Annotator as Ordinary Reader: Accuracy, Relevance, and Editorial Method

Abstract

As the first annotated edition of Churchill’s poetry, William Tooke’s 1804 Poetical Works of Charles Churchill offers insight into the reading practices specific to eighteenth-century verse satire and beyond. Drawing information from widely-circulated periodical sources rather than the author-proximate documents favored by most annotators today, Tooke reveals the suspect modern assumption that satires held the same meanings for early readers as authors intended. Building on the reader-centered approach behind Tooke’s apparatus, this essay argues that the lingering intentionalist bent of modern explicatory editing distorts the information available to past readers, the identities ascribed to allusions, and the uses assigned to past texts. In Churchill’s case, such annotation obscures his links to the print-driven scandal culture of the 1760s, a culture in which identifying allusion displays one’s mastery of gossip. Ultimately, Tooke raises questions about the continued editorial allegiance to intentionalist ideas of accuracy and relevancy, questions that can be extended to the editing of texts from many genres and times. He implies that, while early scholarly apparatuses may not meet today’s standards, they nonetheless offer information about reading habits, insights often more historically accurate than what is gleaned from modern editions.