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Results tagged with textual-history
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user 3003
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 …
- 63.9k
17
votes
Accepted
When and why did "No man is an island" start being regarded as a poem?
Independent versifications
The versification of this passage from Donne predates the widespread use of the Internet, as you’ll see from the earliest examples below. Moreover, it looks as though multip …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
10
votes
Why was Pygmalion retitled to My Fair Lady?
The title of the musical is discussed by Alan Jay Lerner (the librettist) in two passages in his 1978 memoir The Street Where I Live. Lerner gives no indication that anyone involved with the musical e …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Why was Far from the Madding Crowd first published anonymously?
It was the policy of Cornhill Magazine to publish all articles and serializations without a byline, so Hardy surely had no choice in the matter. If you look at volume 29 (January–June 1874), you’ll se …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
5
votes
Accepted
How does "handwriting" provide evidence for dating Beowulf's composition to "the first half ...
The history of a Wikipedia article can be investigated using the ‘wikiblame’ tool. This shows that the gloss “(handwriting)” for “palaeographical” was added, along with a couple of other glosses, in t …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k
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 …
- 63.9k