DescriptionEthan Frome: A Digital Scholarly Edition is the product of using a digital tool, Scalar, to edit literature. Among the critical editions of Ethan Frome in print today—thinking mainly of Kristin O’Lauer and Cynthia Griffin Wolff’s 1994 Norton edition, and Carol J. Singley’s 2013 Broadview edition—this version published through Scalar will digitize and expand the scholarly apparatus featured in those print books. Scalar is special in offering new capabilities for the writing of critical annotations. In this platform, annotations feature multi-media source-material which offer further clarity by including images and video to accompany an explanatory note. Scalar’s open-access feature will make the book freely available online to students and readers, and accessible by a URL once the project is finalized and made public. This edition also includes an introduction that highlights critical conversation concerning the biographical influences of Ethan Frome. I choose this critical perspective to frame the story because of its themes alongside the life events experienced by Wharton. Ancillary materials include collations of the copy-text (Scribner’s, 1922) with the manuscript, the first edition (Scribner’s, 1911), and the Scribner’s Magazine issues of Ethan Frome (1910), meant to show the changes that took place throughout the text’s compositional lifetime. Digital components of Scalar are used to imbed media in the text’s explanatory notes, an expansion of the act of critical annotation as seen in print editions, for the way supplementary materials of other media can be used to clarify moments in the text. The present project, as it stands, tests this hypothesis with the digital artifact—the prototypical Scalar book—discussed in this document, by presenting its materials in a way that show its potential as a scholarly tool as self-evident. It is my intention to refine my use of this digital tool, and the project, at a doctoral program starting in 2018.