EMENDATION AND VARIATION

This list records the present edition's emendations of substantive readings together with the variants in substantive readings amongst the texts collated. Each note provides the full history of the readings in these texts. The reading of the Cambridge text appears immediately after the page–line citation. It is followed by a bracket, then by a siglum (or sigla) identifying the text(s) in which it occurs, and then by the variant reading(s) of the remaining texts and their sigla. A substantive variant shared by more than one text appears here in the form (the ‘accidentals’) that it takes in the copy-text or, otherwise, in the earliest one recorded. A separate list (below) records emendations of accidentals.

Formal conventions and appurtenances of the documents – such as Conrad's signatures, serial bylines, editorial headings, and instalment statements – are ignored unless they bear upon variants otherwise being reported, as are differences in typography and styling (see the ‘Preface’, p. xii). Excluded in the same way, and with the same proviso, are impossible word forms created by mere typographical errors as well as those containing unreadable or uncertain characters (usually an original typewritten text that has been blotted during revision). Also not reported as such are legitimate variants in word forms, including abbreviations.