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Project Gutenberg is lauded as one of the earliest digitisation initiatives, a mythology that Michael Hart, its founder perpetuated through to his death in 2011. In this Element, the author re-examines the extant historical evidence to challenge some of Hart's bolder claims and resituates the significance of Project Gutenberg in relation to broader trends in online document delivery and digitisation in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially in the World Wide Web's first decade (the 1990s). Through this re-appraisal, the author instead suggests that Hart's Project is significant as an example of what Millicent Weber has termed a “digital publishing collective” whereby a group of volunteers engage in producing content and that process is as meaningful as the final product.
The major scholarly editions of Shakespeare published from the mid twentieth century through to the opening decades of the current century are considered in this chapter. Peter Alexander's edition for the Glasgow publishers Collins is tracked in detail and its use as the working text for the BBC Shakespeare TV series is registered. The Riverside edition, which served for many years as the dominant text for the US university market, is also considered. The history of the Oxford Shakespeare, in its various incarnations from its first appearance in 1986, is mapped. The Oxford edition provided the base text for the Norton Shakespeare, though, in more recent times, Norton has severed the link and established its own text. The history of the Norton edition is considered, as is the Royal Shakespeare Company endorsed edition, produced by Macmillan. The chapter ends with an exploration of significant challenges to New Bibliographic editorial practice that emerged in the closing decades of the twentieth century, often driven by poststructuralist thinking; it is noted that, despite these challenges, editors continue to find the basic techniques of the New Bibliography of considerable utility.
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