Brooke Conti
Graduate student in English Literature
Yale University
Thanks to the
Friends of the Princeton University Library, this past summer I received a
one-month grant to conduct research on Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici,
a unique annotated copy of which is held inPrinceton’s
rare book collection. The Religio, a leisurely and apparently
autobiographical meditation upon the relationship between faith and reason, is
Browne’s most well-known work. Less well-known is the fact that the work exists
in three quite different versions written over some seven years: the original
is believed to have been written around 1635 and to have circulated widely in
manuscript copies; at some point Browne revised the work, and this revised
version also circulated in manuscript before appearing in a pirated (and
anonymous) printed edition in 1642. Finally, in 1643, Browne revised the work
yet again, this time for an authorized printed edition that would bear his
name. While the Browne who published the work during the English Civil War is
certainly not the same man who composed it seven years earlier, modern critical
editions of the Religio have collapsed these distinct periods of
Browne’s life by providing either a composite text or a lightly edited version
of the 1643 text (under the assumption that the final version best reflects
Browne’s "real" intentions). Because my work on Browne focuses on his
autobiographical self-representations and their relationship to his religious
beliefs, I have been making a careful study of these three distinct versions of
the work, including those that exist only in manuscript. Therefore, I was
delighted by the opportunity to make a careful examination ofPrinceton’s
copy of the 1642 unauthorized edition, which contains extensive comments,
corrections, and changes in Browne’s handwriting.
Although this copy
appears to have served as the base text for Browne’s 1643 authorized edition,
to my knowledge it has never previously been studied by scholars. Its existence
certainly confirms the long-standing belief that, in preparing his authorized
edition, Browne did not return to an earlier and less corrupted
manuscript copy (as he claims in his authorial preface); however, in examining
this item I was hoping to determine yet more: were there any annotations that Browne
made to his copy that for some reason did not get made in preparing the
authorized version? Does the authorized version show any additional changes not
present in Browne’s annotations? What stage in Browne’s revision process does
this copy represent? Could I ascertain anything about Browne’s attitude toward
the 1642 edition? And, finally, was there any evidence to support or disprove
the speculation, first made by Samuel Johnson, that Browne might have had some
hand in the publication of the earlier and ostensibly pirated edition?
The results of my
investigation, although they did not turn up any smoking guns, did succeed in
filling in some important gaps in the scholarship on the Religio. All of
the annotations inPrinceton’s copy are indeed
reflected in the authorized version of 1643, but not quite all of the new
material that appears in the 1643 version is represented by Browne’s
annotations to the earlier edition. Eight lengthy additions are indicated only
by marginal slash marks at the point of their eventual insertion, suggesting
that Browne either already had composed, or intended soon to compose, these
sections on separate sheets of paper. Fewer in number are a handful of small
but telling alterations (usually of no more than a few words) that seem to be
authorial, but that are not indicated in any way in thePrinceton
copy. These missing changes and additions, combined with the extraordinary
neatness of Browne’s existing corrections, lead me to conjecture that the Princeton
copy represents the penultimate stage in
Browne’s revision process, and that it was probably the copy Browne intended
for the typesetter; additional changes may have been made while the book was in
press. Such multiple stages of revision would be consistent with what we know of
Browne’s writing habits: his next work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, went
through six different printed editions, and there are dozens of extant copies
of these editions that show Browne’s various stages of marginal changes and
corrections.
Although what the Princeton copy of the Religio tells us about
Browne’s habits of revision and composition is certainly valuable, its real
significance emerges only alongside the early manuscript editions of the work.
Taken together, the three successive editions of the Religio show Browne
nervously revising his self-presentation and trying to cover his tracks on a
number of controversial issues. Although the Religio has long been read
as the expression of a tolerant and playful personality, the earliest edition
indicates that Browne was actually preoccupied with a number of heresies and
heterodoxies and trying hard to reassure himself of his own orthodoxy. With
each set of revisions Browne seems to be working to smooth out the edges of his
self-portrait, and though the Princeton copy is nearly the last stage in this
process, the same anxieties are legible in his deletions of passages such as
those that deal with the Trinity in what he may have felt was too uncertain or
fanciful a manner.
My revisionist
reading of the Religio forms one chapter of my dissertation (which I
hope soon to revise for publication), but the research that I have done along
the way and the textual difficulties that I have encountered have also inspired
a new project: a parallel-text edition of the Religio that would allow
scholars to compare the various versions of the work at the same time and in
the same location. My grant through the Friends of the Princeton University
Library has proven vital to both projects, and I am grateful to the Friends,
and especially to the unfailingly helpful Meg Rich, for making Princeton’s resources
so accessible and for making me so
welcome among the library’s collections, readers, and staff.
27 September2005
libraryf@princeton.edu
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