From the Mast-Head

At the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) panel in Austin, Texas, during the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association last January, John Bryant was presented with the CELJ’s 2015 Distinguished Editor Award. We at Leviathan and in the Melville Society celebrate this much-deserved tribute to the journal’s founding editor. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, in her “All Astir” column for this issue, provides details about the event and prints the remarks that John delivered at the CELJ panel.

For 25 years, John was the Editor of the Melville Society, responsible for all of its publications. He not only founded Leviathan but served for 15 years as its first editor. Before that, he edited Extracts, the Society’s newsletter, which was folded into the journal. At the helm of Leviathan, John ensured a fair and effective peer review process, superb content, excellence in journal design, and accuracy in copy-editing. He appointed and trained an Associate Editor (first Wyn Kelley and then yours truly), who assisted with general editing and special projects, and he supervised guest editors, who put together issues on special topics. During those 15 years, John read every contribution to the journal. The phrase “copy-editing” does not begin to convey the quality of his attention to argument and evidence. Leviathan was his creation, and the journal reflected, and continues to reflect, his capacious intellectual interests and high standards.

John writes thoughtfully about his vision of an editor as both collaborator and teacher in his essay “Editing Is Learning” (Profession 2009), and he tells the story of how he developed Leviathan in three “From the Mast-Head” columns published in volume 15 (2013) of the journal. What began as an author society newsletter has now become an influential journal published by a leading university press in the humanities.

John’s work on Leviathan is—and I write “is,” rather than “was,” because he continues to participate as a Consulting Editor and as a member of the journal’s Advisory Board—part of his career-long dedication to issues of textuality. That commitment includes creating print and digital editions of Melville’s works (prominently a 1996 Penguin edition of Typee, a 2006 digital edition of Typee for Rotunda/Virginia, and the NEH-funded Melville Electronic Library, in progress); criticism based on his textual scholarship (Melville Unfolding: Sexuality, Politics, and the Versions of Typee in 2008); and reflection on editing and the creative process (The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision and Editing for Book and Screen in 2002).

I know from many scholars, young and old, who have published in the journal—and I know from my own experience—the benefits of John’s editorial regard and professional generosity. I join the other Leviathan editors—Brian Yothers, Dawn Coleman, Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, and former Associate Editor Wyn Kelley—and the CELJ judges in honoring John’s splendid record. If there ever was a Distinguished Editor, certainly it is John Bryant.