About
On a basic, practical level this website has been set up to publish transcriptions of several “Tom Collins” novels that have so far escaped digitisation. It grows out of my work as a scholarly editor and book historian. I established the Joseph Furphy Digital Archive on AustLit as a first step towards a comprehensive digital resource for the study of a writer who is a central figure in Australia’s literary history. AustLit’s bibliographical foundations provide a reliable structure on which to assemble and connect the disparate digital resources available to students and scholars. New editions (digital or print), wherever they reside, can be quickly recorded within this open-ended bibliographical assembly. This works well with slow, long-term, open-ended projects like the Joseph Furphy Digital Archive.
Until now, an unabridged version of Rigby’s Romance has not been available online. Because of a preference for first editions in digitisation projects, ‘Tom Collins’ Rigby’s Romance has only been available in its abridged form – it was first published in book form in 1921, nine years after Furphy’s death. In 1905-1906 it had appeared in print as a serial in the Broken Hill newspaper the Barrier Miner, three years after it, along with another chapter from Such is Life, had been extracted from the longer typescript version. An unabridged version was not available in book form until 1946 when Guy Howarth prepared an edition based on the newspaper serial. This complicated material and textual situation informed the development of the AustESE WorkBench, and this platform was meant to support the publication of Rigby’s Romance, but AustESE is currently hibernating on GitHub due to a lack of ongoing financial and infrastructural support. Similarly, due to limited opportunities in the academy, I have conducted much of this work as an independent scholar with occasional and limited access to institutional support and funding. Sustainability is always an issue. But a scholarly editor’s work must go on and so a workable alternative to these resources had to be found.
When Ed was released in 2016 a ready-made platform for publishing simple digital scholarly editions became available. Based on minimal computing principals, with boiler plate pages easily adapted for new projects, Ed offers just enough to publish transcriptions of texts online in a simple yet attractive presentation. This has been a primary goal for Tom Collins and Company. The static website supported by the Ed platform also provides a suitable environment for a secondary goal: collaborative annotation. This is made possible with Hypothesis open scholarly annotation. This version of Rigby’s Romance will undergo a period of collaborative annotation to complete the trilogy of annotated editions that began with The Annotated Such is Life and The Buln-buln and the Brolga.
This website need not remain one devoted only to “Tom Collins”. As a test-case, Rigby’s Romance will provide a model for future publication of texts that have escaped digitisation. Tom Collins and Company plans to publish Australian texts from multiple contributors with an aim to generate a series of annotated editions of classic and not-so-classic Australian texts. By providing reliable texts and associated annotation, repurposed through innovative discovery tools, Tom Collins and Company aims, ultimately, to foster engagement with Australian literature, and to encourage the reading of Australian classics.
Dr Roger Osborne, Editor
November 2016