Morgan Robertson (1861-1915) was born in Oswego, NY. Over his lifetime, he published more than 130 short works of fiction based on his sea-going experiences. Robertson’s best-known novella is a work of eerily prescient speculation: in The Wreck of the Titan, or, Futility, originally published in 1898, Robertson describes the fate of a fictional ocean liner—the largest ever built and “practically unsinkable”—that collides with an iceberg on its transatlantic maiden voyage and loses most of its 3,000 passengers, not least due to a dearth of lifeboats on board. When the non-fictional Titanic struck an iceberg on its own transatlantic maiden voyage fourteen years later, Robertson’s reputation as a literary figure possessed of uncanny foresight was cemented.
With the exception of The Wreck of the Titan, or, Futility, however, Robertson’s writing has fallen into obscurity. There exists no complete bibliography of his publication record, let alone a comprehensive collection of his work. The Morgan Robertson Digital Archive aims to make Robertson’s complete published corpus available for the first time in a scholarly edition. This edition will include annotations of the people, places, and historical references that populate Robertson’s writing. The edition will also provide definitions and explanations for the highly technical nautical language that characterizes Robertson’s literary style. As it grows and develops, the Morgan Robertson Digital Archive will offer resources of interest to scholars of maritime history, transatlantic fiction, early science-fiction writing, and late-19th/early 20th-century periodical publishing.
Site credits
Editor: Fiona Coll
Editor: Sean Milligan
Acknowledgments
The development of this project has been made possible by SUNY Oswego’s Faculty-Student Challenge Grant and by Dean Adrienne McCormick’s support for the institutional partnership between SUNY Oswego’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute.
We would like to thank Professor Ann C. Allen of Le Moyne College for sharing her own research on Robertson with us.
We would also like to thank George R. DeMass, President of the Oswego Town Historical Society, for his generosity and support.
Selection Policy
The Morgan Robertson Digital Archive will be based upon transcriptions of Robertson’s writing as it appeared in print between 1894 and 1920, as well as maps, annotations, and historical information that will explain Robertson’s nautical language. Some of Robertson’s short fiction was republished multiple times during this period, with each republication introducing textual and paratextual variations; these variations will be documented. Although few of Robertson’s personal papers or manuscripts seem to be extant, we will also seek out materials relating to Robertson’s publishing career to include here.
This edition will contain an estimated 130 short stories and novellas, 25 non-fiction articles, and several works of poetry.
Annotation Policy
This edition of Robertson’s writing will offer identifications for people, places, terms, and historical events when those identifications are key to comprehending the cultural or literary significance of a textual reference. Currently, annotations appear as pop-ups above the main text. As the archive grows, annotations will include links to images, maps, and other primary documents relevant to Roberston’s world. For “The Derelict Neptune,” our sample text, we have sourced annotations from three popular reference texts of the period, in order to give a sense of how Robertson’s readers might have read and understood the story’s many geographic, nautical, and political references.
Transcription Policy
Many of Robertson’s stories were first published in magazine format. To maintain a sense of this format, transcriptions will indicate original page breaks. To maintain fidelity to the editorial policies of the originating magazines and journals, punctuation will not be regularized. However, spelling and abbreviations will be regularized in order to make searching easier.
Robertson’s stories were often illustrated when they first appeared in print. Where possible, transcriptions will also include illustrations placed as close as possible to their original positions in the text, along with their original captions. A description of each illustration will also be transcribed in order to make these illustrations and the names of their creators searchable. The Morgan Robertson Digital Archive may include excerpts and images from pictorial nautical dictionaries, maps, and photographs; these visual materials will be similarly descriptively transcribed.
In keeping with the MLA Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions, transcriptions will be compared with original documents when possible, will indicate where comparisons have been made to photocopies of original documents, and will ensure that all transcriptions are proofread by someone other than the original transcriber.