Essential Resources!

I've had a few queries about the edition project from various students (feel free to contact me: in person, via email, or through this blog); and these have in turn made me think I should flag up a few absolutely essential resources for anybody working on a critical edition.

Number 1: the OED. I mentioned in the lecture that if a word is in the Concise OED, then you probably don't need to explain it in a footnote. But you should not limit yourself to the Concise version. If you haven't done already, have a look at the complete OED. The physical edition is in the Library, and there's one in the Department too. One advantage here is that you can cite the OED -- which you can't do for 'I did a google search and some random stuff came up'. Another advantage is that it gives illustrative quotations for all its definitions, so you can see where Scott likely got his obscure or archaic word from -- and if Scott's the only or the earliest source the OED quotes for any given word, then you can be pretty sure that he made that word up.

Number 2: the DNB. The Dictionary of National Biography is also in the library in hard-copy form, in one volume concise form, but much more usefully for us in its original multi-volume form. If Scott mentions a noble medieval Scottish family, you could do worse than have a look in the DNB and see if they were still influential aristocrats and friends of Scott's in the early 1800s. Also good for tracking down Scott's aristo connections is Debrett's and Who's Who.