systematic comparison of the manuscript and Clapper’s transcription. Such a comparison lies outside the scope of the fluid-text edition, which is first and foremost intended to be a faithful remediation, in TEI, of Clapper’s work on the manuscript. But we have decided that it makes sense, and best serves readers, to correct errors and supply arguably significant omissions as we encounter them.

The TEI provides a simple way for us to catalog our interventions: the @resp attribute, used to assign responsibility. The table below displays, for each intervention, the chapter, paragraph, and paragraph section where the intervention occurs; the xml:id value of the app element and @wit attribute associated with the manuscript revision in question; the element to which @resp is attached (e.g., rdg, add, del); the xml:id of the editor responsible for the intervention; and the text inside the element to which @resp is assigned.

Please note that the text in the table is not formatted to display cancellations and insertions. To locate the manuscript surfaces corresponding to these interventions, use our Manuscript Search Tool. Additional details regarding some interventions will be found in the commit messages of our GitHub repository.