Editing in an Electronic World: The Lyrical Ballads Project

The speed and storage capacity of today’s networked computers make possible the representation of literary texts in every stage of their development. Traditional editorial method that strives toward a single perfected text is called into question once information technology enables us to put “version theory” into practice. Seeing the text as a series of events rather than a stable thing, however, brings with it new challenges and revives old controversies. Experience in creating an electronic edition both demonstrates that issues of authorial intention and editorial intervention stubbornly reassert themselves and calls on us to reinvent conventions of the print medium, a process that inevitably entails a re-evaluation of familiar metaphors describing the book and reading.