CBCP Modernist Editing Symposium, 23 September 2025

This symposium brings together leading scholars and practitioners in modernist textual criticism and scholarly editing. Organised by Dr Buxi Duan and Lawrence Jones at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP), with support from the Samuel Beckett Research Centre and the Bibliographical Society UK, the event explores how scholarly editions of modernist texts can better preserve and reflect their dynamic evolution – from manuscript and typescript to first editions, serial publications, and comprehensive scholarly editions.

With CBCP’s commitment to examining book and publishing cultures, as well as the political and material conditions of textual production, this symposium focuses on the key issue of how editorial theory and practice have shaped these cultures and the modernist texts we read today. Our speakers will discuss how they respond to publishing contexts, editorial interventions, and book cultures reflected in the many editions of the works they are editing – and how, as 21st-century readers and researchers, we might critically evaluate these often-competing editions of modernist texts, especially those that remain or become controversial.

This in-person symposium is free to attend. However, due to limited capacity, please click here to reserve your tickets. Because of the nature of the presentations, which involve discussions of unpublished materials and in-progress editorial work, we regret that online participation is not possible on this occasion.

To join us, please register here.

Refreshments (incl. lunch – vegetarian & vegan) will be provided. If you have any dietary or accessibility requirements, please email the Centre for Book Cultures & Publishing at cbcp@reading.ac.uk.

We are delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous conference subvention provided by the Bibliographical Society UK, four travel grants of up to £50 will be available to PGRs and ECRs who do not have institutional support to attend this in-person symposium. If you would like to be considered for this financial support, please send a short message to Dr Buxi Duan (b.duan@reading.ac.uk) by Monday, 1 September 2025 at 5pm, describing how you expect this symposium to benefit your research project. Decisions will be communicated on Monday 8 September 2025.

Please note that campus parking is limited, and availability cannot be guaranteed.

Image: Typescript with handwritten annotation for Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf from the Hogarth Press archive. Courtesy of the Modernist Archives Publishing Project

Programme

10.30-10.45am: Refreshments & Welcome

10.45-12.00pm: Modernist Authorship in Scholarly Editions (20mins each + 15mins Q&A)

• Dr Chris Mourant (University of Birmingham), editor of A Passage to India, The Cambridge Edition of the Fiction of E.M. Forster
• Dr Gareth Mills, editor of Doom of Youth, OUP Wyndham Lewis
• Dr Wim Van Mierlo (Loughborough University) – ‘Modernist Editing in Perspective’

12.00-12.15pm: Coffee break

12.15-1.00pm: Launch Event of the Digital Anon (Virginia Woolf) (30mins + 15mins Q&A)
Dr Joshua Phillips (University of Oxford), Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

1.00-1.45pm: Lunch (provided)

1.45-3:00pm: Editorial Frameworks & Scholarly Editions (20mins each + 15mins Q&As)

• Dr Barbara Cooke (Loughborough University), Co-executive Editor of Oxford Waugh
• Dr Becky Bowler (Keele University), General Editor of Edinburgh Sinclair
• Prof Bryony Randall (University of Glasgow), Co-General Editor of Cambridge Woolf

3.00-3.15pm: Coffee/tea break (provided)

3.15-4.00pm: Roundtable: Challenges & New Perspectives in Modernist Editing

• Panel: Prof Mark Nixon, Prof Steven Matthews, Dr Wim Van Mierlo, Dr Buxi Duan
• Chair: Prof Nicola Wilson

4.00-4.15pm: Wrap up followed by an informal CBCP social/drinks at Park House (located on the university campus)

To join us, please register here.