This original and authoritative book offers a first-ever attempt to define a poetics of the
editing arts. It proposes a new field of editing studies in which the 'ideal editor' can be
understood in relation to the long-theorised author and reader. The book's premise is that
editing like other forms of 'making' is mostly invisible and can only be brought into full
view through a comparative analysis that includes the insights of practitioners. The argument
laid down in careful layers is supported by a panoramic historical narrative that tracks the
shifts in textual authority from religious and secular institutions to the romanticised self of
the digital present. The dangers posed by the anti-editing rhetoric of this hybrid romanticism
are confronted head-on. To the traditional perception of editing as the imposition of closure
A Poetics of Editing adds a perspective on a dynamic process with a sense of the possible.
