Editorial judgments are based on an assessment of all available evidence manifest in Santayana’s works, letters, annotations, and other authorial material. The project editors determine the authority of all documents containing the text in question, establish the critical text on the most authoritative documents, record all textual data for appropriate documents, and account for any divergence, whether substantive or accidental, from the copy-text.

When completed, this procedure enables scholars, using the information presented in the editorial apparatus, to recover readings of the documents used in preparing the text and to evaluate the editorial judgments made in establishing the critical text.

To explore a more in-depth look at how the editorial process works, visit the editorial workflow page.