An alternative to the traditional research paper, the scholarly edition has much to offer students and professors of American literature. By "scholarly edition" I mean a single document that includes a primary text, a note on the text, a paper that summarizes and interprets the text, short endnotes glossing the text, and a bibliography. All of us are familiar with the popular scholarly editions of literary works published for the college classroom by Norton, Broadview, Bedford, and many other scholarly presses. But not all have considered the creation of shorter yet comparable works as an assignment for the undergraduate and graduate classroom or for the undergraduate honors thesis. The following paper describes versions of the assignment developed through many years of experimentation at different levels of instruction, with an emphasis on practical advice for implementing the assignment successfully. It also notes how these projects might be especially useful today for the advancement of American literature scholarship. And the paper concludes by noting how these projects look in the light of recent scholarship on improving undergraduate education through inquiry-based learning and collaboration with faculty in research.