A Brief History of Documentary Editing

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The practice of publishing collections of writings, letters, and/or speeches by leading figures dates back to the late eighteenth century and became popular by the mid-nineteenth. Men such as Henry Clay had collections of their speeches published during their lifetimes.

The project that is generally cited as the progenitor of "modern" documentary editing is The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, begun at Princeton University in 1943. When the Jefferson editors presented a copy of their first published volume to Harry Truman in 1951, the president noted that he hoped this work would "inspire educational institutions, learned societies, and civic-minded groups to plan the publication of the works of other great national figures." Truman issued a charge to a section of the National Archives then known as the National Historical Publications Commission (NHPC)-- now the National Historical Publications and Records Commission-- to see what could be done to facilitate the development of other projects.

The NHPC conducted a survey of scholars to identify which historical personalities merited the most consideration and recruited people to serve as editors and set up projects. Most of the ones begun in the 1950s and early 1960s focused on white male political leaders. As the academic disciplines became conscious of more diverse subjects in the late 1960s and the 1970s, documentary work broadened as well.

Work on the modern editions benefited from the advent of microfilming and photocopying, allowing projects to accumulate facsimiles of the original documents that could be consulted whenever necessary. In recent years, the computer has become an invaluable tool, particularly in expediting the publication process.