Godwin’s The Man in the Moone was influenced by the writings of the Copernican Revolution and actually seems to have anticipated Newton’s law of gravity. I chose to use the Epistle to the Reader for my textual edition because this preface’s emphasis on the book as “entertainment” and an “essay of fancy” combined with the implication that perhaps the author’s invention will be proved reality in the future are what gives this work the distinction of being called the first science fiction novel in English.

      Analogous to Greetham’s Parallel Old and Modern-Spelling Edition with Commentary, my edition uses both a digital facsimile of the text and a modernized electronic version side by side with text notes and links to supplementary materials that can be relevant to the both the material text and the content. The notes and links are inserted into the modernized spelling version of the text.

      The digital facsimile of the “copy text” empowers the reader with textual information allowing the reader to critique the editor. This is similar to the way a book of poetry in translation prints both the original language version and the translation in the same opening allowing the reader to “hear” the original language version and compare the translation to her own reading of the poem. It also allows for an enjoyable reading of a modernized spelling version with critical and explanatory notes on the content and text and links to supplementary materials. Rather than cite note sources, one can link to the entire text of an article, opening up rather than limiting the reading of the text. Period visual illustrations, which I found so illuminating in the Folger Shakespeare Editions, need not be left out due to expense in an electronic edition and can be in color. Also, printing two pages of the same text and inserting plenty of pages of supplementary materials is not as prohibitively expensive as it would be in a printed version. Mouse-over notes allow for a clear text at the same time as displaying flags if one chooses. I found using mouse-over words, which display the original spelling of the word when its modernized spelling version is moused-over, unnecessary in an edition where the digital facsimile of the copy text is right there to be compared to the edited version. However, I gave two examples of how this can be done in the second frame of my text.

      Note on text: The digital facsimile of this text is taken from EEBO STC (2nd ed.) / 11943, from a copy in the British Library. The edited side of the text simply uses modernized spellings and eliminates catchwords to facilitate the flow of the language for screen reading, while remaining true to the original text. To modernize the spelling I replaced V with U, I with J and the long S with S. I also modernized the spellings of words, for example the two words I moused over in frame two: shewed became showed and beliefe became belief. I didn’t feel any qualms removing unfamiliar spellings which impede the speed of screen reading as I knew that any edits I made could easily be compared to the digital facsimile of the copy text along side the modernized version. Because of the presence of the copy text, I could rest assured that no ambiguous meanings or evidential material would be lost through editing.