Encoding an On-Line Electronic Scholarly Edition and Implementing an XML Prototype

The project aimed to program an on-line scholarly edition and implement an XML prototype meeting MLA’s guidelines for the electronic scholarly edition, and presenting full-text versions of all renditions to show evolution of a text to final states and devolution to original states. The first stage was to prepare a scholarly edition of William Wells Brown’s novel Clotel which provides the full text of all extant versions (those of 1853, 1860, 1864, and 1867) with explanatory annotation, textual-variant notes, and a scholarly apparatus. The second stage was to identify and develop software programs which will make this body of text operate on-line as a fully-functional electronic scholarly edition (an ESE). The project has made readily available in scholarly form a novel of considerable significance. Further research questions are arising from the opportunities offered by the particular text chosen to edit as an ESE. Few African American texts have been prepared as scholarly editions in print and none on-line. As a result, work on Clotel has raised questions not always raised by the preparation of texts by mainstream white authors for whom there are usually well-preserved records and a rich scholarship of practices. At the same time, unlike most nineteenth-century African American novels normally available in one version only, there are four authored versions of Clotel of equal textual standing, all independently published.