Making the Archives Talk
Making the Archives Talk is a collection of twelve essays by editor, biographer, bibliographer, and book historian James L. W. West III. In these essays, West sets forth his views of editorial theory, archival use, textual emendation, and scholarly annotation. He has published editions of major writings by Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Styron. Drawing on these editions for examples, West defends intentionalist editing and the eclectic emendation of texts. He discusses the treatment of both public documents (novels, stories, and nonfiction) and private texts (letters, diaries, journals, and working papers). Highlights of the collection include “The Scholarly Editor as Biographer,” “Editorial Theory and the Act of Submission,” “Double Quotes and Double Meanings in Jennie Gerhardt,” “Annotating Mr. Fitzgerald,” and “The End Is Near.” Two of the essays, “Toxic Words and the Editor” and “Keeper of the Flame: Editing the Literary Remains of William Styron,” are previously unpublished.
James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University and general editor of Penn State Studies in the History of the Book. He has published some twenty scholarly editions—among them editions of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and Trimalchio; and William Styron’s Inheritance of Night and Letters to My Father. West’s books include American Authors and the Literary Marketplace Since 1900 (1988), William Styron: A Life (1998), and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005). He has been awarded fellowships and grants from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy in Rome. West has held Fulbright appointments in England at Cambridge University and in Belgium at the Université de Liège.