A Selective Bibliography for Textual Criticism of Manuscripts

Caveat lector: This page is under construction. This bibliography is useful only to about 2000 and highly selective till then. (HND)

"If you have a collection of complex verbal artifacts and wish to preserve them intact over a couple of millennia, you would be well advised not to entrust them to repeated manual copying; the experiment has been tried, and the results are not encouraging. From the Renaissance onward scholars have invested untold learning and imagination in the attempt to locate, and if possible to correct, the defects of the manuscript traditions of ancient authors. The industry continues."
Malcolm Heath, "The Corruptions of Copyists and Classicists." TLS (January 11, 1991): 18.

"It would not be true to say that all conservative scholars are stupid, . . . but it is very near the truth to say that all stupid scholars are conservative."
A. E. Housman, Lucanus, xxvii.