Thomas Hardy’s ‘Poetical Matter’ Notebook

[...]for those who suspect Millgate may not be the ideal keeper of Hardy's flame, that he has been territorial about his chosen biographical subject and based his arguments about both man and work on distortions of the available material (material which he has controlled), this edition offers strong supporting evidence. Thomas Hardy's 'Facts' Notebook (2004) is indeed a fine edition; its editorial procedures were based on those used in Dalziel and Millgate's Thomas Hardy's 'Studies, Specimens &c.' Notebook (1994), where we defined the basic principle of the edition as 'that of a typographical "facsimile"' (p.xxiv). [...]the appropriate question for Professor Pite to have asked would have been why in editing 'Poetical Matter' the editors did not adopt the same editorial policy as they had used in editing 'Studies, Specimens &c.' Our editorial policies, as we state in the Editorial Procedures, were dictated by practical considerations. Because of the notebook's numerous erasures and excisions - of segments of leaves, as both the Introduction and annotations make clear, not of complete pages as Pite asserts - reproduction of the pagination and layout of 'Poetical Matter', as in our edition of 'Studies, Specimens &c.', would have resulted in considerable blank space (misleadingly blank space where portions of leaves have been excised). [...]typographical reproduction of the interlineations would have awarded them undue prominence by visually suggesting that they were the only late additions, when in fact most of the significant late additions - all identified in the annotations - were added at the end of entries.