ABSTRACT
One of the most significant aspects of An Collins’s poetry is that it existed for so long not only in a single printing but also in a single surviving copy. Examining the first (and apparently only) edition of Collins’s works issued in her own era can tell us a certain amount about Collins’s personal identity, but doing so can also suggest a good deal about her relations with the tradition her poems represent, about the importance of studying her book as a book (that is, as a finished entity with a coherent design), and, most importantly, about the roles Collins fashioned for herself as a self-conscious author-the ways she wanted to be perceived as a writer, and the ways she wanted her works to be read. In addition, examining the history of the single surviving copy of her poems can shed significant light on the ways the reception of her works has been shaped by an editorial tradition in which few editors (until recently) have had easy access to the actual complete text of Collins’s writings. As will soon become apparent, many early editors necessarily relied on the inevitably limited work of their predecessors, and this history of dependence has had major consequences for the ways Collins’s poems have been represented and perceived. Even more noteworthy, however, are the liberties that recent editors have often taken in presenting and printing Collins’s poems, as well as the significant variations that still exist in recent editions (both printed and electronic) of her work. For all reasons just mentioned, it seems worth tracing the editorial legacy of Collins’s poems, beginning with their very first publication in a printed book.
