A Devolutionary Approach to Editing the Letters of the First Duchess of Ormonde

Abstract

ABSTRACT“To devolve”, explains John Kerrigan, “is to shift power in politics or scholarly analysis from a locus that has been disproportionately endowed with influence and documentation to sites that are dispersed and more skeletally understood”. This “devolutionary” approach has had some success in shaping our understanding of the history and culture of early modern Ireland; in this article, I consider its impact on scholarly editing. I suggest that the “expansive, multilevelled, discontinuous, and polycentric” approach described by Kerrigan is particularly valuable for editing collections of letters. I draw upon my experience of editing the more than three hundred surviving letters of Elizabeth Butler, née Preston, Baroness Dingwall and first Duchess of Ormonde to outline what a “devolutionary” editorial practice involves and what insights it brings. I show how a “polycentric” approach influenced all aspects of my own editorial work, from the selection and arrangement of letters, the transcription policy, the presentation of headnotes, the content of annotations, the Introduction, illustrations, and editorial apparatus such as family trees and lists of persons and places. Ultimately, I suggest that editing early modern women’s letters from Ireland and elsewhere is not only uniquely suited to but demands a “devolutionary” approach.