Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 10 Fall 1992

              The Santayana Edition
The Last Puritan, Volume IV of The Works of George Santayana, is scheduled for
publication in the late fall of 1992. This volume represents the cumulative work of
many persons, and its appearance exemplifies the pattern of scholarly editing and high-
quality production associated with our volumes. Once again the Modern Language
Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions awarded the seal of "An Approved
Edition." Donna Hanna-Calvert, Associate Editor, and Bill Holzberger, Textual Editor,
provided invaluable assistance and leadership in managing both the details and the
scholarship associated with this volume. Irving Singer wrote the fine Introduction. If
anyone wishes to review the volume for a journal or paper, please write to me or to
MIT Press.
Presently we are working on ten books: Volume V, Letters (four books); Volume
VI, The Life of Reason (five books); and the Marginalia. The Letters will provide
valuable information that has long been missing from Santayana scholarship. Fewer
than six hundred of Santayana's letters have appeared in print, and we have collected
approximately twenty-five hundred letters for the volume. This is a project that Bill
Holzberger has worked on since 1972, and it will be a delight to see it come to fruition
in a few years. The Life of Reason is a significant multi-book volume that stands as
a major contribution to philosophy and to pragmatism during Santayana's early career.
John McCormick is editing the volume of Santayana's marginalia. This will be quite
valuable since Santayana's extensive marginalia is largely inaccessible to scholars
unless they can travel to the many repositories of Santayana's books.
This past year I made trips to Canada, Spain, England, and China giving lectures
on American philosophy and on Santayana specifically. I was pleased by the growing
interest in Santayana in these countries. I was somewhat surprised to find several
scholars and graduate students in China working diligently on Santayana.
The First International Conference on Santayana was held May 27-30 in Avila,
Spain (Santayana's boyhood home). The conference was a major success featuring
forty-two international scholars and approximately one hundred and twenty participants.
The papers were excellent and provided a clear indication of the growing interest in
Santayana scholarship. Much appreciation goes to the work of Jose* Luis Gutierrez,
Pedro Garcfa-Martin, and Brenda Bridges for their assistance in organizing, funding,
and running the conference. The Fundacidn Cultural Santa Teresa provided significant
funding for this conference as well as Texas A&M University, the Comision Quinto
Centario, Henny Wenkart, and Corliss Lamont. In addition, Santayana's Spanish
family, the Sastres, were remarkably gracious and kind during this celebration of
Santayana scholarship.
In May, the Santayana staff completed another detailed proposal to NEH for 1993-
96. This is a task that takes considerable energy and time, but we simply cannot
continue our work without the appreciable support of NEH. The NEH staff has been
consistently supportive and helpful in our endeavors. The narrative portion of the
proposal has been sent to all Board members.
HERMAN J. SAATKAMP, JR.
General Editor