This brief, annotated, general bibliography consists of each editor's favourite stemmatological book and a short phrase why he or she considers it very important:
– Beccaria, Gian Luigi, ed. 2004. Dizionario di linguistica, e di filologia, metrica, retorica. Nuova edizione. Torino: Einaudi. – An encyclopedic dictionary which includes the definitions of major notions in the field of textual criticism, accompanied by illustrative examples. A collaborative work carried out by 40 scholars.
– Bein, Thomas. 2011. Textkritik: Eine Einführung in Grundlagen germanistisch-mediävistischer Editionswissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. – An introduction in scholarly editing of mediaeval German texts, with exercises for students and a short glossary of stemmatological and philological terms.
– Foulet, Alfred, and Mary Blakely Speer. 1979. On Editing Old French Texts. Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas. – One of few introductions to the editing of mediaeval texts; of great interest also for other literatures than Old French. It contains a concise introduction to editorial philology and the Bédier controversy, and a detailed and practical discussion of actual editing.
– Greetham, David C. 1994. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. New York: Garland. – A fine introduction to the academic study of texts, putting editorial philology into a broader context, such as the disciplines of bibliography (in various forms), palaeography and typography. Of the nine chapters, ch. 8 and 9 deal with textual criticism and scholarly editing, and even if this book is written mostly from the perspective of modern (i.e. post-Gutenberg) texts, the author shows that he has an impressive overview of the entire field.
– Havet, Louis. 1911. Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins. Paris: Librarie Hachette. – An extensive study of the types of errors and a fascinating attempt to explain how they arise in the course of historical transmission. Havet argued that earlier explanations favouring graphical misapprehension were perhaps overly simple and missed more likely sources for variation. The book is also known for distinguishing true variants (leçons vraies) and authentic variants (leçons authentiques).
– Hunger, Herbert, Otto Stegmüller, Hartmut Erbse, Max Imhof, Karl Büchner, Hans-Georg Beck, and Horst Rüdiger. 1961–1964. Geschichte der Textüberlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur. Vol. I: Antikes und mittelalterliches Buch- und Schriftwesen. Überlieferungsgeschichte der antiken Literatur. Vol. II: Überlieferungsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Literatur. Zürich: Atlantis-Verlag. – Gives a good and detailed overview of different kinds of textual traditions from antiquity and the middle ages (incl. the Bible). Every section is written by one of the then leading experts in the field.
– Lemey, Philippe, Marco Salemi, and Anne-Mieke Vandamme, eds. 2009. The Phylogenetic Handbook: A Practical Approach to Phylogenetic Analysis and Hypothesis Testing. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – The book presents a broad review of phylogenetic techniques, including among others, maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and distance-based methods. Each topic is divided into two chapters, one detailing the theory and assumptions underlying the approach in question and another one containing step-by-step instructions for running analyses based on the approach using one or more software packages.
– Luiselli Fadda, Anna Maria. 1994. Tradizioni manoscritte e critica del testo nel Medioevo germanico. Roma: Laterza. – Part I (Il segno scritto) focuses on the Germanic manuscript traditions in a comparative perspective. Part II (Codici e copisti) provides a full introduction to the mediaeval codex as a material object, and to the copy process theory. Part III (Il recupero storico del testo) deals with the major issues of restitutio textus. A brief glossary is provided at the end of the book (pp. 265-271).
– Martens, Gunter, ed. 2013. Editorische Begrifflichkeit: Überlegungen und Materialien zu einem “Wörterbuch der Editionsphilologie”. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. – The book contains 18 essays/articles dealing with the project of a ‘Dictionary of scholarly editing’.
– Nutt-Kofoth, Rüdiger, Bodo Plachta, H.T.M. van Vliet, and Hermann Zwerschina, eds. 2000. Text und Edition: Positionen und Perspektiven. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. – The book contains 18 essays on scholarly editing with a focus on its history and on the relationship between texts and their editions.
– Stussi, Alfredo, ed. 2006. Fondamenti di critica testuale. Nuova edizione aggiornata. Bologna: il Mulino. – This handbook contains nine essays taken from works written by highly influential authors in the history of scholarly editing (G. Paris, J. Bédier, A. Vàrvaro, G. Contini, C. Segre, S. Timpanaro). A couple of essays deal with authorial philology (A. Stussi) and the philology of printed texts (N. Harris). The last chapter (A. Bozzi) provides a brief overview of digital philology.
– Semple, Charles, and Mike Steel. 2003. Phylogenetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – This graduate-level textbook is mathematical in nature and nicely brings together numerous results central to the area of phylogenetics which otherwise would be spread over an ever increasing body of literature. In addition, it outlines how algorithms for phylogenetic tree reconstruction could be derived from the mathematical theory and also comments on the biological significance of some of the included concepts. The book is self-contained and easy to read with exercises at the end of each chapter.
– Trovato, Paolo. 2014. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann’s Method: A Non-Standard Handbook of Genealogical Textual Criticism in the Age of Post-Structuralism, Cladistics, and Copy-Text. Foreword by Michael D. Reeve. Firenze: Libreriauniversitaria.it edizioni. – Introduction to Neo-Lachmannian philology and especially Italian scholarship in the field during the 20th century.
- Van Reenen, Pieter, and Margot Mulken, eds. 1996. Studies in Stemmatology. With the assistance of Janet Dyk. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. – A basic introduction to principles, methods, techniques, and application of stemmatology. Includes some critical reflection on the various approaches and traditions. A good overall primer for people new to the field.
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