Critical Issues in Editing Exploration Texts

Barry M. Gough is a professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University
and author of The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and
Discoveries to 1812.

Eight papers given at the 28th annual Conference on Editorial Problems,
held at the University of Toronto in 1992, are contained in this book of
proceedings. The papers universally deal with a cultural problem of
exploration: how explorers relate their experiences and how exploration
writing reflects national epic or scientific inquiry. Additional focus
is given to cultural analysis, editorial procedures, literary genres,
and cultural appropriation. The editor purposefully avoids any systemic
summary of the chapters, leaving individual authors to speak for
themselves. D. Henige writes about problems of editing Columbian
writings; L. Formisano, D.B. Quinn, and A. Quinn similarly look at
Italian and English exploration. I.S. MacLaren follows with an analysis
of Paul Kane. H. Wallis and J. Lockart conclude with papers on the great
publication societies and on editing the Florentine Codex. This work
will be of particular value to specialists already familiar with the
nuances of an important, technical scholarly matter—the editing of
exploration texts.