Chronology and publication history

Rørbye's travel journals stem from three of his major journeys. The first concerns a tour of Jutland and Norway in 1830 (Journal A); the second is about his grand tour to the south in the years 1834-37 (Journal B); and the third (in two volumes) tells of his Italian honeymoon with his wife Rose in the years 1839-41 (Journal C-D).

Only the first of the four journals has previously been published, by Georg Nygaard under the title Maleren Martinus Rørbyes Rejsedagbog 1830 (Copenhagen 1930). However, Nygaard omitted passages corresponding to one-third of the original manuscript, not least concerning Rørbye's visits to mines and collieries and therefore including a great deal of technical terminology, and he also carried out a far-reaching linguistic and orthographic standardization.

The journal from 1834-37 has not previously been published, except for the pages dealing with Rørbye's two stays in Athens, which are published in Ida Haugsted's Dream and reality. Danish antiquaries, architects and artists in Greece (London 1996). The majority of the journal has so far only been available in a handwritten transcription by Georg Nygaard, prepared at the request of Rørbye's descendants immediately after the publication of the Norwegian journal. Over the years, Nygaard's transcription has been used extensively by art historians, but has increasingly proved unsatisfactory -- not only because Nygaard has often omitted passages that were insignificant or difficult for him to read, but also because of simple misreadings and a widespread standardization of Rørbye's spelling. All in all, Nygaard's copy can only be regarded as a draft and has therefore not been of importance for the work leading up to the present edition.

The journals from the honeymoon of 1839-41 have not previously been transcribed or published, and of the 51 extant travel letters, which are also included in the database, only ten have previously been published.

Principles for text reproduction

The individual journal entries are entered under the date to which they relate, and not under the day on which they can be inferred to have been written down. In particular, entries relating to travel days and horse-drawn carriages are often not written down until the following day, and in some cases events are clearly not recorded until several days have passed.

Every effort has been made to reproduce Rørbye's distinctive and inconsistent orthography and punctuation as accurately as possible, without making it difficult to read. Word forms such as "igaard", "blodt" and "Pagage" (i.e. yesterday, just and baggage) are thus faithfully reproduced. However, Rørbye's arbitrary way of interchanging the vowels e and æ has been adjusted for the sake of readability. Rørbye's use of semicolons for commas and commas for full stops has also been retained, although assistant pause signs have been introduced in exceptional cases where it is otherwise deemed to disrupt meaning.

In addition, the following principles for text reproduction apply:

• Rørbye's underlining in the manuscript is shown in italics.
• Page breaks and page numbers in the manuscript are indicated in the text between two large dots, for example -12-, which indicates that "here begins page 12".
• Editorial comments and missing words are indicated in the text in [square brackets].
• Words that are crossed out in the manuscript are indicated as [strikeout:], while words and phrases added above the line, below the line or in the margin are indicated between |vertical dashes|.

Principles of annotation

The annotations attached to the original text are intended to support the reading and to clarify misunderstood references. It has been the ambition that the notes should first and foremost contribute to the identification of the works and persons mentioned, as well as occasional information on peculiar word forms and spellings.

Editor

Comments and suggestions for improvements can be sent to project editor Jesper Svenningsen, jsv@smk.dk.