Carrie Smith and Lisa Stead, eds. The Boundaries of the Literary Archive: Reclamation and Representation. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013. xv, 210 p. ISBN 978-1409443223. $104.95

Abstract

In the past 15 years, literary and textual scholars have been pushing the boundaries of literary and personal paper archives to find new modes of scholarship, whether it be reclaiming authors previously considered “unworthy” of scholarly study or using textual criticism and the materiality of the book/manuscript to discuss how a scholar pieces together different types of material and information to formulate their argument. These new assertions highlight that the literary archive is neither neatly defined nor should it be a fixed form of study. Instead, the contributors to this wonderfully articulated collection argue for flexibility both in the archive . . .