by Dorothy Leigh<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Introduction and Editing by Macy Cloninger
Macy Cloninger is an English MA Student at the University of Central Arkansas<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nI was interested in Dororthy Leigh\u2019s The Mother\u2019s Blessing<\/em> because I felt like it touched on themes we discussed throughout the semester. Leigh talks about female authorship and religious authority, albeit briefly, and places herself in contrast to the gendered conventions of the time. She acknowledges the oddity of a woman writing a text like this, and despite stating her intentions of humility, seems confident in her words. Further, I thought it was interesting how a good portion of a text written for her three male children is specifically written for women, both to them and in defense of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I began my process by reading through the work and copy-pasting passages I was most interested in, or ones I thought specifically pertained to themes from class. I knew from the start that I wanted to include her letter to Princess Elizabeth and the poem she wrote to her sons, because I felt like it set the tone for the rest of the book, in terms of who her audience was and her intentions. From there, I read through the selected excerpts and adjusted the spelling to be more modernized, which primarily included deleting -e\u2019s<\/em> and –y\u2019s<\/em>. I decided to retain most of the –eth <\/em>endings, because I felt that it didn\u2019t significantly impede understanding, and helped keep some of the original language. Words that were similar enough to modern spelling to be decoded, but still significantly different, I glossed. Examples include \u201cmaruaile,\u201d \u201cmard,\u201d and \u201cblud.\u201d I felt that completely altering the word to the modern spelling would be too much interference in the original text. Any words that had modern meanings, but didn\u2019t seem to fit the context of the sentence\u2014such as \u201cpolicy\u201d and \u201cwitness\u201d\u2014I checked with the OED and chose the word I felt best fit the meaning of the original sentence. Adding annotations was much harder. Leigh\u2019s writing wasn\u2019t the most difficult, especially compared to some of the works we\u2019ve read in class, so it was hard to pinpoint what might have needed extra context. I added some biographical and religious context, mostly. Anything that I didn\u2019t fully understand, I researched and added a footnote to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I learned that trying to keep the integrity of a text, while modifying it for clarity, is an involved and delicate process. Each word carries a specific meaning that the author intended, and it\u2019s difficult to be certain that you\u2019re making the right decisions to carry on the intentions in their work. As an editor, it seems important to know what audience you\u2019re editing for. I created this edition with a high school class in mind (I know nothing about education, I was referring to my own high school experience), so I ended up adding definitions to words that had similar modern meanings, but wasn\u2019t necessarily guaranteed to be known by that age range. As a reader, I have a tendency to skip over words I don\u2019t know or assume I can figure out their meaning with some context clues. I don\u2019t think this is a necessarily wrong approach in most fiction, but it is a major hindrance when reading older literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n