The Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Digital Edition (1889-1895).

摘要

This project comprises a digital edition of a selection of letters by American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), including all known letters written by the poet between 1889 and 1895, and hosted online by Colby College Libraries' Digital Collections. The edition is based on work started last century by Professor Wallace L. Anderson of Bridgewater State University, and left unfinished by him at his death in 1984. Professor Anderson collected a vast quantity of Robinson's letters from various repositories and private parties around the country. He transcribed them and provided annotations and textual notes for about three-quarters of them. For my project, I have edited, updated and corrected a substantial portion of Anderson's transcriptions, as well as completed fresh transcriptions of my own, checking them for accuracy against Robinson's holographs held at Harvard and the University of Virginia. I have formatted the new edition so as to more accurately represent the holographs, and have added my own textual notes and annotations to those of Anderson, along with an introductory critical essay detailing my methods and principles. It is of primary importance to me that these letters be accessible to both the scholarly community and the general public, with a view to maximizing their usefulness for literary and historical research. I have settled on digital publication as the best means to achieve this end because it will render the letters accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection, free of charge. The project of publishing the remainder of Robinson's letters in this format is expected to continue beyond the dissertation.