Variants is the annual, peer-reviewed journal of The European Society for Textual Scholarship.
- The current issue is Variants 8 (2011) Private: do (not) enter: Textual Scholarship and Personal Writings, is guest-edited by João Dionísio (University of Lisbon) and contains a selection of the papers from the 2008 conference. Until recently, writings of a private nature have been neglected in literary and textual studies. There are two main reasons for this: the scarcity of pre-modern witnesses of this type of textual production and, in contrast, the over-abundance of material in contemporary writers' archives. Although in more recent times, there has been a marked shift towards the study of private and personal writings, important issues remain to be studied. In the light of genetic criticism and in the context of the broadening attention of textual scholarship to all matters relating to textual production, these texts have acquired a new status, but the legal, philological and historical questions they raise have not been systematically addressed. The new interest of textual scholarship in the processes of creation and dissemination of texts offers an opportunity to reflect more thoroughly on the nature of these documents: on the role they play as witnesses to specific literary or para-literary genres (e.g. letters, diaries), on their significance in circumstances of political repression, and as part of the textual genetic process. This collection of essays includes articles that deal, through heterogeneous approaches, with different aspects of Dutch, English, French, Lithuanian, Portuguese and Spanish written cultures. Non-members can purchase a copy from Rodopi.and 9 are currently in preparation.
- Variants 9, which contains the papers from the "Texts beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship" conference in 2009 at the Academy for Science and the Arts (KVAB) in Brussels (Belgium), is in press.
- The inaugural issue, edited by H.T.M. Van Vliet and P.M.W. Robinson, was published by Brepols (Turnhout, Belgium) in 2002.
- Variants 2/3 (2003) was edited by Dirk Van Hulle and Wim Van Mierlo and published by Rodopi.
- For Variants 4, published in 2005. For information and contents, see the cover and table of contents, and selected pages from articles by George Bornstein, Jerome McGann, Geert Lernout, Paul Eggert, Peter Shillingsburg, and Dirk Van Hulle.
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Variants 5 was published in January 2008: see the
table of contents and selected
pages from articles by Francisco Rico, Peter Shillingsburgh, Jan Rock and others.
- Variants 6, Textual Scholarship and the Material Book, guest-edited by Wim Van Mierlo, appeared in December 2009. It includes contributions by Chris Ackerley, David Atkinson, Simon Frost, John Gouws, Susan Kovacs, Rita Marquilhas, J.C.C. Mays, Mark Nixon, Rudiger Nutt-Kofoth, Bodo Plachta, Wendy J.Philips-Rodriguez, Clara Rowland, Paulius V. Subacius, Mariken Teeuwenand Dirk Van Hulle, and an Introduction by Wim Van Mierlo. Individual copies can be ordered from Rodopi.
- Variants 7 (2008) is a special issue on Textual Scholarship and the Canon, edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Peter Robinson and Paulus Subačius, and contains papers from the 2007 ESTS conference at Vilnius, published in November 2010. The volume contains contributions by Mikas Vaicekauskas, Paulius V. Subačius, Paula Henrikson, Gabriel Viehhauser, Michael Stolz, Rüdiger Nutt-Kofoth, Jesús Varela Zapata, Nila Vázquez, Luc Herman, John M. Krafft and Sharon B. Krafft; Hans Walter Gabler and Christian Benne.
Guidelines for Submissions
Variants invites submissions on any aspect of textual scholarship and scholarly editing. We accept articles written in English of no more than 7000 words. To be considered for inclusion in the next issue, please submit your article before 31 March 2012. For enquiries and information about the stylesheet, please contact the Associate Editor, Wim Van Mierlo.
Review copies of books on textual scholarship and cognate fields of interest and of scholarly-critical editions should be sent to the Book Review Editor, Wim Van Mierlo, Instititute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, United Kingdom. We also review digital editions or online projects; suggestions are gratefully received. For a list of Books Received, please click here.