A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton : A Progress Report

Conceived as a six-volume project, A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, thus far, includes three published volumes and three projected volumes. The three volumes published by Columbia University Press between 1970–75 are on the Latin, Greek, and Italian poems (volume 1), the minor English poems (volume 2), and Paradise Regained (volume 4). The projected volumes are on Paradise Lost (volume 3), Samson Agonistes (volume 5), and Milton’s English prosody (volume 6).

Since the publication of the first three volumes, whose editors are deceased, John M. Steadman and Edward Weismiller have continued to work on the project. They acquired from the late Merritt Y. Hughes some notes for an introduction to Paradise Lost; from the late William Riley Parker they ac quired a 200-page introduction, which needs to be updated, to Samson Agonistes. From Hughes and Parker they received thousands of pages of notes on the epic and the dramatic poem, covering significant scholarship and critical commentary after Thomas Newton’s mid-eighteenth century variorum editions to approximately 1970. Steadman and Weismiller have organized the work of their deceased colleagues and supplemented it in numerous ways: (1) by verifying and correcting, where necessary, the information that they received, (2) by adding notes and commentary from important and influential works not covered, (3) by compiling bibliographies of titles of other works from which notes and commentary should be derived, (4) by proposing additional topics to be included and discussed in the introduction to the dramatic poem and (5) by outlining in detail an introduction to the epic. Since the deaths of Hughes and Parker almost thirty years ago, Steadman has done almost all of the work on the project, especially on Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, while Weismiller has concentrated on Milton’s English prosody and verse by identifying and synopsizing commentary on these topics and also by developing his own original, comprehensive, and systematic analysis.

Recently, however, Steadman has requested assistance in advancing the project toward completion. He and Weismiller have agreed to continue as senior editors and consultants on the project, Albert C. Labriola will serve as the general editor, and Paul J. Klemp as the associate general editor. Working with Labriola and Klemp are several contributing editors, some on Paradise Lost, others on Samson Agonistes. The editors at work on the epic are Gardner Campbell, Claudia Champagne, Cheryl Fresch, Edward Jones, Dennis Kezar, Jameela Lares, John Leonard, John Mulryan, Stella Revard, and Louis Schwartz. The editors working on the dramatic poem are Archie Burnett, Stephen B. Dobranski, and John C. Ulreich.

Work on the project will progress in three stages. First, all of the materials by Hughes, Parker, Steadman, and Weismiller will be transposed from handwritten and typed records to computer files. Thereafter, this information will be verified for completeness and accuracy. Second, computer files with these materials will be turned over to the contributing editors who will supplement them by pursuing further lines of inquiry proposed by Steadman and by including other scholarship and commentary that they, along with the general and associate general editors, deem significant. By these processes, the introductions to the volumes on Paradise Lost and SamsonAgonistes and the commentary on the epic and dramatic poem will include coverage through 1970, so that these volumes will be published with approximately the same terminus ad quem as the three volumes already in print. At the same time, Weismiller will complete his work on prosody and verse, some of which will be incorporated in the volumes on Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, but most of which, notably the original analysis, will comprise volume 6 of the project. Third, the entire project then will be updated with the publication of additional volumes not only on the epic and the dramatic poem but on the other poems as well, so that Variorum coverage for all of the poetry will be extended from 1970 to approximately 2000. Though the thirty-year span of coverage in these later volumes will be less than that in the earlier volumes, the amount of scholarship and critical commentary since 1970...