On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Robert Hirst wrote:

> Much is made in the introductory material to Mr. Shapiro's book about
> the extensive use of electronic searching to make this a very
> thorough and comprehensive collection of quotations. That is all the
> more reason to regret his failure, here and elsewhere, to cite the
> source of information he supplies in this way. The words used in this
> case are so close to the source that I have no doubt what the source
> is, and no doubt that Mr. Shapiro knows, or should know, what it is.
> Why not say it?

This is a very perceptive comment, and I will try to answer it as honestly
as I can.

Mr. Hirst is referring, I think, to the fact that in The Yale Book of
Quotations I generally did not give a precise bibliographic source for
letters and speeches.  (Similar points could be made that I did not
generally give page numbers for quotations from books, periodicals, etc.
and did not generally cite to specific standard editions of older works.)
This was a conscious and difficult decision driven by preferences of the
publisher and my own desire to make this a popular work that would reach a
wider audience than, say, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.  The result
is a book that is based on more profound research than the ODQ and
Bartlett's but that, to some extent, hides the full results of the
research and creates difficulties for readers wanting to check on the
original source. Another way to put it is that my book is based on
research somewhat comparable to that of the Oxford English Dictionary, but
without the full citations characteristic of the OED.

The situation described above is a bit painful for me -- I am more of a
historian at heart than a student of literature, and, as the leading
contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, I am very aware of the
importance of precise sourcing -- but there it is.  The tradeoff was that
scholars will be slightly inconvenienced but the truth about many
important quotations will be promulgated more widely than would have been
the case if I had created a more pedantic-looking work.

I am concerned enough about scholarly accuracy that in reading Mr. Hirst's
posting I focused on his implication above that the words I use in the
"Paris" quotation are not precisely correct.  Looking at the electronic
Twain letters edition I see that my text is slightly different from what
is given there.  In my defense let me say that I got my text from a Mark
Twain Papers-derived article in Bancroftiana, Nov. 1981!  But I am happy
to improve the quotation in my next edition.  I would welcome any other
suggestions for improvements from Mr. Hirst or others on this list.  I do
list the Mark Twain Papers in my acknowledgments, and I appreciate the
help I received from them, directly and indirectly.  I am sorry that the
policies I describe above deny some credit to the Mark Twain Papers in
the citations.

Fred Shapiro