The Complete Works of George Herbert

FAIN: RQ-279788-21

Northern Michigan University (Marquette, MI 49855-2818)
Robert Whalen (Project Director: December 2020 to present)

Preparation for print publication of three volumes, along with the corresponding digital components, of the complete works of George Herbert (1593-1633), including translations of Herbert’s Latin and Greek works. (36 months)

GEORGE HERBERT: COMPLETE WORKS (GHCW) is a comprehensive scholarly edition under contract with Oxford University Press: three print volumes, with extensive textual and critical apparatus, and including original verse and prose translations of Herbert’s Latin and Greek works. Complementing the print edition is a parallel-text digital resource that captures all witnesses as archive-quality images presented alongside diplomatic transcriptions. The edited texts, apparatus, and translations are reserved for the print edition, while the digital complement captures the full textual record as a dynamic and robust searchable archive, preserving the whole of Herbert’s oeuvre for future generations of scholars, students, and general readers. The $300,000 in NEH funds sought here represent roughly 41% of the project’s total costs. The editors’ institutions are committed to providing the remaining 59%.

Associated Products

Cestus Responds to Æthiopissa (Article)
Title: Cestus Responds to Æthiopissa
Author: Robert Whalen
Abstract: Yale Osborn MS. b 197 includes a neglected witness, one of six, to George Herbert’s “Æthiopissa ambit Cestum Diuersi Coloris Virum,” followed by the only known copy of a twenty-two-line reply, “Cesti ad Æthiopissam Responsio.” This latter cannot be said with any certainty to be Herbert’s; it is nevertheless a fascinating rejoinder to perhaps the most un-Herbertian of his poems. This paper provides edited texts, original translations, and apparatus; a description of the manuscript; and consideration of arguments for and against attributing the new poem to Herbert.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v44i1.37045
Primary URL Description: Direct link to the article.
Access Model: Open
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme
Publisher: Iter Press (New York and Toronto)

Restoring a Deleted Note in Valdesso's _Considerations_ (Article)
Title: Restoring a Deleted Note in Valdesso's _Considerations_
Author: Robert Whalen
Abstract: Misled by marginal notes declaring as French in origin two commentaries in the 1638 Herbert/Ferrar edition of Valdesso's _Considerations_, F. E. Hutchinson neglected to include in his _Works of George Herbert_ (1941) what appears to be Herbertian material after all. Examining the English _Considerations_ in light of the three late sixteenth-century French editions, this article finds the note for the commentary on Consideration 65 to be especially doubtful. The argument includes brief consideration of the French and English theological contexts, and provides an edited text of Consideration 65 together with its (very likely) Herbertian commentary.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1353/ghj.2018.0006
Access Model: Open
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: George Herbert Journal
Publisher: George Herbert Journal

Neglected Witnesses to George Herbert's _Musæ Responsoriæ_, and a Previously Unpublished Poem, "Wren cum Chirothecis" (Article)
Title: Neglected Witnesses to George Herbert's _Musæ Responsoriæ_, and a Previously Unpublished Poem, "Wren cum Chirothecis"
Author: Luke Roman
Author: Robert Whalen
Abstract: This article considers three manuscript witnesses to the _Musæ Responsoriæ_, George Herbert’s answer to Andrew Melville’s polemical poem _Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria_. None of these, two of them complete copies, was known to Herbert’s first modern editor, F. E. Hutchinson, nor are they mentioned in any of the several subsequent editions of Herbert’s Latin verse, all of which follow Hutchinson’s sole source, the 1662 _Ecclesiastes Solomonis_ of James Duport. In addition to providing descriptions of their contents and provenance, we survey the substantive variants and accidentals pertaining to the two complete copies and argue why one in particular will supplant Duport as copy-text for the new edition of Herbert’s works currently in progress for Oxford University Press. Our essay also presents a hitherto unknown Latin epigram that appears in the other complete copy and considers evidence for attributing the poem to the author of _The Temple_.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2023.0008
Secondary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/885826
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Studies in Philology
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

George Herbert: Complete Works (Volume I, English Prose) (Book)
Title: George Herbert: Complete Works (Volume I, English Prose)
Editor: Christopher Hodgkins
Editor: Robert Whalen
Abstract: The complete English prose of George Herbert, seventeenth-century poet, priest, University of Cambridge Orator, and author of _The Temple_. This first of three volumes for Oxford Scholarly Editions includes newly edited texts alongside extensive textual and critical apparatus.
Year: 2025
Primary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/george-herbert-complete-works-9780192855053?q=9780192855053&cc=us&lang=en
Primary URL Description: Oxford University Press book catalogue
Access Model: Purchase only
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780192855053
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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