Documentary Editing: A Bibliography

Documentary editing has achieved unprecedented importance in American historical scholarship since the publication in 1950 of the first volume of Julian P. Boyd\u27s edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Thanks to the support of state and federal government, foundations, and universities and to the labors of a generation of editors, scores of letterpress and microfilm editions have been completed or are in progress. These editions are noteworthy for their comprehensiveness and high standards of scholarship as well as for their cost. The rapid expansion of documentary editing has been accompanied by the appearance of an extensive literature on all phases of editing, including its history and current state, practitioners, methods, funding, objectives, priorities, and role within the profession. The following bibliography provides a comprehensive listing of this literature but excludes three kinds of material. First, such items as mimeographed guidelines and progress reports from editorial projects, although sometimes available at libraries associated with individual projects, are generally difficult to locate and hence have not been included. Second, many letterpress editions contain useful introductions, but these are so much a part of such editions that they can be safely omitted. Third, book reviews have been excluded