Some posts earlier today where there was a disagreement on the proper citation from Wellington’s Dispatches led me to go over something I used to know but had departed my senile brain. I also have just had a discussion with my Editor about how to properly reference Wellington’s Dispatches. So, here is the problem.
The typical way of doing it is to cite volume and page number. This does not work because the original set published from 1834 is 12 volumes and there is also a later ‘New and Enlarged’ 8 volume set. So, you would need to be clear whether you are citing the original 12 volume set or the later 8 volume set. Ok so far?
Right, now it gets complicated. There are actually two versions of the 12 volume set. The original volumes 1-9 were published 1834-1837 and the final three volumes, 10-12 were published in 1838. BUT, the original nine volumes were also republished between 1837-8 with additional information, so the page numbering has changed. These new versions now had additional words on the title page ‘A New Edition’. So you cannot cite the 12 volume version unless you specify if you are using the original versions or the ‘A New Edition’ versions.
You cannot assume that the same information is in each of the different versions and editions. There is more stuff in ‘A New Edition’ than there is in the original. There is much more material in the ‘New and Enlarged’ edition than there is in either of the 12 volume versions. BUT, you cannot assume that the ‘New and Enlarged’ edition has all the material in the 12 volume edition, because some material has been removed from the later, ‘New and Enlarged’ edition. Case in point is what started this note. Tom Holberg quoting Donald Horward quoting Despatches on Wellington writing that Portuguese civilians who did not abandon their homes in 1810 would be hung. It is in the 12 volume versions (both) but not in the later 8 volume edition. My guess is that it was removed because Wellington was wrong to say it; it was not correct and certainly not diplomatic.
Finally, there is another complication and even I have lost the will to live now. There are two versions of the 8 volume set. They were first published in the 1840’s and called ‘An Enlarged Edition in 8 volumes’. I think they are the same as the later ‘New and Enlarged’ 1852 versions but so far I have only found volume 1 and that is the same.
If you have got this far – well done. The clever readers will have skipped straight to the end for the point of this note.
If you are citing from Wellington’s Despatches, you need to look very carefully at the title page to be clear about which version you are looking at and state it clearly in your bibliography. I argued successfully with my Editor (thanks Andrew) that it is better to put the source, recipient, location and date of the letter. It gives the reader a fighting chance of finding the letter whichever edition / version of despatches they have access to. Citing the volume and page number is not actually very helpful.
Finally don’t blame me, blame Gurwood and the Second Duke.
I know that it consumes space, but it really is helpful if you can cite the details of the letter, not just volume and page number. So if you see a note that says 'Wellington to Henry Wellesley, Viseu, 8 April 1810 WD IV p 11-12' you have a chance of finding the letter quite easily in whatever edition of the Dispatches you are using (or the manuscripts), unless it is a letter that does not appear in all the editions - and that's only a small minority of the letters. But if the note just says WD IV p 11-12 and you are using a different edition of the Dispatches you will have really difficulty finding the letter to which the author is referring.
Of course, even this isn't fool proof, as Wellington often wrote several letters to the same person on the same day on different subjects, so it might happen that historian A cites a letter as above for a piece of information and historian B comes along, looks in a different edition of the Dispatches, finds a letter from Wellington to the same recipient, same date, that doesn't say what historian A claims it says, and thinks that historian A is making it up as they go along! To be fair this is pretty hypothetical - I don't think I've ever actually encountered this problem - but it is theoretically possible.
Is also important to note an edition of the Index to the Dispatches (a book with 3 volumes) in 1839, that starts with the text:
A new edition of this work having been called for after Volume VIII was published, the Dispatches, irregularly printed in the First Edition of Volumes I. to VIII., were placed in the New Edition of those Volumes, according to their respective dates. Volumes IX. to XII. combine both Editions. The dates, therefore, in this Index have reference to both Editions, whereas, the paging has reference to the New Edition only of Volumes I. to VIII., but to the combined Editions of Volumes IX. to XII.
There are three separate Indexes of the twelve Volumes; No. 1. of Volumes I. to III., relating to India; No. 2. Volumes IV. to XI., relating to the Peninsula and the South of France; and No. 3. Volume XII., relating to the Low Countries, Waterloo, and Paris.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.81358/
Could you link to their location (i.e. archive.org or hathitrust or whatever) rather than having them downloaded directly from the site? Either way, a central point of reference would be brilliant.
A really useful post Mark, thanks. I have the 12 vol 1838 edition on PDF - presumably vols 10-12 don't have New Edition on the title page? Is it worth getting the 8 vol set as well?
@Zack White A really useful page for the site would be links to downloads of all the editions as it can be a minefield sourcing them.
Could you not just put all the versions consulted in the Bibliography and refer to them with various different abbreviations (e.g. WD 1st ed.; WD rev. ed.; etc.) and have a list of abbreviations? There must be a way of doing this without using too much of your word count or confusing the reader too much...!
This is a really interesting problem. Up until very recently, I used to get around the problem by citing the original letters in the Wellington Papers (this is my equivalent of being a spoilt brat, in the sense that being at Southampton Uni, where the papers are held, I could access them with relative ease). Recently though, I was advised that its better for the sake of the wider reader to refer to the published versions in Despatches (unless the letter never appeared). Trying to locate a comprehensive set of digitised despatches is almost impossible because of this precise problem where the volumes don't overlap because of multiple versions existing (and of course being a destitute PhD student means that I can't splash out on a printed version).
Surely the solution is to cite the precise dates of publication in the bibliography (as you have done above) and to add a note somewhere explaining the difficulty (perhaps at the beginning of the bibliography, or as a separate 'Note on Sources')? The whole point of citing is to allow anyone else to follow up your research, so consistency and clarity would be key. With that in mind I agree with you that it's best not to get too involved at the footnote level, but at the same time it would probably be best up front to say something like 'In the footnotes, WD are cited in the following manner because XYZ'. Is that possible?
Being an 1815 fanatic, please tell me that there are not the same problems with the Supplementary Dispatches?
This is similar to a problem I have encountered with Marengo. Fortunately, most of the key Austrian documents were collected and typed up by a guy called Huffer, but there is additional material that is either legible or I can extract some useful info, usually with the help of Michael Wenzel. But how do you cite that - while Huffer is a transcription, he might have made a mistake and I hadn’t read the original document. The best answer seemed to be to make a general note saying most of the material was Huffer, but to still use the document citation, adding that actual original docs would be indicated differently.
So, presumably you are mainly working from the most extensive set, so say that is where they have generally come from and then annotate the smaller groups differently?