Hidden in Plain Sight: Editing and (Not) Canonizing Early Modern Women's Writing

This essay explores some of the recent history of how early modern women's writing was edited. The process of recovering and analyzing that writing, in all its heterogeneity, has gone hand in hand with innovative approaches to editing. I explore a series of recent editorial developments that address three fundamental aspects of the positioning of early modern women's writing in relation to current debates about the nature of texts and textuality: the return of the authoritative complete edition, a revitalization of teaching editions, and new approaches to digital editing. What is at stake when we attempt to understand early modern women's writing, and how does editing contribute to that understanding? To illustrate this I look very briefly at the example of Katherine Austen's reflections on the Plague in her Book M.