The publishing of a critical edition begins, first and foremost, with choosing one of Santayana’s texts to become a critical edition: or in the case of his letters or marginalia, which texts are going to become part of the critical edition. The ultimate goal is to publish all of his work in a twenty-volume critical edition format. Our illustrations of the process throughout this explanation will come from The Life of Reason: Reason in Science from the Life of Reason series.
There are many printed forms in which Reason in Science appears. The stemma below shows the progress of Reason in Science through its publishing history. In the case of Reason in Science a manuscript also exists that must be considered along with the multiple published versions. While there may be other pre-printed forms of other works published by George Santayana, the issue with Reason in Science is that the only surviving pre-printed version of the text is a partial manuscript.
