Chapter 5 - Editions

Summary

Editions’ begins with the Attribution Controversy: in 1790 George Chalmers attributed 81 titles to Defoe; by 1960 John Robert Moore counted 570. This led to a trio of works by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens overhauling the bibliography: The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (1988), Defoe De-attributions: A Critique of J. R. Moore’s ‘Checklist’ (1996), and A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (1998). Various scholars reinstated titles; various other scholars wondered whether Defoe even wrote Moll Flanders and Roxana. But editors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were confident enough in identifying the Defovian to produce multi-volume Works, while in this century Pickering & Chatto have published to date forty-four volumes. The chapter concludes with a look at some of the more arresting versions of Robinson Crusoe – such as the one in ’Pitman’s shorthand "(corresponding style)"’.