Textual Afterlives: Generating Editions and Editing Generations of Americana

How does a text change from one iteration to the next? Different editions of a printed work – even under the same title – often conceal significant differences between them. Authors, in the early modern period as today, changed their work as they were invited to produce different editions; translators, in turn, frequently did far more than just translate, often arrogating to themselves an authorial role that accommodated their own personal views. The lack of intellectual copyright in this period allowed editors and publishers to adapt texts in order to sell their wares. In search of the perfect way to take a book to market, they changed formats, illustrations and intended audiences. 

Drawing on Randall McLeod’s notion of “transformission” – which implies that texts were transformed from the moment they were transmitted – this exhibition follows several of the most celebrated texts related to the early modern Americas as they made their way from inaugural to subsequent editions. New Worlds were transformed and transmitted to new audiences sometimes beyond recognition. Ultimately, these cases of radical ​transformission raise the question: when does a text stop being the “original” text and start to become something else?