Introduction xi

Ultimately, it is fair to conclude that the edition provides an extensive, though not exhaustive, collection of libels and related material. The texts are drawn from research in over twenty major research libraries and records offices, mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Within these archives, research was guided partly by available catalogues and first-line indices, and partly by the previous research of other scholars. No known source of any significance has been overlooked, and many new sources have been identified. Nonetheless, while there is good reason to believe that the edition has identified and collected the majority of libels extant in manuscript collections, there is also reason to believe that other poems remain to be identified. Since the cataloguing in some archives is far from complete, it is likely that further discoveries will be made as more resources become available.

b) conventional editorial practice

The editorial practice does not conform to what are generally accepted as the requirements of a “scholarly” edition of poetry. Typically, the editors of such volumes will seek all available sources for individual poems, and will produce a text by comparing these sources and identifying that which best represents the final intention of the author. Further, a scholarly edition will collate extant texts, and identify variations. By comparison, this edition reproduces one sound version of every known libel, and does not depart in any way from the selected version unless there is a special reason for doing so. In most cases, more than one version has been consulted, and a choice of a copy-text has been made on grounds of clarity and (if it is possible to judge) quality. In all cases, the text of a poem is accompanied by a list of other known sources, so that readers with particular interests may independently pursue further research into variants.