Manuscript Editing for ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture

ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture calls itself “the oldest professional journal devoted to nineteenth-century American literature.” It still centers the American Renaissance of Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman, and Hawthorne while taking in regional and ethnic American literatures. The Department of English at Washington State University publishes it quarterly, and its editor in chief is at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Scholarly articles run 6,000 to 12,000 words, roughly 25 to 35 pages. Citations follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, with the exceptions in the ESQ style sheet: endnotes only, no Works Cited, short forms for later notes, and no ibid. A source cited five or more times gets a defined abbreviation and parenthetical citations. Scare quotes are not allowed, so any word in quotation marks needs a note citing its source. Review is double-blind, and simultaneous submissions are not accepted. Off the Grid Editing sets up the abbreviations and removes unsourced quotation marks. You email the manuscript as a Word file to esq@wsu.edu.

Washington State's submission guidelines link the ESQ style sheet. If you have reviewer comments from an earlier submission, send them with your manuscript and we will address each one. If you have questions about which service is right for your manuscript, contact us directly. We respond to every inquiry the same day during business hours.

See journal article and essay editing for how we edit literary scholarship, and academic proofreading for the last read before submission. We also prepare articles for American Literary History and Nineteenth-Century Literature.