Complete edition

This article deals with the term complete edition. For the collected works of Martin Heidegger called “Complete Edition” see Complete Edition (Heidegger) .

A complete edition is a book edition that brings together the entire literary work of an author within a series of publications.

In addition to writings that were published during the author's lifetime, also works that were in the estate, letters, speech manuscripts, etc. and often reports and quotations from third parties on other works that were no longer available at the time of publication are taken into account.

On the basis of the scientific preparation of the texts, a distinction is made between pure reading editions and critical editions intended for scientific research or historical-critical editions . In practice, however, there are also intermediate forms, how specifically the procedure has to be taken from the edition guidelines of the edition.

Names such as work editions and collected works can also denote complete editions. In some cases, however, it may conceal editions that only contain a selection of the entire work. Often, however, these alternative names are simply chosen to distinguish them from older text editions by an author that are considered outdated.