Why Do Authors Produce Textual Variation on Purpose? Or, Why Publish a Text That Is Still Unfolding?

Post-publication revision causes problems for both an Anglo-American editorial tradition and genetic critics. Discussion of variance in Shakespeare, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath shows that publication is only as much of an event as an author makes it. It need not entail a neat breach between genesis and transmission. Using Wittgenstein’s notion of “seeing as”, I propose that “in process” (still being composed) and “finished” (ready for transmission) are aspects of textual apprehension rather than descriptions of any individual documentary stage. Publishing a genetic dossier fixes its contour, just as post-publication revision unfixes a circulating work