The volume assembles the papers delivered at an international colloquium devoted to the clarification and practical implementation of text-genetic concepts of scholarly editing. The essays brought together here center to a high degree on a comparison of the Critique Génétique approach developed in France and the persuasions underlying Text Genetics as conceived in German-speaking countries. In addition, individual editions are examined for their text-genetic purview, individual problems of text-genetic description are discussed and possibilities for the employment of electronic data-processing investigated. Despite the obvious bias towards questions of scholarly editing, the volume casts light on an important area of editorial activity in a way that also opens up new vistas on textual criticism and study for other literary studies scholars not themselves actively engaged in editing work.