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For questions about the history of the manuscripts, printed texts, or orally transmitted versions of a single work; or when and where a work was first published; or specific features of one or more editions; or how editors establish an accurate or authoritative text, etc. Not to be confused with the [publishing] tag, which is about publishing practices generally, or the [historical-context] tag, which is about relevant background information.

27 votes

In which version of "Snow White" is her name really "Lips Red as Blood, Hair Black as Ebony,...

Here’s the start of the story ‘Sneewittchen’ as given by the brothers Grimm: Es war einmal mitten im Winter und die Schneeflocken fielen wie Federn vom Himmel, da saß eine schöne Königin an einem Fen …
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15 votes
Accepted

What words sung by Gloria Gaynor correspond to the line written in the lyrics of I Will Surv...

Gloria Gaynor recorded two versions of ‘I Will Survive’. The original 1978 version has the lyric “It took all the strength I had not to fall apart” that is quoted on many lyrics sites. But in the earl …
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3 votes

Have any Middleton manuscripts other than A Game at Chess survived?

The work has been done for us by the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700! All we have to do is go to the author page for Thomas Middleton and search for “autograph” and “Middleton’s ha …
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4 votes
Accepted

When was each article of Avowals and Denials written?

Yes, this is straightforward (if somewhat tedious). Avowals and Denials begins with a note: The essays of which this book is composed are reprinted, often with slight alterations, from the Illustr …
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5 votes

Gagool, Gagoola, or Gagaoola?

The name “Gagaoola” appears in Haggard’s Cetywayo and his White Neighbours (1882), a journalistic account of the Anglo–Zulu War of 1879 and the First Boer War of 1880–1881. Appendix III describes a ca …
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4 votes

Why do I have a different version of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"?

It is impossible for us to say how come you have a different version—we’d have to know how you learned the poem, which you didn’t tell us, and you likely don’t remember. But we can investigate the gen …
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10 votes
Accepted

How does the editor know that seven lines are missing from Wordsworth's Home at Grasmere?

TL;DR: Line numbers in the margin of manuscript A indicate that the missing page 9r in manuscript B had 24 lines, of which 17 can be restored from manuscript A, meaning that 7 are missing. Manuscript …
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4 votes
Accepted

What's the first appearance of the rhyme about "He died defending his right of way"?

The poem is ‘An Epitaph’ by Edgar A. Guest, first published in the Detroit Free Press on 1st October 1916 in Guest’s ‘Breakfast Table Chat’ column. An Epitaph. Here lies the body     Of William Jay, …
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7 votes

How many Elizabethan or Jacobean manuscripts of Shakespeare sonnets have come down to us?

The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 (CELM) has a list of manuscripts of Shakespeare sonnets: 1 (‘From fairest creatures we desire increase’) — c.1650s 2 (‘When forty winters shall …
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5 votes

How many manuscripts of English Renaissance plays have survived?

The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 (CELM) has a comprehensive list of manuscripts from the period of interest. I sampled some of the authors and I estimate that the catalogue incl …
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12 votes

In "It", was Derry, Maine said to be named after Derry or Londonderry?

The Internet Archive has three editions of It, spanning more than 30 years: November 1986, New York: Viking September 1987, New York: Signet July 2017, New York: Scribner All three have the same tex …
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13 votes
Accepted

Why are so many Agatha Christie novels published with multiple titles?

This is because Christie was published in both the United States and the United Kingdom. These are the two largest markets for English-language books, and in the mid-20th century when Christie was wri …
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4 votes
Accepted

The text of Wordsworth's "To Toussaint L'Ouverture"

I found four versions of these lines published by Wordsworth in his lifetime. We can be reasonably confident that these are the poet’s own revisions. Toussaint! the most unhappy Man of Men, Whether t …
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6 votes
Accepted

Why is the 1820 Indicator version of La Belle Dame Sans Merci seen as more "politically corr...

Fry relies on McGann, so in this answer I’m going to summarize McGann’s argument. McGann starts with the observation that a commonly accepted editorial principle is that the editor should try to recov …
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11 votes
Accepted

Which short stories are falsely attributed to Guy de Maupassant, and why?

The ‘which’ and ‘where’ parts of the question were answered by Maupassant’s biographer Francis Steegmuller: A smart American publisher and bookseller named M. Walter Dunne, whose specialty was large …
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