The Conference on Editorial Problems (CEP) was inaugurated in 1965, and has been held annually since then at the University of Toronto. Its longevity is witness to a long tradition: critical editions of the works of numerous authors, in many languages and disciplines, have had a long association with Toronto, from the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia and the notebooks of Coleridge to the correspondence of Zola and the collected works of Northrop Frye.

The Conference has benefited from the support of University College, the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, the School of Graduate Studies, as well as departments and centres across the University. Its affiliation with St Michael's College and Victoria College, with the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, allows the conference to draw on both the reach and promise enjoyed by the University's programs in Book and Media Studies and Book History and Print Culture, as well as the Collaborative Program in Editing Texts. These associations bespeak a wider commitment. The conference is a strong supporter of the professional training of graduate students in the humanities. It has provided important opportunities for students interested in textual scholarship and editing to participate as co-convenors and co-editors of individual programmes and volumes, to chair sessions, and to organize roundtable discussions.

Although its earliest programmes were devoted mainly to the canon of English, French, and Italian literature, the conference has expanded over the years to encompass a wide variety of topics. A representative sample would include: Editing Illustrated Books (1979), Editing Greek and Latin Texts (1987), Music Discourse from Classical to Early Modern Times (1990), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (1991), Editing Early and Historical Atlases (1993), Editing Women (1995), Editing Aboriginal Texts (1996), Computing the Edition (1997), Reconstructing Ancient Texts (2001), Editing the Image (2003)Editing 'New France' (2008), Modernism in Canada (2010), and Medical Texts from Medieval England (2017).

The meetings of the conference are usually held over the first weekend of November each year. Sessions take place at St Michael's College and at various other parts of the University of Toronto (please consult the campus map for directions to specific venues, posted for each year's conference).

Recent and forthcoming conferences have been devoted to subjects as diverse as the literatures of contact, Middle English texts and medieval vernacular books, modernism in Canada, early African American Literature, the textual cultures of medieval Germany, as well legal texts and editorial problems associated medieval medical texts, Latin and vernacular. See Forthcoming Conferences for the topics currently under consideration.

The current members of the executive committee of the Conference on Editorial Problems are: William Edwards (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), Ann M. Hutchison (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies; York University), Ann Komaromi (Slavic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature), and Fred Unwalla, chair (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies). General enquiries about the conference may be addressed to Fred Unwalla.