Students of literary studies typically tend to view bibliographical and textual criticism as the most austere and objective areas of our cognitive domain, those methodologies aspiring most convincingly toward the status of the hard sciences. Many of the essays in Jesse Swan’s fine Editing Lives support this reputation. However, by belonging to the genre of festschrift, the present volume also ... Read moreembraces a moving and subjective humanity, as it celebrates the life and career of the eminent Johnsonian whom friends and colleagues fondly called “Skip.” All who knew him will surely acknowledge Skip to be a rarely fine human being as well as a top drawer scholar. The apparatus of Editing Lives, that bookend these essays, offer eloquent testimony to these claims. . . .The editor has divided the book into three sections: 1. “Textual Studies,” 2. “Biographical Studies,” and 3. “Edition.” Within these heads are arranged eleven scholarly essays and a translation. . . .[which] serves as a fitting conclusion to a sound and rewarding excellent volume.
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