Strafe: Create your own edition

Stage III: Create your own edition

You have now had an opportunity to look at all manuscripts and typescripts, and should have reached a decision on which one is to be your base manuscript. Your task now is to create the edition itself.

Before you start, use the above tabs to:

Familiarise yourself with transcription notation
Read through our brief example edition

Use the below manuscripts, this time with their diplomatic transcripts alongside, to create an edition. You should start with the transcript of your base manuscript and then make appropriate edits, ensuring to note the different manuscript variations at the bottom, to create an edition of the poem you think suits best.

When looking at the manuscripts you think MS B is the ‘base manuscript’ the nearest to the final version the poet managed. Select MS B and on the right hand panel you will see a diplomatic transcription where everything on the manuscript is recorded. Copy and paste the text into a word-processor. Now, using the methods outlined in ‘Diplomatic Transcripts’ and ‘Example Edition’ work through the other manuscripts – starting with MS A – and record down any things that are different (‘variants’). Think of the following questions:

Does any of it make you question your choice of base manuscript?
Piecing it together can you suggest an order in which the manuscripts were written?
What does it tell you about the poet and how they wrote a poem, how much thought they put into words and phrases?
What did they change and why?

When you are finished working through all the manuscripts and recording the variants you will have created your own edition of this famous poem! You can then scroll below to compare to the published edition.

Browse Diplomatic Transcripts of Strafe

(5) Strafe (2)

The "crumps" \are/ falling twenty to the
                       minute.
We crouch, and wait the end
           of it, - or us.
Just behind the trench, before,
           and in it,
The "crumps" are falling twenty
                   to the minute;
(O Framilode! O Maisemore's
               laughing linnet!)
Here comes a monster like a
               motorbus.
The "crumps" are falling twenty
           to the minute:
We crouch and wait the end
       of it-or us.

Stage IV: Compare your edition

You can now compare your edition with the published one that appeared in Severn & Somme in November, 1917

Strafe

The "crumps" are falling twenty to the minute.
We crouch, and wait the end of it - or us.
Just behind the trench, before, and in it,
The "crumps" are falling twenty to the minute;
(O Framilode! O Maisemore's laughing linnet!)
Here comes a monster like a motor-bus.
The "crumps" are falling twenty to the minute:
We crouch and wait the end of it-or us.

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