On 25 October 1963 the Times Literary Supplement
published a short article entitled "The Soho Recipe," taking the appearance
of Richard Fifoot's bibliography of the Sitwells as an occasion for reflecting
on the series of Soho Bibliographies (p. 876). That series, begun in 1951
by Rupert Hart-Davis,[1] has been
influential in the twentieth-century development of author bibliographies,
particularly in regard to the division of material into sections and the
assignment of reference letters and numbers to individual items within those
sections. If in some respects the Soho volumes were uniform enough to
suggest that a "recipe" lay behind them, in other respects their practice
varied, as the TLS article pointed out;[2] and the questions raised in that
article
stem from the fundamental issue of whether uniformity of plan and
technique among bibliographies is desirable. The article recognizes that
without fuller
rules the practices of each Soho volume are bound to "depend as much
upon the temperament of the bibliographer as upon the tractability of the
material," and it understands at the same time that more detailed rules could
be "oppressive." Yet it cannot resist wishing for more uniformity in the
treatment of certain matters, asserting that the reader has a right to find
"agreement, or explicit reasoned disagreement, when two or more
bibliographers describe the same book."
There is, in fact, good reason not to believe that the reader of a
bibliography has any such right, and the line of argument is implicit in what
is said elsewhere in the article. Although the piece unfortunately
does not pursue these issues very far, it is essentially enlightened in its
approach, for it sees that questions regarding the presentation of material
in a bibliography cannot be divorced from a consideration of the particular
nature of the sources involved and the individual aims of the bibliographer.
Differing Soho treatments of publishing history and "the biographical
element in bibliography," as the
TLS writer correctly states,
result not simply from the extent of the preserved documents in each case
but also from "the degree of enthusiasm and understanding which the
individual has brought to his task." The "understanding" is crucial: when
one understands that bibliographical research is historical research and that
bibliographies are historical studies, one perceives that biography and
publishing history are not separable from bibliography. One should also
then see how naive it is to suggest that different treatments of the "same
book" ought to agree or be in "explicit
reasoned disagreement." Different bibliographical accounts of a book, even
of the same copies of a book, may have different emphases, details, and
arrangements, in the same way that accounts of any other kind of historical
event are likely to vary according to the historian who is ordering the
material. And if specific facts and figures are at odds, there are
explanations other than that an error has occurred: perhaps the copies
examined do not match, or perhaps the examiners have observed different
tolerances in measuring or in reporting measurements. Sometimes scholars,
in bibliography as in any other field, may find it appropriate to comment
on the differences between their own accounts and those of their
predecessors; at other times they may feel that the defects of previous
reports, and the advances made by their own, are obvious and that the point
requires no explicit statement.
In some respects the TLS writer proceeds admirably
from
the recognition that bibliography is a branch of historical scholarship and
calls attention to the fact that bibliographies vary according to the interests
and points of view of their authors; at times, however—as in the
expectation that two descriptions of a book will agree—the piece
seems
to reflect the narrow, but quite common, view that bibliographies are
merely compilations, rather mechanically assembled. That a descriptive
bibliography is actually a historical study has been understood since at least
the time of Sadleir's Trollope bibliography (1928), which explicitly makes
the case for an author bibliography as "a commentary on the book and
publishing crafts" of a particular period. An author bibliography (as
opposed to a simple guide to the identification of first editions) is a
historical account of the production and publication of an author's
works—and is therefore a partial biography of the author
and a partial
history of publishing in the period.
[3]
Its value, as with any other presentation of the results of historical research,
depends on the thought that has gone into the assessment of the evidence
and on the coherence of the overall conception, which determines the
degree of relevance of specific data and the relative space and detail to be
accorded them. What constitutes responsible handling of evidence and
effective presentation of conclusions is the same in bibliography as it is in
any other historical investigation; in bibliography as in other fields different
people may find different patterns in the material, and more than one
account can be responsible. (Whether or not any of them has arrived at the
"truth" will of course remain an open question.) Fredson Bowers was
certainly right, in his
Principles of Bibliographical
Description,
to speak of bibliographies as "written," not "compiled."
[4]
All this is a necessary preamble to a discussion of the arrangement of
material in a descriptive bibliography. Without seeing bibliography in the
context of historical research in general, one might infer from such a
discussion that definite rules for the arrangement of bibliographies could be
prescribed. The fact that some parts of bibliographies are set forth in a
formulaic way and not in straightforward expository prose has no doubt
contributed to the notion that a bibliography is a compilation, subject to
mechanical rules. What would it mean to ask how a history of a battle or
a biography of a statesman should be arranged? Methodological reflections
on the writing of such works can be useful, one but cannot set up a specific
order in which the material must be presented.[5] This obvious point has not always
seemed
so obvious in relation to bibliography. But once a bibliography is
recognized as a history, one must further recognize that the
arrangement of its contents has to grow out of the nature of the material
and out of the bibliographer's own approach and aims. There are always
people, in all fields, who wish
to be told what to do and who will proceed unthinkingly to follow
instructions. Whether bibliography has more than its share of such people
is hard to say; certainly anyone who has been associated with the publishing
activities of a bibliographical society knows that requests come in from
would-be bibliographers who want to know what arrangement of material
the society prescribes for the bibliographies it publishes. Would a
biographer ever write to a publishing firm asking whether its biographies
were to be chronological or thematic in arrangement? Probably not, but in
any case the point is clear: scholars of intelligence, who understand what
they are doing, will work out in each instance the arrangement of material
that serves their purposes.
[6] Persons
who need to be told how to organize their material have not given sufficient
thought to their subject to produce useful results.
[7]
These, then, are reasons for not writing on the subject of the
arrangement of bibliographies. In spite of them, I propose to do so, now
that I have tried to make clear the context for my remarks. Discussions of
methodology can be salutary in any field, and I intend here simply to set
forth some of the considerations involved in thinking about the problem of
arrangement in bibliography. My comments are meant to encourage such
thinking, not to imply that a single scheme of arrangement can, or should,
be declared standard for all situations.[8] The present
moment seems an appropriate one for examining these matters, because in
recent years some bibliographies have appeared that focus new attention on
the question of arrangement—particularly as a result of increased
examination of twentieth-century authors
[9] and the attendant problems created
by
newer methods of plating. The first order of business is to look into the
arrangement of the descriptions of the various editions, impressions, and
issues of a single work. Then there is the question of how those composite
entries fit into the bibliography as a whole—how, that is, the various
kinds of material (books, contributions to books, contributions to
periodicals, and so on) can be arranged in relation to one another. Finally,
I should like to comment on the numbering of the entries, for reference
numbering inevitably reflects the arrangement given to the material.
