Autobiography by Proxy; Or, Pastiche as Prologue: Review of Lincoln on Lincoln; Franklin on Franklin; Jefferson on Jefferson; Washington on Washington; Adams on Adams edited by Paul M. Zall

Authors

James E. Guba, Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia

Date of this Version

Spring 2004

Document Type

Article

Citation

Documentary Editing, Volume 26, Number 1, Spring 2004. ISSN 0196-7134

Comments

2004 © the Association for Documentary Editing. Used by permission.

Abstract

Paul M. Zall, professor emeritus of English at California State University at Los Angeles and research scholar at the Huntington Library, has taken up Washington's invitation "to posterity to think & say what they please" by completing "autobiographies" left unfinished or never written by several preeminent Americans. He is perhaps best known as one of the editors, together with J. A. Leo Lemay, of the Center for Editions of American Authors' approved genetic text and subsequent critical edition of Franklin's Autobiography (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981; New York: Norton, 1986). The prolific Dr. Zall has also built upon his study of early modern English jestbooks to produce several collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American witticisms and humorous sketches. In a series of imaginative and entertaining volumes for the University Press of Kentucky, the editor and the anecdotalist meet.