The Charles Willson Peale Family Papers, a historical editing project established in 1974 by Lillian B. Miller (1923-1997), is housed at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The project has collected copies of over six thousand documents, spanning three generations of the Peale family from the 1730s to the 1880s. The American Philosophical Society, the repository for most of the original documents of the Peale Family papers, agreed to make its collection available for publication. A desire to make this collection available to scholars as soon as possible led us to first publish a complete microfiche edition, The Collected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family (Kraus Microform, 1980). Afterwards, the project's work turned to the publication of seven large and liberally illustrated volumes for the Selected Papers letterpress edition. Yale University Press agreed to co-publish the volumes in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution. To date, five volumes have been published with a sixth scheduled to appear in 2007 The Peale Family Papers has had the immense good fortune to be housed and largely supported by the Smithsonian Institution. The project has, however, received publication subventions from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and an initial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The methodology of the Charles Willson Peale Family Papers occupies a middle ground in modern editing, between the more highly technical literary editions and those meant for a more popular audience. The editors publish complete Peale documents, not excerpts. The selection process for the four published volumes on Charles Willson Peale revolved around two criteria: the document had to contain an event or subject of historical interest and significance, or it had to maintain the continuity of the Peale family narrative. Volume 5, Charles Willson Peale's autobiography, will be published in its entirety. Selection for volumes 6 and 7 will be a more complex process. The sheer number of documents for Charles Willson Peale's children precludes a straight narrative approach. Instead, as indicated below, the editors will select certain thematic lines for several of the Peale children. Transcriptions published in the letterpress volumes retain original spelling and grammar. However, crossouts are only printed if they are judged to be significant; slips of the pen and simple mistakes are omitted. Interlineations are silently inserted and superscripts brought down to economize on printing costs. Scholars who need to study the actual manuscript may consult the Collected Papers, but they can be assured that the transcriptions in the Selected Papers are reliable and readable.
Annotation in the Selected Papers has been kept to a minimum, but is still on the full side. There are no monographic and lengthy editorial essays, but the volumes contain a liberal number of headnotes and chapter introductions to place in context the diverse interests and pursuits of the Peales. For example, a headnote discussing the development of taxidermy in Europe and America accompanies the document in which Charles Willson Peale describes his own method of preserving museum specimens. With Peale's autobiography, the editors have been more reluctant to interfere with the narrative, and have restricted footnotes to brief identifications and explanations. Still, because Peale was involved in so many activities, the editors have been compelled to cast a wide research net in their annotation.
Publications
Above left: The Peale Family (detail)/ Charles Willson Peale/ Oil on canvas, c.1770-1773/ Image courtesy New-York Historical Society, NYC