Item 40 - Letter from Kenneth Sisam to R. B. McKerrow

2 single sheets

Clarendon Press, Oxford.—Settles the description of the new impression. Discusses present-day standards of philology and textual criticism.

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Transcript

The Clarendon Press, Oxford
4th July, 1928.

Dear Mr. McKerrow,

I vote for “Second impression with corrections” as perhaps the most accurate description of a book that has not been revised in all details and yet has been retouched on some points; so I shall proceed with that.

I think you are right in supposing that a good deal of present day philological detail is worked out by students of no great range or fund of critical ideas, and that they rely too much on the easy assumption that a spelling represents a sound. The facts are very confusing, and my own experience as a copyist makes me suspicious, for at times I habitually tend to mis-spell in a direction which, as far as I know, represents nothing in my pronunciation. But what I most complain of is on the one side the vagueness of much of the work that is done, and at the other extreme, the amount of petty detail which is not a starting point for any new work. After all a subject cannot progress without ideas, and the mere collection or recording of a few small facts is not very helpful. I have always thought the best test of the vitality of a subject was the quality of its textual criticism—its interpretation of sound texts and its emendations of unsound. Yet it seems to me that in Early English studies we are at the lowest point for roundly 100 years in this particular department. However, that is not what I am going to write about in the article, but rather on the habit of working in blinkers. I shall do my best about length, upon which at present I have no precise views. But if it so happens that I can get the whole thing into 20 pp., I may plead for it when the article is in your hands, because I don’t want to go beyond certain limits of detail. The text of Aelfric’s Homilies is a remarkable problem, and as far as I know in all these years nobody has ever even suggested that there is anything to investigate.

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Sisam

P.S. The older generation of scholars were much more widely read in the texts, and deliberately passed over many details of spelling, etc. as unreliable which are now made the basis of new work.

KS

R. B. McKerrow Esq.,
Enderley,
Little Kingshill,
Great Missenden,
Bucks.

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Typed, except the signature. At the head are the reference ‘L.B. 5889/K.S.’ and, elsewhere, the letter ‘C.’