The Center for Scholarly Editions (CSE), administered by a Committee on Scholarly Editions, was suggested by an ad hoc committee of the Modern Language Association in the spring of 1975 and officially established, by action of the Executive Council, as an entity within the MLA on 1 September 1976. The occasion for that ad hoc committee's deliberations was the impending expiration of the grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities under which the MLA Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA) had been operating; the termination of that grant on 31 August 1976 offered an appropriate moment for the MLA to rethink its role in promoting editorial scholarship. The CEAA not only had fostered the production of a large number of editions of American authors but had increased the awareness of editorial problems among members of the profession generally. It seemed natural, therefore, that the next step should be a broadening of the scope of the MLA's committee on editions to encompass more than American literature. Accordingly, no restrictions were placed on the content of the editions with which the CSE could concern itself: editors of any kind of work or document—whether literary or not—from any country can feel free to seek the services of the CSE.