The Trouble with Dreiser: Harper and the Editing of Jennie Gerhar ...

to make any critical decisions about editorial or authorial cuts and emendations. Instead, its purpose is “to present a faithful version of a single document, with only minimal textual involvement by the [textual] editor” (Greetham 349). The most “faithful” of the non-critical editions is the facsimile, which is normally used for manuscripts or other documents that “have some specific interest in themselves, either textual or codicological” (349). A facsimile would, for instance, be ideal for studying not only the text but authorial comments written in margins, handwriting style, erasure marks, font and type size, margin size, and other idiosyncrasies of an original manuscript or printed edition. A less “faithful” non-critical approach is the “diplomatic method” or a variation of it. This method does not attempt to photographically re-create a document, but simply to reproduce its text (350). With the exception of perhaps normalizing spelling, punctuation, and usage, the objective of this method is to publish a faithful version of one manuscript, usually the last one the author himself produced or a first edition. The assumption is that an author submits his/her work to an editor ready for publication, and so any editorial changes, with the exception of accidentals, are not in the best interest of the work of art. It is this text that the editor hopes will become the “authoritative” text.

An additional method of textual restoration introduced more recently involves the study of all extant manuscripts and/or editions as a type of unit, emphasizing the process of creating a text rather than the product of the text itself. In this sense, no one text is given priority or “authority” over another. Instead, the focus is on the development of a particular work of art from manuscript to first edition, to second edition, and so on. As Pizer explains: “it is neither the holograph nor the typescript nor the first edition which is of principal interest, but rather the process by which the holograph became the first edition” (Pizer, “Text” 45). In addition to the various texts, the editor provides the reader with indexes listing the cuts and emendations made to each edition. The reader, therefore, has all the tools necessary to make critical decisions about the work's development and the necessity of editorial alterations in any one edition. In the end, the reader can construct his/her own text.