The Critical Edition

The volumes of The Works of George Santayana are unmodernized, critical editions of George Santayana’s published and unpublished writings. An “unmodernized” edition retains outdated and idiosyncratic punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and word division in order to reflect the full intent of the author as well as the initial texture of the work. A “critical” edition allows the exercise of editorial judgment in making corrections, changes, and choices among authoritative readings.

The goal of the editors is to produce texts that accurately represent Santayana’s final intentions regarding his works, and to record all evidence (in textual apparatus that lists all variants and emendations) on which editorial decisions have been based.

Members of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, especially John Lachs, were responsible for the creation of a critical edition of George Santayana’s published works. The edition was originally located at the University of Tampa from 1977 to 1985. In 1985, the project moved to Texas A&M University and relocated again to IUPUI in 1999. The project focused its energy on the letters, (an endeavor begun by Daniel Cory, Santayana’s literary executor in the late 1960s), after the publication of The Last Puritan in 1994.

The Works of George Santayana is published by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.