What is textual scholarship?

The primary goal of the discipline of textual scholarship (or textual criticism) is the investigation of texts. Textual scholars attempt to understand how texts have come to be as they are and, in order to achieve this, they examine the primary sources of a text. There are several different schools of thought within the discipline: some scholars are interested in what the author intended, some others see texts as collaborative products and there are also those who are interested in how a text is transmitted. In many cases, textual scholars produce editions of the texts they have studied.

This website

Here you can find bibliographical resources and articles about textual scholarship. For now, I am doing this work with some help from Peter Robinson. If you find it useful, it would be good if you could let me know. Alternatively, you could offer suggestions on aspects that are not yet being covered by this site. There is also a Wiki where you can contribute with entries about textual criticism and scholarly editing. On July 22nd, and thanks to a great deal of help from Andrew West, I started the Textual Blog. I can tell that some people have been reading it, but no one has yet made any contributions to it.

The list

TextualScholarship is an e-mail distribution list that allows the free exchange of information about any aspect of textual scholarship and editing. The list is not moderated, but members are protected from spam by the JISCmail security system. Membership to the list is free and we encourage new members to send queries, comments and announcements. To join TextualSholarship, just follow the link.