The question of “the text” has come increasingly to the center of attention in recent years and accordingly deserves some scrutiny here at the outset. In both their historical and technical aspects the major texts of the American literary tradition have come to be seen as somewhat problematic. In the first place, questions have quite properly been raised about the reliability of texts transmitted to us typically in surprisingly haphazard fashion. Quite literally, we have discovered that we did not know what we were reading – whether, for example, variations from edition to edition or from manuscript to first printing in periodicals or in pamphlet form and on to first book edition, could be ascribed to the author, to friends, relatives, or literary executors, or indeed to publishers and printers. In some cases manuscripts no longer exist or have not been found, and the same is true for galley and page proofs. Naturally, the problems vary from author to author.

James Fenimore Cooper, for example, was long considered a careless author who composed quickly and never bothered to revise, but recent textual scholarship suggests that this is not true. Poe's literary estate was left, after his bizarre and premature death, in the hands of a malicious “executor” (Rufus Griswold) who altered some things to suit his own devious ends. Several of Emerson's most important pieces – “The American Scholar” and the Divinity School Address, in particular – were delivered orally only once for a specific audience from scripts that no longer exist.