Submissions Information

Topics

Studies focused intensively on a single text or work of art are quite appropriate if also affording broad interdisciplinary interest; however, studies of single works are not encouraged, if likely to appeal only to very specialized interests.

Successful submissions to NCS are typically characterized by their authors having “done their homework.” With due allowance for the commonly recognized proportions of a journal article, authors should demonstrate in their arguments and documentation that they have thoroughly paid respect to fellow workers in a given field. Even then, authors whose articles are accepted should expect copious suggestions for revision and augmentation from readers and the editorial staff.

From the initial stage of submission to final revisions of accepted essays, authors should always bear in mind that the audience of NCS is truly interdisciplinary. Readers are professional scholars, committed to study of the nineteenth century in all its aspects, but not necessarily sharing training in the field of a given contributor. We look therefore for essays that make original contributions to their respective fields, while managing also to make that scholarship available to a broader audience. Both aims may be achieved only after a substantial review and editing process, but the potential should be present in a submission from the start.

Submission Requirements

The expected length of feature essays ranges between 8,000 and 10,000 words, including notes. Terser treatments of 5,000–8,000 words are welcome, as are more extensively documented essays up to approximately 12,000 words, although very long submissions will be scrutinized for excess baggage.

Review essays typically discuss at least three texts, usually several more. They should therefore be no shorter than about 2,500 words and can run much longer, depending on the number of books discussed. Unusually long review contributions should be cleared with the editor. Electronic sources reviews form a special case: owing to the forum format of that feature, those contributions may be briefer than 2,500 words.

1. General

The documentation system used by NCS is what the Chicago Manual calls “the documentary-note or humanities style” (14th ed., sec. 15.2, p. 493) – as opposed to an “author-date system” or something like that recommended by the MLA Handbook. (A somewhat revised overview is provided in 15th ed., secs. 16.1–17.7, pp. 594–96.) In NCS, all documentation is provided in notes, and works-cited lists are nowhere printed.

For example, whereas MLA recommends:

Brian Taves suggests some interesting conclusions regarding the philosophy and politics of the adventure film (153–54, 171).

backed up by an entry in a works-cited list that reads:

Taves, Brian. The Romance of Adventure. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1993.

NCS prefers:

Brian Taves suggests some interesting conclusions regarding the philosophy and politics of the adventure film.¹

accompanied by a note that reads:

1. See Brian Taves, The Romance of Adventure (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), 153–54, 171.

To take another example, when following strict author-date style, a quotation would be documented as follows:

Michel Foucault, for example, describes the discourse of confession as an “internal ruse,” an “immense labor to which the West has submitted generations in order to produce . . . men’s subjection” (1978, 60).

backed up by a reference-list entry that reads:

Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon.

NCS prefers:

Michel Foucault, for example, describes the discourse of confession as an “internal ruse,” an “immense labor to which the West has submitted generations in order to produce . . . men’subjection.”²

accompanied by a note that reads:

2. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 60.

2. Exceptions

In certain instances, it is permissible to give page numbers for certain primary sources in the text instead of in notes. Take, for example, an article on Villette. The first time the novel is quoted in the text a note identifying the edition used should be provided:

3. Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853), ed. Mark Lilly (New York: Penguin, 1979), 40 (chap. 6). Page (and chapter) numbers for subsequent quotations will be given parenthetically in the text.

Then, page numbers for subsequent quotations can be given in the text as follows:

Lucy insists that her “confession” is not a revelation of sin but simply the acknowledgement of her silent sufferings: “I said, I was perishing for a word of advice or an accent of comfort . . . . I had a pressure of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly any longer endure the weight” (p. 33 [chap. 5]).

It should be noted, however, that such a citation strategy is reserved for situations where only one or two texts, and a very large number of citations of each, are involved.

3. Inclusive Page Numbers

Given that scholars are increasingly forced to rely on interlibrary loan to obtain their research materials, NCS has adopted the policy of always providing inclusive page numbers, not just for journal articles, but also for essays in collections – for anything, in fact, that is a part of a larger whole (newspaper and magazine articles, forewords and afterwords, introductions and epilogues, etc.). If inclusive page numbers have not been provided in the version of the essay that is submitted for copyediting, they will be queried during the copyediting process.

Should the first citation of, say, a journal article be, not just a journal reference, but documentation for a quote, the note citation should be set up as follows (with inclusive page numbers first, then the page number for the quote):

4. Kate Lawson, “Reading Desire: Villette as Heretic Narrative,”English Studies in Canada 17 (March 1991): 53–71, 53.

4. Subsequent Citations

Subsequent citations of a work should use both the author’s last name and a short title. A subsequent citation of, for example, the Foucault book used as an examle in sec. 1 above might read:

5. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 69.

While NCS style allows the use of ibid., it does not allow idem, op., cit., or loc. cit. Please note also that ibid. can only be used only to refer to a single work cited in the note immediately preceding. It should not be used if more than one work is given in the preceeding note. Ibid. takes the place of both the author’s name and the title of the work as well as as much of the succeeding material as is identical. It may, therefore, in many cases be used to repeat the complete preceeding citation.

5. Divisions Within Works

Because not all readers are likely to have on hand the same edition of, say, David Copperfield, In Memoriam A.H.H., Past and Present, or Biographia Literaria that is used in a particular NCS essay, chapter, section, or other subdivision numbers should be supplied along with page numbers when documenting quotations from primary sources:

6. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1849-1850), ed. Trevor Blount (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 49 (bk. 1, chap. 1).

Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), in The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks (London: Longmans, Green, 1969), 907 (sec. 51, lines 5–8).

Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843), with an introduction by Douglas Jerrold (London: Dent/Everyman’s, 1960), 230 (bk. 4, chap. 1.).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions (1817), ed., with an introduction by, George Watson (1956; reprint, with additions and corrections, London: Dent, 1974), 16–17 (vol. 1, chap. 2).

6. Secondhand References

NCS prefers to avoid secondhand references. As far as possible, quotations should be taken from original sources. And, even if the original source cannot be obtained, complete publication information for that original source should be provided, along with information about the source from which the citation is taken:

10. Anonymous account from L'Ami de la religion 151 (March 1851): 14, quoted in Joseph C. Sloane, Paul Marc Joseph Chenavard: Artist of 1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 121.

The Citation of Online Material

The findings of recent studies of the longevity of Internet citations are sobering. For example, a study of “more than 1000 articles published between 2000 and 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Science” found that, “in articles 27 months old, 13% of Internet references were inactive” (Robert P. Dellaville, “Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References,” Science 302, no. 5646 [31 October 2003]: 787–88, 787 [Abstract]). The problem is, of course, that the scholarly community tends to treat Internet sources as if they are permenant, when, in fact, many are ephemeral. Without prejudicing Internet sources, NCS would like to ensure that the documentation offered in its pages is as useful as possible for as long as possible. To that end, we request that our authors observe the following guidelines.

In cases in which both print and online versions of a primary or secondary source exist, an electronic citation alone will suffice if the reader can easily find the passage in question in the print version (e.g., alphabetized resources such as the DNB and the Encyclopedia Britannica):

6. On the significance of Jevons for economic thought, see Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Jevons, William Stanley,” http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9043592 (accessed 5 January 2006).

If a citation solely to an online version makes the passage in question difficult to find in the print version, a double citation is preferred, e.g.:

7. Sally Mitchell, Dinah Mulock Craik (Boston: Twayne, 1983), 110, available online at http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/craik/mitchell (accessed 7 January 2007).

In cases in which a text (especially a primary text) is available both in print and electronically but the presentations do not merely replicate one another, we must make a judgment about what form of citation best serves the reader. That choice should above all be governed by quality of editing and presentation, and authors should be prepared to justify their choice of sources, whether print or electronic. A legitimate component of that justification may be convenience, which often draws authors to free online sources. The benefit of convenience can, however, be illusory, especially when a link comes up dead. Quality of editing being equal, sources can be cited solely in electronic or solely in print form, as long as chapter (or other subdivision) numbers are supplied, enabling the reader to find the passage in question easily enough in any form. If the source is not conveniently provided, then the citation of both electronic and print sources is helpful.

8. Samples

NCS follows Chicago Manual style for the documentation provided in notes. Samples of the more common types of entries follow. Further guidance may be obtained by consulting secs. 15.77–15.425, pp. 529–635, of the 14th ed. of the Chicago Manual (or chap. 17 of the 15th ed.).

8.1. Journal Articles

Jean M. Humez, “‘Ye Are My Epistles’: The Construction of Ann Lee Imagery in Early Shaker Sacred Literature,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 8, no. 1 (summer 1992): 83–103.

Wayne C. Booth, “Amateur Pleasures,” Daedalus, no. 73 (March 1999): 21–37. [for journals that carry issue numbers instead of volume numbers]

8.2. Magazine/Newspaper Articles

Charles Hopkins, “The Shakers,”Regenerator 1 (8 February 1841): 116–17.

Nathan Lane, “At Home with Irene Ryan,” Newsweek, 14 May 1973, 77–79.

Bob Woodward, “A Decade After Nixon,” Washington Post, 27 September 1984, A2, A10– A12

8.3. Essays in Collections

David Brion Davis, “The American Family and Boundaries in Historical Perspective,” in Dying or Developing? The American Family, 1660–1960, ed. David Reiss and Howard A. Hoffman (New York: Plenum, 1979), 1–20.

8.4. Books

Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Alfred Sisley, Selected Letters, ed. Franz Kline (New York: International, 1978).

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961), trans. Richard Howard (New York: Pantheon, 1965; reprint, London: Routledge, 2001).

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983; rev. ed., London: Verson, 1991).

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, 10 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909-14).

S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, vol. 7 of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).

8.5. Letters

William Wordsworth to Joseph Cottle, London, 29 June 1799, in The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 42.

8.6. Conference Papers, Dissertations, Etc.

James Clark, “The Orangery at Kew” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, New Orleans, 29 December 2001).

Toby Jenkins, “Serialized Fiction in Household Words” (paper presented at the conference “New Directions in Victorian Fiction,” Georgetown University, 17 February 1996).

James Worthington, “The Last Years of the Oxford Movement” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, Department of English, 1988).

N.W. Claiborne, “An Anatomy of Nineteenth-Century Fiction” (Columbia University, Department of English, 2001, typescript). [i.e., for an unpublished manuscript, a date and the author's institutional affiliation should be provided]

9. Dates

9.1 Supplying Dates of People, Works, Events, Etc.

Because NCS is a period journal and interdisciplinary – publishing in areas such as art history in which dates are crucial for identifying works under discussion – we routinely identify life dates of nineteenth-century figures and dates of works and events. Context determines what dates are cited – of composition or publication, in the case of literary works; of composition, first performance, or publication, in the case of musical works; of design, erection, and/or destruction, in the case of buildings – so long as the choice is made clear and relevant.

9.2 Form of Citing Dates

NCS gives dates in the order day, month, year, (not month, day, year), e.g.:
28 January 1956.

10. Foreign-Language Quotations

In essays concerned more than in passing with sources in languages other than English, NCS prefers to quote both in the original and in translation. We leave the order to the author's discretion, literary analysis perhaps awarding primacy to the original, with the translation following. Whichever order is followed, the basic forms follow.

10.1. English Translation in Text, Original-Language Text In Note

For example, at the end of En route, Durtal claims: “I am condemned to live apart from my fellows, for I am still too much of a literary man to make a monk, and yet I am already too much of a monk to remain among literary men.”¹⁴

14. “[E]t me voici condamné à vivre dépareillé, car je suis encore trop homme de lettres pour faire un moine et je suis cependant déjà trop moine pour rester parmi less gens de lettres” (J.-K. Huysmans, En route [Paris: Plon, 1961], 380 [chap. 9]).

10.2. Both Translation and Original-Language Version in the Text

a) Independent clauses:

Already in Fontenay, he remembers his previous abode and, in particular, an ornament he had attached to the ceiling in order to be reminded of his unfortunate childhood at Lourps: “Thus, out of loathing and contempt for his childhood, he had hung from the ceiling of this room a little cage of silver wire, in which a captive cricket sang, just as the crickets had sung among the cinders and on the hearths of the Château de Lourps” (AN, 10 [chap. 1]). (“Ainsi, par haine, par mépris de son enfance, il avait pendu au plafond de cette pièce une petite cage en fil d’argent ou un grillon enfermé chantait comme dans les cendres des cheminées du château de Lourps” [Ar, 69-70].)

b) Non-independent clauses:

There remains only one visible proof of continuity, the portrait of “an inscrutable, wily face, its features lifeless and drawn, with cheekbones accentuated by a dash of rouge, thickly pomaded hair intertwined with pearls, and a taut, white-painted neck emerging from the goffers of a highly starched ruff” (AN, 3; “une tête mystérieuse et rusée aux traits morts et tirés, aux pommettes ponctuées d’une virgule de fard, aux cheveux gommés et enroulés de perles, au col tendu et peint, sortant des cannelures d'une rigide fraise” [Ar, 61]).

c) Quotations long enough to be set off as extracts:

. . . Descriptions of life with the parents are rendered literally obscure by an obstinate use of dim light and limited movement accentuated by theatrically deliberate posing:

                    [H]is mother he remembered as lying motionless in a dark room
                    in the Château de Lourps. Only rarely did husband and wife meet,
                    and of those occassions he recalled lacklustre encounters, with the
                    father and the mother seated opposite one other before a table lit
                    only by a lamp with a large, very deep shade. (AN, 4).

                    ([S]a mère il se la rappelait, immobile et couchée, dans une chambre
                    obscure du château de Lourps. Rarement,le mari et la femme étaient
                    réunis, et de ces jours-là, il se remémorait des entrevues décolorées,
                    le père et la mère assis, en face l’un de l’autre, devant un guéridon qui
                    était seul éclairé par une lampe au grand abat-jour très baissé. [Ar, 62])

Des Esseintes’s biological affinities with his parents significantly undermined, the possibility of intellectual kinship is entirely rejected owing to a serious lack of communication . . . .

10.3. Both Translation and Original-Language Version in the Notes

a) Translation (in this case the author's own) in body proper of note, original-language text in parentheses following documentation:

Daniel Grojnowski notes: “[Des Esseintes] applies himself to the transformation of his entire existence into a work of art. He fashions it as such, isolated from the world, autonomous, and posits it as a full-fledged reality: a devised reality, a written reality, which readjusts the declaration of faith of ‘The Experimental Novel’” (Le Sujet d’ “A rebours” [Villeneuve d’Ascq (Nord): Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1996], 96–97; “[Des Esseintes] s’applique . . . à faire de son existence tout entière une oeuvre d’art. Il l’élabore comme telle, coupée du monde extérieur, autonome, et il la pose comme un réel à part entière: réalité concertée, réalité écrite qui réajuste les professions de foi du Roman expérimental”).

b) Note consisting of nothing but translation and original:

18. “His family hardly paid him any attention; sometimes his father would visit him at his boarding school: ‘Hallo, goodbye, be a good boy, work hard.’ He spent the summer holidays at the Château de Lourps; his presence did not disturb his mother's reveries; she seemed barely conscious of his presence, or else might watch him for a few seconds with an almost painful smile on her face, then disappear once again into the artificial night with which the thick casemet curtains shrouded the room” (AN, 4 [prologue]). (“Sa famille se préoccupait peu de lui; parfois son père venait le visiter au pensionnat: ‘Bonjour, bonsoir, sois sage et travaille bien.’ Aux vacances, l’ été, il partait pour le château de Lourps; sa présence ne tirait pas sa mère de ses rêveries; elle l’apercevait à peine, ou le contemplait, pendant quelques secondes, avec un sourire presque douloreux, puis elle s'absorbait de nouveau dans la nuit factice dont les épais rideaux des croisées enveloppaient la chambre.” [Ar, 62–63].)

c) The English translation given in the text is, not the author's own translation, but one taken from another source, and the French original given in the note is taken, not from the original, but from a secondary source:

98. Chenavard quoted in Sloane, Chenavard, 73–74 (“Panthéon vraiment fraternal qui s'ouvrirait devant les grands hommes de toutes les nations et de tous les temps” [Chenavard quoted in Alexis Bertrand, “Le Mouvement sociologique: Art et sociologie d’après les lettres inédites de Paul Chenavard,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle, de medicine, et de psychologie normale et pathologique, 15 July 1911, 525–49, 533]).

Graphic works that were published in the nineteenth century can generally be considered as public domain and, therefore, require no special permission, except for a courtesy acknowledgement (if appropriate) of the collection that supplied the source to be photographed. Unique works of art owned by museums or individuals do require permission to reproduce. A copy of the permission must be supplied to NCS, so that we may adhere to any special requirements respecting reproduction and the form of acknowledgement.

As camera copy for reproductions, black-and-white positive prints are generally the most sound. Slide transparancies are also acceptable, and can sometimes provide a better image than positives (especially if the positive is taken from the slide transparancy in the first place), but their quality is less predictable. At present, NCS is not in a position to print full-color reproductions routinely. If a contributor believes his or her presentation depends crucially on color reproduction, the author should point out this requirement at the start of the review process, so that the staff may take the request under advisement.

Submission Review Process

Review time takes one to five months, and can take a month or so longer if appropriate readers prove difficult to locate. Every effort is made to process submissions expeditiously, but also fairly and carefully.

Addresses for Submissions

Queries to the author are set as lettered notes at the bottoms of pages. Before returning the manuscript, please check especially carefully that all queries have been answered. Every effort must be made to resolve problems at this point of production, before the manuscript goes to proofs. Changes at the proof stage can be problematic and must therefore be held to a minimum.

When answering queries and making corrections on copyedited manuscript, please use a colored pencil or pen. Lead-pencil or black-ink changes are easily overlooked. Minor changes can be made directly on the printout. Longer or more complicated changes should be provided on separate sheets.

Returning Copyedited Manuscript and Attachments

If your essay is illustrated and we have not yet received camera-ready artwork, please supply it when you return the manuscript (we will need it to prepare page proofs), along with caption copy and all requisite permissions.

If you have not already done so, please also supply a brief bio, including affiliation (institution and department), rank (if desired), and recent publications or projects in progress. Please stay within 50-75 words.

CHECKING PROOFS

1. Proof carefully for typographical errors. Since we have never rekeyboarded your essay, but have edited your essay using the computer file that you supplied to us, the only typographical errors you should find at this point are any that may have been introduced when entering your final revisions and corrections from copyedited manuscript. Of course, it is always possible that we overlooked errors at the copyediting stage that also remain to be corrected.

2. Answer all queries, if any.

3. Please make all corrections on this set of proofs. We also suggest that you keep a photocopy of your corrections for future reference. Please use colored pen or pencil; lead-pencil changes are easy to miss.

4. Send a brief bio for the contributors page (if one has not already been provided).

If corrections are simple, you can email them to us. To avoid ambiguities, however, it is often best that the marked proofs be sent to us by post or courier service, mailed in time to reach us by the scheduled date.

Please stay in contact! Let us know the best way for us to contact you during the time you are correcting proofs and the next few weeks after you return them.

Contact addresses and numbers

Addresses and numbers for the the NCS editorial office are as follows: