in praise of the poor devil of letters
Editing’s a thankless job. Turns out it always has been.
According to the historian Anthony Grafton in this piece at Lapham’s Quarterly
[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/correctors], book editors—who began
as “correctors”—have been underpaid and under-appreciated ever since Gutenberg:
> One of the most striking