Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts: a critical edition in four volumes

作为英国文学史上最著名的作家之一，简·奥斯汀的小说手稿是无价的。自1845年她的姐姐卡桑德拉去世后，这些作品就被分散在各地，先是在家庭成员中，后来在世界各地的图书馆、博物馆和私人收藏中。在AHRC资源增强计划的慷慨支持下创建的数字版为这位主要作家提供了一个新的资源：手稿小说的每一页的图像和其内容的完全可搜索的transmittance。数字版的真实的公共利益是，奥斯汀的小说手稿现在可以在网上免费提供给世界各地希望查阅或欣赏它们的人。数字版是一个更雄心勃勃的项目的第一部分，该项目旨在将完整的传真图像和transmittance（来自数字版）结合起来，对奥斯汀的工作实践进行细致的研究。这项新的研究将最终在四卷印刷版简奥斯汀的小说手稿，将由牛津大学出版社出版。新的内容将是：介绍追溯个人手稿作品的起源，它们与奥斯汀的印刷生涯的关系，它们的出版历史和批评接受;关于手稿特征的短文（“写作与修改”;“写作笔记”;“简·奥斯汀的收集”;“简·奥斯汀的阅读”;“标点符号”;“手稿页的动态”;“简·奥斯汀以外的手”）;完整的文本关键设备和文本注释为每个手稿。总的来说，大约50，000字的新材料将被添加到图像和图像中。我将进一步巩固数字和印刷形式的版本之间的关系，在两篇关于它们的概念和实践关系的文章中，将在学术期刊上发表。虽然以前的研究存在（特别是布赖恩苏瑟姆的开创性简奥斯汀的文学手稿（1964年;修订版，2001年）），系统的检查已经阻碍了手稿本身的相对难以接近和反复的不一致的编辑实践中处理他们。现在我们有了高质量的图像，这些图像具有一致的和深刻的编码外交transanimation，有可能对手稿小说的组成特征进行第一次全面的比较学术分析，创建一个全面的文本批评装置，并绘制奥斯汀作为一个作家的工作方法：个人作品的创造性发展，以及对她整个职业生涯的实践的比较理解。这项新研究将在印刷版中发表。两者结合，独特的数字和印刷组件将创建一个强大的混合版本：部分文本实验室和部分权威，稳定的参考来源。很明显，对奥斯汀来说，作品的表面和写作行为之间有着至关重要的联系。对印刷版的进一步研究将证实手稿编辑的定义，即对对象（商店购买的笔记本或自制的纸张收集）以及书面文本的编辑。它将解决这样的问题：我们如何将手稿的形式特征（来自纸张的信息，它的质量，形状和大小，来自墨水，以及页面上的文字布置）纳入我们对文本意义的理解？作者在手稿和印刷品中的出现有什么不同，手稿证据作为事件和表面（编码时间和空间的物体）的集合，如何调整我们对作者实践的理解？我将利用数字版中的视觉和可搜索证据来完成大部分工作。进一步的研究将进行在摩根图书馆和博物馆，纽约，国王学院，剑桥，并在大英图书馆，伦敦举行的主要奥斯汀材料。

As a record of the creative mind of one of English Literature's most famous writers, Jane Austen's fiction manuscripts are priceless. Since 1845 when her sister Cassandra died, they have been scattered, first among family members, and subsequently in libraries, museums, and private collections around the world. A digital edition, created with the generous support of the AHRC Resource Enhancement Scheme, has made accessible a new resource for this major writer: images of every page of the manuscript fiction and fully searchable transcriptions of their contents. The real public benefit of the digital edition is that Austen's fiction manuscripts are now freely available online for anyone worldwide wishing to consult or enjoy them. The digital edition was the first part of a more ambitious project that aims to incorporate alongside full facsimile images and transcriptions (derived from the digital edition) a close-grained study of Austen's working practices. This new research will culminate in a four-volume print edition of Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts, to be published by Oxford University Press. New elements will be: an introduction tracing the genesis of the individual manuscript writings, their relationship to Austen's print career, their publication history and critical reception; short essays on features of the manuscripts ('Composition and Revision'; 'Writing Habits'; 'Jane Austen's Gatherings'; 'Jane Austen's Reading'; 'Punctuation'; 'The Dynamics of the Manuscript Page'; 'Hands other than Jane Austen's'); full textual critical apparatus and textual annotations for each manuscript. In total, around 50,000 words of new material will be added to the images and transcriptions. I will further consolidate the relationship between digital and print forms of the edition in two essays on their conceptual and practical relationship, to be published in scholarly journals. Though previous studies exist (notably Brian Southam's pioneering Jane Austen's Literary Manuscripts (1964; revised edition, 2001)), systematic examination has been hampered by the relative inaccessibility of the manuscripts themselves and by repeated inconsistencies in editorial practices in dealing with them. Now that we have high quality images with consistently and deeply encoded diplomatic transcriptions, it is possible to develop the first fully comparative scholarly analysis of the compositional features of the manuscript fiction, to create a comprehensive textual critical apparatus, and to map Austen's working methods as a writer: the creative development of individual works, and the comparative understanding of her practices across her career. This new research will be presented in the print edition. Taken together, the distinct digital and print components will create a powerful hybrid edition: part textual laboratory and part authoritative, stable reference source. It is already clear that for Austen there was a vital link between composition surface and the act of writing. Further research for the print edition will substantiate a definition of manuscript editing as the editing of an object (shop-bought notebook or homemade paper gathering) as well as its written text. It will address such questions as: how might we incorporate the formal features of manuscript (information from paper, its quality, shape and size, from ink, and the disposition of words on the page) into our understanding of the meaning of texts? what are the differences between an author's appearance in manuscript and in print, and how might manuscript evidence, as a collection of events and surfaces (objects that encode time as well as space), adjust our understanding of authorial practice?I will draw on the visual and searchable evidence within the digital edition for much of this work. Further research will be undertaken on primary Austen materials held in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, in King's College, Cambridge, and in the British Library, London.