Questions tagged [textual-history]
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.
142 questions
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What are the other numbers in the number line there for?
I was watching a guide on number lines.
Given a number line like this:
0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The printing of the book is the lowest non-zero number. So this is a first printing.
My question is: what ...
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Missing passage in "Brideshead Revisited"
Spurred by this question I have been rereading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, specifically the Boston: Little, Brown (1945) edition. I could have sworn that when Charles and Sebastian visit ...
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Scholarly explanation of Kabir's hiranā samajh būjh ban caranā
tl;dr
While there are plenty of interpretations of hīranā, samajha būjha bana caranā on the web, I'm hoping for an analysis backed by scholarly evidence.
Deets
A well-known poem attributed to the 15th ...
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What changes did Tom Stoppard make to Travesties and why?
Tom Stoppard's Travesties was originally performed at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in 1974 by the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1993, the same company revived the play at the Barbican. The 1996 ...
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Why does Kolatkar's "Collected Poems" leave out some of his translations of other poets?
The bilingual Arun Kolatkar wrote in English as well as Marathi, translating his own work freely between the two—sometimes even simultaneously creating versions of a single poem in both languages. In ...
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What specific changes did Damian McNicholl make to A Son Called Gabriel?
Damian McNicholl's debut novel, A Son Called Gabriel, is about the coming of age of a gay Catholic boy in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The book was first published in 2004 and republished ...
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Marathi version of Kolatkar's Jejuri?
In the Editor's Note to Kolatkar's Collected Poems, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra writes:
Jejuri was first published by a small co-operative, Clearing House, of which he was a part, and thereafter it was ...
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Why did the Joyce estate withhold permission to publish John Kidd's edition of Ulysses?
The text of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) is notoriously problematic. For example, Random House published two editions, one in 1934 and another in 1961. The copytext for the former was a pirated 1929 ...
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Why is the First Edition date in the future?
In the copyright page of the book The Folly of Realism by Alexander Vindman, I found the following information:
ISBN 978-1-5417-0504-3
First Edition: June 2025
How is it possible that the First ...
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Why was "The Foreman" left out of Green Thursday?
Spoiler alert. This question reveals important plot elements of Green Thursday and "The Foreman."
Julia Peterkin's Green Thursday ends with "Plum Blossoms," a short story that ...
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Which is right, “ever dreams of” or “dreams of ever”, in Byron’s ‘Don Juan’?
In the first (1821) publication of canto 5 of Byron’s Don Juan, stanza 48 reads:
Some talk of an appeal unto some passion,
Some to men’s feelings, others to their reason;
The last of these was ...
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Which is right, “inmittens” or “inmites”, in Propertius’ “Elegies”?
In the introduction to his edition of Juvenal’s Satires, A. E. Housman wrote:
The task of editing the classics is continually attempted by scholars who have neither enough intellect nor enough ...
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What are the differences between the various versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
A 1959 conversation between Tennessee Williams and Yukio Mishima includes the following:
YM: By the way, Tennessee, with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof you made a rewritten version incorporating Elia Kazan's ...
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Was Ambrose Bierce's "A Dissertation on Dogs" ever published as "Concerning Dogs"?
From S. S. Van Dine's novel The Kennel Murder Case (which is available to read online):
"[...] I once had to sit for half an hour listening to Brisbane read aloud Ambrose Bierce's libelous ...
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What is the provenance of "A fox jumped up one winter's night"?
As a child, I used to love the following nursery rhyme:
A fox jumped up one winter’s night,
And thanked the moon for her bright light,
For he’d many miles to trot that night
Before he reached his den ...
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