"authoritative edition" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it when referring to an official or authoritative version of something, such as a book, document, or collection of works. For example, "This authoritative edition of the works of William Shakespeare includes all 37 of his plays."
An authoritative edition of Marlowe's works was edited by Fredson Bowers, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1981).
One hundred years after his death, the University of California Press is publishing the "Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition" in a series of three volumes, edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the editors of the Mark Twain Project.
In addition to his authoritative edition of Chopin's works in 15 volumes, he edited some 19th-century piano studies, wrote an important piano method (School of Advanced Piano Playing), and composed salon music for piano.
This is also a scholarly work — the "authoritative" edition.
The first authoritative edition of the entire work was published in 1954 and was later replaced by several new translations.
J. R. R. Tolkien's authoritative edition was a gift to readers, though his own translation now seems somewhat flowery.
Like many early-music specialists, he devoted himself to producing authoritative editions of 17th-century works and to keeping track of musicological discoveries and developments.
This may be why, as I read "Ida" and "Stanzas in Meditation," both reissued in corrected, authoritative editions from Yale University Press, I remembered a Jonathan Richman lyric I'll paraphrase as "Pablo Picasso never got called a jackass".
"Shakespeare's plays are one of the true landmarks in English writing, and the Folger editions have always served to make accessible, authoritative editions of the plays available to a broad sweep of the reading and playgoing public," Michael Witmore, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, said in a statement.
By the time I joined the directing team, This Week had established itself as the dominant current affairs team in British television, and Kee's vibrant film after the Soviet invasion of 1968, Remember Czechoslovakia, was just one example of the immensely wide-ranging and authoritative editions Phillip masterminded.
