Most editors of literature consider it their main duty to present the text as the writer intended. this sounds simple, but putting aside the question of how the author's intentions can be known, it is not necessarily clear what is meant by author's intentions. the actual cases are so diverse that one cannot formulate universal rules for an editor. sometimes authors have been pressured to alter their work. the publisher of the first edition of the red badge of courage mollified stephen crane's uncompromising depiction of the horrors of war. the publisher of the first edition of women in love toned down some of d. h. lawrence's explicit sexual passages. in both cases, the changes were "authorized" in the sense that the authors accepted the. but them, it was either that or not see their work published at all. did they then accept the, freely, and if not, do the changes represent the authors' intentions? most readers recognize the importance of punctuation to an author's individual style. yet punctuation is what publishers traditionally feel most free to alter; first editions tend to present the publisher's "house style" rather than the author's own punctuation. the obvious course for an editor is to return to the author's manuscript, where possible. but publishing-house re-punctuation is so routine that some authors seem to have counted on it for the correct punctuation of their work; in such cases, the manuscript would contain punctuation (or a lack thereof) that the author did not intend to be reproduced in print. jane eyre provides an interesting quandary for an editor. we have charlotte bronte's original manuscript. we also have a letter from her publisher, him for correcting her punctuation. which punctuation is more authentically "brontean": bronte's own, or that which bronte explicitly preferred to her own? the thorniest situation of all, perhaps, involves authorial revision made long after publication. for example, w. h. auden altered his earlier poems to accord with his later political and religious opinions. one fancies that the young auden would have been furious at the old auden's liberties. yet both are auden - which has greater authority? which of the following situations would the author probably say presents the least difficult decision for an editor? (a) pope rewrote the dunciad, directing the satire against a completely different person(b) dickens changed the ending of great expectations at a friend's suggestion(c) dickinson's poems are preserved only in her own oddly-punctuated manuscripts(d) whitman printed leaves of grass himself