J. H. Alexander

Editing the Waverley Novels

Everybody concerned with British Romantic studies will be aware of the major editorial endeavours, completed or in progress, of the last two decades. In poetry, for example, there have been, or are in the process of coming into being, the Cornell Wordsworth, McGann’s Oxford Byron, Stillinger’s Keats, and Robinson and Powell’s Oxford Clares; and the letters and journals of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Keats have been more or less thoroughly edited. The major fiction of the period has been less intensively investigated, though Chapman’s Oxford Jane Austen was an early landmark. Pioneering local forays have been made by Douglas Mack in particular, with his editions of individual Hogg works, and by Claire Lamont with her Oxford Waverley. The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels (EEWN) draws inspiration from these enterprises and forays. This is not the place to trace in detail the history of the edition to date: sufficient to note that discussions began in 1982, serious textual investigation got under way in 1984, and the major textual policy decisions were made at the beginning of 1987. The first batch of novels (a chronologically representative selection) will appear in 1992. Two or three novels will appear each year thereafter, and the project will be completed by the end of the century.