Abstract

For most editors and editorial theorists, texts published in periodicals function primarily as points on a work’s production history, meaningful for how they demonstrate continuities with and differences from other versions of the work. This article argues for the periodical text as meriting fuller editorial consideration on its own terms, in line with the fundamental differences inhering in the experience of reading a magazine versus a book. The essay concludes with a proposal to understand periodicals as a particular kind of work.