Only one edition of Parerga andParalipomena was published duringSchopenhauer's lifetime. The first volume appearedas:

The present translation uses the text as edited byArthur Hübscher, ArthurSchopenhauers Sämtliche Werke (Mannheim:F. A. Brockhaus, 1988), vol. 5. Hübscher's text is aconfection based on A, but resulting from asubstantial revision of it that includes numerousalterations and added material from handwrittensources. The majority of these come fromSchopenhauer's own copy of A, in which he madeextensive notes. Others come from passages in hismanuscript remains. Working on the assumption thatSchopenhauer was assembling revisions with a view tore-publication, in 1862, two years afterSchopenhauer's death, Julius Frauenstädtincorporated many of these handwritten passages in anew edition, which he described as ‘improved andconsiderably augmented’:

Thereafter various revisions appeared in the versionsof Schopenhauer's complete works under differenteditors, who have not agreed on the placing of allthe handwritten passages. Here we simply followHübscher's decisions. (For a full account of thehandwritten sources, editorial history and list ofvariations across the different editions, seeHübscher, SW 5, 531ff.)

The upshot of this process is that, although, almostwithout exception, all the words in the text we havetranslated are Schopenhauer’s, he never saw apublished German text that resembled the presentedition very closely. Setting aside mereorthographical variations, the incorporatedalterations to A, numbering well over four hundred,are of different kinds: some are small grammaticalor lexical changes, some add emphasis to a point orgive an extra bibliographical reference, somecorrect errors. Others insert substantial materialamounting to whole paragraphs.