Chapter 4 - ‘This Story the World May Read in Me’

Summary

Chapter 4 addresses the myth of editorial neutrality, exploring how editorial biography can illuminate historical editions. It includes three case studies, each of which focuses on an edition produced for English schoolchildren between 1909 and 1927 and draws on both the editor’s life and the broader setting of the edition’s creation. The first study examines Evelyn Smith’s 1927 Henry V, an edition which strongly signals its post-war context, using her glossarial notes, questions, and citations to extrapolate information about Smith’s viewpoints. The second study highlights the tension between archival evidence regarding Agnes Russell Weekes and the racist and colonialist content of her 1909 edition of The Tempest. The third study demonstrates how understanding editor Dorothy Macardle’s Irish Nationalist background reveals the immense depth of her edition of The Tempest (c. 1917).