QueenʼsMen Editions

Guidelines for Submitting Proposals to Queen's Men Editions

1. General Information

Proposals for materials to be posted on the site of Queen's Men Editions should be submitted by email to the General Editor, Helen Ostovich <ostovich@mcmaster.ca>. All proposals will be approved by the Editorial Board and Advisory Board.

Proposals may be submitted by individuals or by a group of collaborating scholars. Proposals may be to edit plays for which there is an argument to be made on their being included as part of the Queen's Men repertory. Such plays may include unrecognized works by Robert Wilson, George Peele, Robert Greene, and others that are not included in Scott McMillan and Sally Beth MacLean, The Queen's Men and their Plays (Cambridge, 1998).

All correspondence will be carried out by email, and all work in progress and final submission will be submitted by attachment in rtf. Contributors should be reasonably computer literate and should have a basic knowledge of HTML, but will not be asked to undertake the final, detailed tagging of text.

2. The Editions

General information about what the editions will include, their structure, and the nature of the copyright retained by contributors is available at: <http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Foyer/Prospectus1.html>.

Specific guidelines for editors have been developed and are available online, even though these guidelines are always in process of revision, in cooperation with Internet Shakespeare Editions.

2.1. Publication

The electronic medium allows for publication to be incremental. Editors normally begin with establishing the accuracy of the old-spelling transcriptions, then develop the modern spelling text, the collations, and notes. Each of these components can be published as they are peer-reviewed.

3. Format of the proposal

All proposals should include the following:

  1. A brief curriculum vitae of the contributor(s)
  2. A statement of the contributor's general views on editorial principles
  3. A statement of the main editorial challenges involved in working with the specific text
  4. A statement of the way an electronic edition of the play might differ from the printed text
  5. A summary of the kinds of supporting materials that will be linked to the edition (sources, historical documents, and so on)
  6. A "timeline& for the completion of the project. Note:
    1. that the electronic medium allows for incremental publication as work is completed (it also allows for the progressive correction of errors as they are detected);
    2. that deadlines for the print version of the edition will of necessity be more rigorous than for the electronic edition;
    3. that collation and work on the old-spelling transcriptions should be completed before the modern text is created. Editors will receive a template for the modern text generated from the old-spelling transcription, with tagging in place. A reasonable timeline will specify dates of completion for the main components of the edition
    4. The old-spelling transcription(s).
    5. Collations.
    6. The modern-spelling text.
    7. Annotations. Our annotations have two parts that may spread onto three levels: levels one and two are pop-up annotations that include both editiorial commentary and production notes; level three notes are essays that open up in another window.
    8. Introductory essays, including the textual essay.
    9. Supplementary materials.
  7. An indication of the expertise of the contributor(s) in the use of electronic texts and the Internet.
  8. While different works will require proposals of differing detail, the overall length of the proposal should not exceed 4,000 words, though additional materials may be submitted as appendices or posted as web pages.