| dc.description.abstract | This critical text of Samuel Butler's Hudibras was prepared according to the editorial precepts of Fredson Bowers. Since there is no manuscript of the poem, which would have paramount authority, the determination of text required an investigation of the filiation of the early volumes and the identification of the authoritative texts by a collation of the fourteen editions published during the author's lifetime and in the nine years following his death. W. W. Greg's theory of copy-text, advocated by Bowers, was employed in distinguishing between the authority of the substantives (the words as meaningful units) and of the accidentals (the forms the words take in respect to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and italicizing): If only the first edition, set from manuscript, has authority as being the closest in each of these two respects to the author's lost manuscript, then both authorities are combined in one edition. On the other hand, a revised edition may alter the authority of some of the substantives, but the transmission of the author's accidentals through the hands and mind of yet another compositor destroys the authority of these features of the revised edition. In such a case an eclectic text must be constructed which combines the superior authority of most of the words in the revised edition with the superiority of the forms of the words in the first edition. Since the 1674 edition of the first two parts of Hudibras is an authoritative revised edition, this text is eclectic. Although it does not agree with any existing manuscript or book, it is intended to represent the nearest possible approximation in every respect of the author's final intention. Variant readings were noted and are included so that the reader may see the range of editorial choice. In addition, although no manuscript of the poem exists, two manuscripts from the British Museum, one of which is Butler's commonplace book, were examined, Lines similar or identical to those already in Hudibras were collated and are recorded as variant readings, and others believed to be intended for a second revised edition are added in editorial brackets to the text. Also included are textual notes, which explain emendations or decisions not to emend. In addition, there is a descriptive bibliography of the manuscripts and the fourteen seventeenth-century editions used in establishing the text of the poem. | |
