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The numerous and varied eighteenth-century abridgments of Robinson Crusoe have for too long escaped the attention of Defoe's bibliographers. Many have noted the existence of these derivative works, but few have ventured to explain their significance. What little scholarship does exist tends to focus on the children's abridgments published by the Newberys in the second half of the eighteenth century. However, children's abridgments and chapbooks represent but a small portion of the total number of abbreviated editions published prior to 1801. In particular, two different abridgments published by a coterie of London booksellers in the 1720s would become the base texts for nearly 100 further English-language editions. And unlike the Newbery abridgments, these were not designed exclusively for juvenile audiences. This essay seeks to answer the following questions. How did abridged editions of Robinson Crusoe differ from Defoe's original? How did the abridgments contribute to the canonization of Robinson Crusoe? And what was the legal status of the abridgments? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The first attempt at a collected edition of Swift's Works remains little studied and decidedly puzzling in several important respects. Eighteenth-century commentators mostly either ignored it or derided it as scrappy and discreditable. For the next two hundred years, it was usually regarded as an irrelevance or an embarrassment. In the last half century, however, it has been increasingly treated as Swift's attempt to create a literary monument for himself. Unfortunately, we have little evidence as to how much involvement Swift had in the selection of the contents or how much textual oversight he exercised during the process of publication. Such evidence as we possess suggests probably not a lot in either case. Recent scholars have generally agreed that the 1735 text of Gulliver's Travels has greater authority than the London edition of 1726, but beyond that much remains questionable. Analysis of the contents of the Works does not suggest that Swift saw it as a ‘monument’ or as a claim to literary eminence. For whatever reasons, the edition omits important published works (including A Tale of a Tub), as well as Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (written 1731) and The History of the Last Four Years of the Queen (a work important to Swift, but not published until 1758). Conversely, the edition does include a great many trivial and occasional pieces. It heavily emphasizes Irish works, not the writings of 1710-14, the period to which Swift harked back nostalgically for the rest of his life. The Faulkner Works comes across as an odd mélange of major and minor works plus topical trivia, not as a systematic attempt to build a posthumous reputation. Given Swift's longstanding casual attitude towards the publication or even preservation of most of his works, moreover, we would be unwise to assume that ‘1735’ possesses textual authority except in the case of Gulliver. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Eliza Haywood (1693 - 1756) has gained more critical attention in recent years, but the bibliographical foundations for her canon largely remain unquestioned. Patrick Spedding, in his heavily documented 2004 bibliography, lists 72 works as ‘certainly by Haywood’. Of these 72 items, 42 were published during just seven years, from 1723 to 1729 inclusive. This represents some 330 sheets, equivalent to more than 5000 pages in octavo. Did Haywood really write all these texts? What is the basis for their attribution? The texts in Spedding's bibliography are attributed to Haywood on the basis of a wide variety of types of evidence, and Spedding's bibliography does not account for any measure of doubt in each attribution case: works are either by Haywood, or they are not. In this article, I will argue that 29 out of Spedding's 72 works are attributed based on less than satisfactory evidence -- including Bath-Intrigues (1724), The Opera of Operas (1733), and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751). I am focusing primarily on external evidence, rather than internal, and I am purposely looking at the evidence skeptically in order to re-assess its validity. In many cases there may be suggestive internal evidence or biographical parallels that point towards Haywood as a likely author, but in the absence of solid proof such attributions must be considered warily. I am not suggesting that we de-attribute these works, but rather that we need to be more cautious in considering Haywood's authorship as certain. If we are to regard Haywood as an important writer whose works deserve close scrutiny, we need to be more scrupulous about the evidence we use to determine what she wrote, and to acknowledge degrees of confidence and doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]