A few words on editorial policy

The choice of editions has been made under the guidance of the Editorial Board. No one single approach to the whole corpus has been possible, but the general policy has been to select the more reliable early and, where appropriate, collected editions.

Certain categories of material have as a general rule been excluded from the database:

Please note that the emphasis of the database is on the actual text of the poems rather than on textural apparatus and front matter, which are generally omitted. A poet's own notes, however, are generally included.

When material from a work is omitted for any of the above reasons the omission is noted in the relevant bibliographic entry (see p. 8-11).

----------------------------

The selection of editions

The following are the basic principles that are used to guide the selection of editions for use in the English Poetry Full-Text Database:

General principles

  1. The edition(s) should encompass the poet's recognized canon. Every attempt is made to acheive this end.

    The aim is to provide a text that will meet most users' expectations with regard to a particular poet's work. We will not be able to guarantee a definitive collection but we will aim for completeness.

  2. If available, collected editions meeting the above principle will be used so that there is a uniformity in the presentatio of a particular poet's work.

    The editorial principles followed in different editions may mean that a poem captured from one source will appear to be structured differently from the same poem taken from a second source. Using a collected edition with a consistent style helps to ensure consistency for a particular poet.

  3. When practicable, editions contemporary with their authors will be used.

    For most poets in the database contemporary editions are the only ones available. Using contemporary editions helps bring a degree of editorial consistency to what must necessarily be a heterogeneous collection. Contemporary editions, however, cannot and will not be rigidly chosen. In particular the principle of contemporaneity will not be followed if the contemporary text does not present the poet's canon in a form that is recognizable to present readers.

  4. Editions in copyright will be considered for inclusion if rights are available.

    For some items we will have no choice but to try to secure rights from copyright holders. In some cases the editorial apparatus may be in copyright while the text proper is not. If the preferred edition is in copyright we will try to acquire the rights. Some attention will be paid to the degree of preference for the copyright edition since texts in the database whose copyright is held by a third party may have to have certain restrictions imposed on their use.

  5. Modernized editions are avoided if possible.

    For some poets, there is no possibility of using a text that has not been amended to some degree by later transmitters of the original. Generally, though, we will not use a modernized text when an alternative is available.

  6. Relevant notes and supplementary materials by the poet will generally be included but notes or other apparatus added by later editors will be omitted.

    The database does not aim to provide a definitive collection of the poetry of poets covered nor to establish authoritative texts for those poems. These tasks are in the domain of the critical edition, where scholarly attention can be focused on the minutiae of particular works. We seek no more than to provide editions that are respected and are useful within the context of the entire database. The value of the database will not lie in the detail it can provide about a particular poet's variants but in the whole new level of access opened up to the great bulk of English poetry.