Editing Historical Documents: A Handbook of Practice
By (Author) Michael E. Stevens
By (author) Steven B. Burg
AltaMira Press
AltaMira Press
2nd October 1997
United States
General
Non Fiction
History
808.027
Paperback
264
Width 153mm, Height 229mm, Spine 17mm
426g
This volume is aimed both at more experienced editors, who may wish to skip over the advice offered in the introduction, as well as at those who are new to the craft and want to know how to begin work on publishing historical documents of interest to them.
Historical editors have long wanted a reliable handbook that would provide easy access to the innumerable issues and practices that they daily deal with in their profession. Editing Historical Documents provides a wonderfully diverse examples of current documentary practice with full citations to the sources used as examples. With an emphasis on the descriptive rather than the prescriptive, this guide shows the range of options available to editors as they make the choices that will affect their editions and determine the policies and styles for the best possible rendering of their documentary collections. The handbook couples a lively, clearly written narrative of theory and practice with a selection of concrete examples drawn from the wisdom of generations of historical editors. The handbook is logically arranged and is readily accessible to the novice as well as the experienced documentary editor. -- John P. Kaminski, Association for Documentary Editing
Michael E. Stevens and Steven B. Burg are both at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.