The next meeting of the Traherne Online Research Network will take place via Zoom on Thursday 5 March 2026, 5.00 p.m. London time (GMT).
Dr Austen Saunders, The Oxford Traherne, and Professor Robert Whalen, Northern Michigan University and The Oxford George Herbert will speak on ‘Editing early modern printed texts: practical experiences from two editions’.
Three books by Traherne were printed during the seventeenth century. The process of editing these texts for a modern critical edition includes searching for variants introduced during printing, a process known as collation. Austen will demonstrate how this was done for The Oxford Traherne using new software specially developed for the task. He will then show some results for Traherne's Roman Forgeries which shed new light on Traherne's involvement in the printing process.
The Herbert text is largely stable, and most of the new discoveries for the Oxford edition pertain to Latin verse and prose in manuscript. Still, collation of selected editions, using the Traherne software, has turned up several interesting and surprising details. Rob will present a few of these in relation to several of Herbert's works, including the Notes on Valdesso, the Memoria Matris Sacrum, and The Temple.
Please email Julia Smith to register for the Zoom link for the meeting, or to join the mailing list for the research network.
You do not need to be an academic researcher to attend the seminars, and students and others interested in Traherne are very welcome. For further information about this research network and subsequent events, please click here.
