Lyrical Ballads : 1798-1998

Versions of Lyrical Ballads

For a volume that would have such lasting significance, the first publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 seems quite tentative. It was slow to emerge from the press, and when it did it appeared anonymously. Joseph Cottle, printer and publisher of Bristol, printed perhaps 500 copies, and issued a few of them on behalf of T. N. Longman. But he soon sold the copyright to the Arches of London, and they issued the remaining sheets with a new title page at the beginning of October, 1798.

Thus, from its earliest days the Lyrical Ballads collection exists in multiple versions. There were two separate issues of the volume, the first from Bristol with the Longman-Cottle imprint on the title page and the second with the London title page from the firm of J. and A. Arch. Furthermore, there are two distinct states of the Bristol issue. The first copies off the press included the poem "Lewti" by Coleridge, but it was decided to withdraw this poem as its previous publication might reveal Coleridge's authorship and thereby compromise the anonymity of the volume. "Lewti" was replaced by Coleridge's "The Nightingale", which necessitated not only a new table of contents page but also the insertion of cancel pages containing a new poem that was longer than the one it replaced, causing an irregularity in the pagination. The five-page "Advertisement" (lacking in the "Lewti" volumes) also made its first appearance in volumes containing "The Nightingale", and there are two copies extant in which this preface is included along with both poems. The correction of typographical errors caught in press introduced additional variants, so that hardly any two copies of the Bristol Lyrical Ballads are alike.

The Bristol Lyrical Ballads is an extremely rare book; only 14 copies are known to survive today in collections scattered throughout the world. The Bristol Lyrical Ballads with "Lewti" is even rarer, 5 copies having been identified. The London issue is far more common, but the minor typographical corrections mentioned introduce some variation from copy to copy. However, this commemorative website will confine itself to representing the three distinct states of Lyrical Ballads 1798 (Bristol A with "Lewti"; Bristol B with "Lewti", "The Nightingale", and the Advertisement; and the London issue).

By undertaking this project, we hope to demonstrate the implications of modern digital technology for the practices of editing, as well as for the representation of texts. The texts represented here electronically are keyed to specific copies of Lyrical Ballads, which have been carefully transcribed and encoded using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) in conformity with the recommendations of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). These searchable electronic texts will be supplemented with digital images of the actual printed pages, so that characteristics of typography and layout can be determined. Indeed, in the case of the London issue, every page of the volume will be illustrated by a digital image, thanks to the generous cooperation of the Rare Books Collection at Simon Fraser University and its curator, Gene Bridwell.

The opportunities offered by digital media also have influenced our editorial practice. Choosing to represent specific copies means that our goal as editors has not been to create an ideal or purified version of the text that reflects some best guess about authorial intention. Rather, the infinite extensibility of virtual space encourages us to try to ground new theories about textual instability and the social production of texts in actual practice. Texts are produced by authors, often working in collaboration not only with one another but also with their friends and relations; as the text heads to market, it further comes under the scrutiny and influence of editors, printers, and publishers. Reasons artistic, personal, and commercial weave a textuality which is less a finished product than a dynamic, evolutionary process. The multiplicity of versions which is Lyrical Ballads seems ideally suited for a trial of the potential of the electronic medium to represent the text in progress.