Editor's Note

When you can see inland for centuries up top.

—Paul Lindholdt

I've long found doubling a source of inspiration: Sarah Pierpont Edwards's spiritual autobiography with husband Jonathan's rewrite for public consumption; Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence against the redacted version approved by Congress. This issue presents several opportunities to explore linked documents in tandem. After reading previously unpublished poems by professor, essayist, and 2018 "River Hero" Paul Lindholdt in this issue's "Inventions" (xx), one might consider O. Alan Weltzien's assessment of the poet's recent collection, Making Land-fall (xx). Laura Mielke reviews Sarah Chinn and Richard Pressman's edited collection of early American plays (xx); Sarah Chinn, in turn, reviews Odai Johnson's recent monograph on Revolutionary-era theater (xx). The University of Manchester's Helen Kilburn and Fordham University's Melissa Morales perform a hermeneutic doubling in their collaborative review of the conference "Transnational Conversations: New and Emerging Approaches to Early American Studies" (xx). Finally, Uppsala University's Michael Boyden, guest editor of this special issue on "The New Natural History," contributes an essay to the entity he has envisioned in its totality.

Early American Literature owes Professor Boyden a debt of gratitude for the skill and dedication that brought him from a conference panel to the finished product you see before you. As he spells out in his introduction to this collection of five essays by emerging scholars, "The New Natural History"'s primary goal is to bring together what some of today's most promising early Americanists have to say about the signature "critical intellectual movement" of the long eighteenth century (Greta LaFleur, The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America 22). These innovative articles not only reanimate a once-prominent discourse in all its ambivalent power but in the process create a "new natural." Whether by placing familiar names in unfamiliar contexts or by orienting readers around a substance, author, or text they had not previously considered, the contributors to this special issue implicitly reckon with how past centuries presaged a nationalist complacency that now buries coasts, starves populations, and may well facilitate the extinction of our planet.

If the seriousness of the above has left you approaching hopeless, I recommend turning to Paul Lewis's contribution to our "Provocations" series (xx). With all the humor one might expect from an essay called "Teaching the Terrible," Lewis recommends finding a place on your syllabus for the occasional bad book—or in this case, atrocious play.

I'd like to conclude by expressing my gratitude to the members of our editorial team for whom this issue is their last. While there remain countless examples of why outgoing undergraduate editorial assistant Nathaniel Cortas should be the envy of any employer, two will have to suffice: while traveling through Europe last summer, he successfully distributed proofs to an entire issue's worth of authors—from an iPhone; and he invented the Early American Literature podcast series whole cloth. (You can find all our podcasts at soundcloud.com/early-american-literature.) As for our outgoing interim review editor, my University of Kentucky colleague Michelle Sizemore: EAL volume 54 owes more than she knows to her brilliance, initiative, resolve, leadership, and counsel.

Did you know that copyeditor can be one word? Neither did I until I met Robert Milks, who with this issue steps down as Editorial Associate of Early American Literature after ten years of dedicated service to this journal and more than forty years working in writing and editing. Anyone who has contributed to EAL knows what an honor it is to work with Bob. He is as tolerant of human fallibility as he is exacting when it comes to linguistic precision and consistency. Our prior editor, Sandra Gustafson, joins me in thanking him for his essential contributions—and friendship—over the past decade.

With so many departures, the journal will have new colleagues to introduce beginning with our next issue. One individual, however, has already begun playing a key role: Erin Fitzpatrick, who succeeds Nate Cortas as our undergraduate editorial assistant. Erin holds a prestigious Gaines Center Fellowship at the University of Kentucky...