The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh: a Little Learning Volume 19
- Submitting institution
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Loughborough University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 1815
- Type
- R - Scholarly edition
- DOI
-
-
- Title of edition
- The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh: a Little Learning Volume 19
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press, USA
- ISBN
- 9780198702917
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- September
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This critical edition required the collection and analysis of extensive material relating to the composition of Evelyn Waugh’s autobiography. A large, unsorted body of manuscript materials was consulted remotely between 2014 and 2016. A two-week visit to the University of Texas at Austin was also undertaken (spring 2015) to scrutinise manuscripts in person. Later in the investigation (2015-16), digital tools were used to determine the correct chronology and genesis of draft materials. Textual variants were also analysed by collating copies of the autobiography with authorial annotations: these were privately owned and gaining access to them took considerable effort.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This scholarly edition is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (CWEW), which produces all Waugh’s published works, juvenilia, personal writings, essays, articles, and reviews in 43 volumes of authoritative texts with full annotation, editorial commentary and critical introductions. Cooke’s explicit contributions to this volume are its 20,000-word introduction and 28,000 words of contextual notes, both of which are informed by extensive primary and archival research including holograph manuscripts and authorial typescripts, the collation of Waugh interviews across print, radio and television, and personal writings.
The volume offers insights into Evelyn Waugh’s drafting and editing practices which inform general studies of the creative process. These insights were gleaned through the collection and analysis of a large body of manuscript material relating to the composition of Waugh’s text. This analysis was supported by a thorough review of Waugh’s personal correspondence with his publisher and others encompassing the period of the book’s composition (1961-64). An appendix of interviews covering Waugh’s whole career offers a comprehensive dataset for researchers evaluating the role such material plays in the composition of life- and other writing.
Once the correct order of A Little Learning’s composition was established, manuscript material detailing textual developments and variants was transcribed according to a system of diacritics devised for CWEW. A narrative commentary of the changes formed part of the critical introduction to the text, which also reveals the professional functioning of the 1960s publishing economy (both books and serialisation) through a detailed study of A Little Learning’s production and dissemination.
As well as publication of the volume itself, Cooke disseminated its findings through platforms including an international symposium (Evelyn Waugh: Reader, Writer, Collector 5-6 May 2017, Huntington Library, Pasadena) and a related exhibition (City of Aquatint: Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford, 26 August-22 October 2017, Weston Library, Oxford).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
