For most editors and editorial theorists, texts published in periodicals function
primarily as points on a work’s production history, meaningful for how they
demonstrate continuities with and differences from other versions of the work.
This article argues for the periodical text as meriting fuller editorial consideration
on its own terms, in line with the fundamental differences inhering in the
experience of reading a magazine versus a book. The essay concludes with a
proposal to understand periodicals as a particular kind of work.
Keywords
Periodical studies; magazines; work; editorial ontology; contexts of production