This original and authoritative book offers a first-ever attempt to define a poetics of the editing arts. It proposes a new field of editing studies, in which the ¿ideal editor¿ can be understood in relation to the long-theorised author and reader. The book¿s premise is that editing, like other forms of ¿making¿, is mostly invisible and can only be brought into full view through a comparative analysis that includes the insights of practitioners. The argument, laid down in careful layers, is supported by a panoramic historical narrative that tracks the shifts in textual authority from religious and secular institutions to the romanticised self of the digital