Textual History:
Resources

Information

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Primary sources

The difficulties of trying to use primary resources are availability and access.

In many cases, the materials are simply no longer available, especially in the case of proofs for major authors or in the case. Or the primary materials do exist, but remain unpublished, housed in special collections libraries here and abroad.

In those cases, a researcher would have to visit the collections that hold the materials: to see a good example of how difficult it can be to examine relevant materials, just check out the list of manuscript locations in a single volume of Marchand's edition (you'll find it in his appendices).

In other cases, the primary materials have been reproduced for researchers through a facsimile "editions." Really reproductions rather than editions, facsimiles offer page images of the original texts. An example of this approach is Donald Reiman's Romantics Reviewed, which provides facsimiles of contemporary reviews.

Secondary sources

Scholarly editions of the text

Another way to gain access to information about primary materials is through an edition created by a textual scholar. A textual scholar in creating an edition typically consults primary documents and records (through notes or appendices) information about those documents.

Therefore, though one may be unable to examine primary materials, one can use these apparati to gain additional information about composition practices.

Jerome McGann's edition of Byron's Collected Works provides information about Byron's composition practice as revealed by manuscript evidence. McGann's discussion is available in the notes to his edition.

Scholarly articles examining composition or publication history, etc.

Often articles or books will discuss textual information as part of a larger discussion, focusing on interpretation. This is the case, for example, with Jerome McGann's Fiery Dust which examines Byron's idea of man as a spirit-infused body.

So, make sure to do the appropriate MLA (for articles) and ABELL (for books) searches on your poem.