I
One of the most basic problems of arrangement in a descriptive
bibliography results from the obligation to identify the relationships among
editions, impressions, and issues of individual works. The problem of
arranging entries for a single work is not entirely distinct from that of the
arrangement of the whole bibliography: if one decided, for example, that
chronology were to take precedence over all other considerations,
impressions would be scattered under the years in which they appeared and
would not be gathered together as parts of a single edition. One would still
specify the edition relationships in words, of course, but the physical
arrangement would be determined by chronology—which is to say
that
classification is a different matter from arrangement (even though the
clearest arrangements are likely to be those that reflect classification). Most
bibliographers do, for obvious and good reasons, adopt a chronological
arrangement within each section of a
bibliography.[10] But chronology does
not dominate, if it prevails only within each section. Furthermore,
chronology is violated within a section if all editions and printings of a
given work are grouped together. Readers are legitimately interested in the
full history of a single work, but there is also a defensible interest in what
happened in each year of an author's career—the mixture of first
printings of new works and later printings of earlier works.[11] Since there is reason to have the
material
both ways, the
approach chosen as the basic one should be complemented by an index that
provides access from the other approach. One can argue that normally the
most sensible basic arrangement is one that brings together all printings of
a single work, for each entry can then build efficiently on those that went
before and can conveniently be used in conjunction with them. More is
gained by having each impression placed in the context of the printing and
publishing history of the work than is lost by having the impressions of
different works in the same year dispersed and retrievable only through a
chronological index. This issue has rarely posed a problem, and
bibliographers of authors have generally followed this plan, taking up an
author's separately published works in the order of their publication and
completing the publication history of each work before passing on to the
next work.
[12] However, they have not
as routinely provided a chronological index,
which—I think it hard to deny—ought to be a regular
accompaniment
to this scheme of arrangement.
Where a difficult problem can enter is at the next step, after one has
decided to group together the entries for the editions and printings of a
single work—because the best order for those entries is not always
readily apparent. There are many simple cases, of course, in which the
order implied by the classification into editions, impressions, and issues can
be followed without question: the successive impressions (subdivided into
issues where necessary) of the first edition are followed by those of the
second edition, and so on. But complications frequently arise that tempt one
to add further organizing principles, superseding those inherent in the basic
terms of classification. Although such situations occur fairly often in
connection with books of the past two centuries (because of the growth of
transatlantic republication of writings in English and the use of plates),
earlier books can pose these problems as well. Even the chronological
ordering of editions can be brought
into question when, for example, a work appeared in a succession of
editions on both sides of the Atlantic (and perhaps in other English-speaking
areas). Should the editions be entered chronologically under each country,
thus placing geography ahead of chronology as an organizing principle?
Should this principle be followed when duplicate plates from
one country are sent to another country, thus placing geography ahead of
the classification into editions? Should it be followed when sheets with
cancel titles are exported to another country, thus placing geography ahead
of the classification into impressions? Within a single country, when
duplicate plates are used during the same period of time by two publishers
(as might happen if one publisher had the paperback rights or the rights to
include the work in a cheap series), should impressions be grouped under
each publisher, thus subordinating the chronology of impressions to the
classification into plate families? Is the situation similar when a single
publisher designates certain printings as part of a series? If plate families
do not consistently coincide with particular publishers (or series), do the
plate families or the publishers (or series) take precedence?
These questions suggest that the problem of arrangement is not
entirely separable from that of classification. (Arrangement need not follow
classification, but an arrangement implied by the classification cannot be
hastily dismissed, either.) And some people have regarded such questions
as posing a serious challenge to the validity of the traditional system of
classification, at least for books of the past two centuries. I do not think it
necessary here to reopen the whole question of classification, which has in
any case been extensively discussed already.[13] But I do think it appropriate, at the
cost
of some repetition, to affirm that 19th- and 20th-century printing
technology, in which plating, photography, and computerization have
reduced the need for resetting, has not made the edition-impression-issue
classification any less relevant or helpful. The fact that many works printed
in those years never reached a second edition because various
means were available for reproducing the original typesetting does not
render the concept of edition superfluous: it refers to the
basic
fact that all copies deriving from a single act of typographic composition,
however diverse they may appear to be (even to the point of exhibiting
different typefaces), are inextricably linked by that common origin. That
works in sufficient demand to require more than a single press run were
likely to appear in earlier centuries in a succession of editions
(not subdivided into impressions) and in later centuries in a succession of
impressions (of a single edition) suggests that the scheme of
classification—far from being defective—is serving (as it
should) to
reveal fundamental differences in the physical relationships among copies
in different periods.
A question of more serious import concerns the relative emphases on
printing and on publishing in the classification. There are times
when printing history would entail one arrangement and publishing history
another, and bibliographers are faced with deciding which arrangement
should take precedence. When they look at the standard classification to
determine whether it is built on one of these approaches rather than the
other, they find that it involves both and are then sometimes critical of it
and may decide to revise it, separating terms relating to printing from those
relating to publishing.
[14] Without
doubt the edition-impression-issue hierarchy does involve both
considerations, but whether that fact points to a flaw is far less certain.
What the bibliographer is describing is published (or distributed)
pieces,
[15] since the activity of
publishing postdates that of printing. Yet grouping copies according to
publisher or to publisher's imprint dates (or copyright or copyright-page
dates) leaves something to be desired, since impressions are sometimes
not differentiated in these ways by the publisher but are always a fact not
simply of printing history but of publishing history as well.
[16] Because publication is an activity
that
involves the distribution of physical objects, the study of publication cannot
be divorced from an understanding of the production history of those
objects. It is not surprising, therefore, that the basic terms
edition and
impression refer principally to
printing
but that publishing enters more explicitly into the division of impressions
into
issues: a cancel title with a new date, for instance, does
not
affect the printing history of the work, for the sheets are of the same
impression as those with the earlier title; but it reflects a publishing (that
is, a marketing) decision, and the copies with the new title form a discrete
publishing unit. Publishing decisions frequently leave their mark on the
physical books; and even if the bibliographer's aim
were limited to the classification of physical books, publishing history could
not be divorced from printing history in the classification.
Even though the mixture of printing and publishing considerations
cannot be regarded as a defect in the system—it is, rather, a
necessary
element—there remain situations in which an emphasis on printing
in the
ordering of entries results in a different arrangement from the one that
would emerge from an emphasis on publishing. Although this dilemma
derives ultimately from the fact that the classification involves
both printing and publishing, one must recognize that the practical question
of what to do in such instances is usually concerned not with the
classification but only with the physical arrangement on the printed pages
of the bibliography. Thus if one were to decide, in a case where an
American publisher issued English sheets with an American imprint (on a
cancel or an integral title), to place the American issue at the head of a line
of American issues and impressions carrying the same publisher's imprint,
one would not be quarreling with the classification of the American issue
as an
issue—as a part of an impression—but
would simply
be emphasizing, through physical arrangement, the publishing history over
the printing history. It is crucial to remember that these questions do not
require the choice of one approach at the expense of the other: the main
entry can be placed where it would fall in the publishing (or printing)
history, and a cross reference can stand at the
appropriate spot to reflect the other approach (or a separate chart or tree
can delineate the second approach).
[17]
Still, one has to decide on one place or the other for the principal
statement, and the decision is not without significance; it should be made
thoughtfully in terms of efficiency of presentation, convenience for use, the
overall conception of the work, and the particular nature of the materials
involved. That more than one physical arrangement, reflecting somewhat
different classification schemes, can be compatible with the larger
edition-impression-issue framework is to be welcomed, not regretted; such
flexibility within an accepted convention allows one to accomplish the basic
task of classification in a way that can readily be understood by others and
at the same time permits one to present the account in a way that emerges
naturally from the material.
[18] Only
those who hope to avoid thinking (and who
believe that bibliography can be a mechanical process) would wish to be
told that a predetermined arrangement is obligatory.
Nevertheless, the importance of having an established level of
classification that falls between edition and
impression is undeniable, for it would supply a standard
means
for placing together (both in thought and on the printed page) any
impressions that constitute a separate
group within the entire series of impressions. Fredson Bowers recognized
this point years ago, in his
Principles of Bibliographical
Description, when he discussed the concept of "subsidiary edition"
(or, for short, "subedition" or "sub-edition")—a concept that has
been
insufficiently examined and used since then. A subedition, as Bowers
conceived it, would be formed by impressions with a different publisher's
imprint, or those with an added indication of series, or those that might
popularly be called "revised edition" or "enlarged edition" (that is, those in
which the text is somewhat altered, but without enough resetting to be
considered a new edition, or somewhat augmented, as with a preface or a
new chapter). These kinds of changes result from publishing decisions: they
generally represent the kinds of alteration that would produce
issues if they affected only parts of impressions rather than
whole impressions. The concept of
subedition therefore makes
formal provision for incorporating publishing considerations into the
edition-impression classification, which is based primarily on printing
considerations. One could, of course, enter all the successive impressions
of an edition in a single sequence, even if all the impressions from a
particular publisher, or in a particular series, did not fall
together—as
would happen, for instance, if the original publisher continued to place new
impressions on sale while a second publisher produced impressions for a
cheap series. Even though one could then supply a separate outline or
stemma to show the groupings of impressions according to publisher,
series, or the like, the basic arrangement would be awkward, since it would
not explicitly recognize that printings from a single publisher (or in a single
series) normally are more closely related with one another than with
printings from another publisher (or in another series). Acknowledging that
impressions fall into groupings by virtue
of the publishing process leads to the belief that publishing history should
be allowed to supersede the strict chronological ordering of impressions and
that the
subedition classification should be regularly
employed.
Whereas most options regarding physical arrangement are best left open for
the bibliographer to determine in each situation, the value of allowing
certain sequences of impressions to show up clearly as distinct groups lends
support to the idea of attaching to them a term—like
subedition—that indicates a classification intermediate
between
edition and
impression and thus
implies a
particular arrangement.
Any suggestion of a fixed arrangement, however, is not without its
problems. Since subedition refers to publishing history, its
use
involves a potential conflict with printing history, if the groupings of
impressions by sets of plates does not coincide with the grouping by
publisher
or series (or other characteristics encompassed by
subedition).
[19] This fact
has recently been explored by James L. W. West III, who suggests that the
concept of
plating should supplant that of
subedition.
[20] His article
on this subject includes a valuable summary of the means thus far proposed
for detecting the use of various kinds of plates; but his presentation of the
concept of plating requires some further consideration, which I hope can
serve as an example of how one may deal with conflicts of classification
that in turn produce alternative physical arrangements. West argues that the
grouping of impressions into subeditions, following Bowers's plan, with
appended notes as necessary to identify replatings, "works satisfactorily for
books with a simple history of plating but is not as efficient in more
complicated situations" (p. 257). In addition, he says, "the root word of
sub-edition
is
edition, a term which implies that type has been reset."
Questions of terminology are obviously of a different order from questions
of concept, and West is well aware of the fact, for he explicitly points out
that any term can theoretically be assigned any definition. It is surprising,
therefore, that he should introduce this second objection to
subedition, which is an argument against using the term to
refer
to a group of impressions of an edition, for such an argument is irrelevant
to the more substantive question of whether a publishing or a printing
concept should provide the intermediate classification between
edition and
impression, at least for purposes of
arrangement. Without explicitly raising that question, he in fact opts for
printing history, for he proceeds to say that "bibliographical terms, if they
are to gain general acceptance, should if possible describe what actually
happens at the printing shop." This statement is not
self-evident, because the bibliographer deals with
published
objects, and an equally good case could be made that publishing history
should dominate over printing history when the arrangements deriving from
the two are in conflict.
There is something askew in the argument that
subedition,
incorporating
the word "edition," carries "mental associations for a bibliographer which
are inappropriate to what the printer has actually done" and that a "new
term would be helpful"—for
subedition was not meant
to
refer to what the printer did and is perfectly adequate to designate the
various publishing practices it was intended to cover.
[21] The real question is not whether
the term
is satisfactory but whether the concept it refers to is the most appropriate
one to serve as the basis in a bibliography for the primary subdivision of
an edition into distinctive groups of impressions. Although West asserts the
primacy of the plating classification
[22]
and of the arrangement it suggests, he does recognize that in particular
instances one may not manage to determine whether separate sets of plates
were used. He says, "If plating did not occur (or he cannot prove that it
occurred), then the bibliographer will simply use
edition, impression, issue, and
state as he
always
has" (p. 258). Does he mean that even in such situations differences in
publishing arrangements are not to be acknowledged by a grouping into
subeditions?
[23] Whatever was meant,
I believe that this question brings us to a significant point. Since
subedition largely involves the kind of difference that within
an
impression would produce an issue, subeditions are usually recognized as
such, for the differences were intended to be noticed as distinguishing
discrete publishing efforts.
[24] The fact
that one generally knows when one is dealing with a subedition and
frequently may not know when there are duplicate plates cannot in itself be
an argument for or against a specific classification, for the desirability of
a classification is not affected by one's failure to ascertain the information
needed to apply it. Nevertheless, the bibliographer
deals with surviving physical objects— normally objects that have
passed
through a publishing process or have in some way been
distributed—and
the groupings into which they fall, within an edition, as a result of the
publishing process would seem to
be the natural basis for arrangement.
[25] Details of production history,
including
the identification of platings, are an important part of the total story and
should certainly be recorded; but it would be hard in most circumstances
to make a convincing case that those details rather than publishing details
should form the primary basis for arranging groups of impressions in a
bibliography. One can of course concentrate on the printing history of a
given work and write a study of that history. But bibliographers ordinarily
do not stop there; instead, they concern themselves with physical entities
that made their way into the world and are now before us—entities
that
may be made up of parts with differing printing histories but that present
themselves to us as published objects. This fundamental fact must affect all
thinking about bibliographical classification and arrangement.
[26]
One might then ask why publishing details should not be dominant
throughout, instead of adopting as basic the concepts of
edition
and impression, which refer in large part to printing history.
Perhaps the most direct way to begin answering this question is to say that
bibliographers actually use these printing terms as adjuncts of publishing
history and are not focusing any less consistently on publication by adopting
them. Indeed, the incorporation of subedition into the
hierarchy
illustrates the point. The bibliographer is interested not simply in identifying
the impressions that derived from a single setting of type but in showing the
varying publishing auspices under which they were released to the public.
When, for example, a second publisher releases new impressions from the
same setting as those released by the first publisher, the bibliographer
cannot refer to the group of impressions thus created as an "edition," since
that term has a
well-established meaning that is broader. The adoption of a term like
subedition reflects the bibliographer's view of an edition as
a
series of publishing units. Now it must be admitted that if this line of
argument were carried to its logical conclusion, the result would be likely
to satisfy no one: if, for instance, the seventh separate printing of a work
to be released by a given publisher were actually the first impression of a
second edition, it would be pointless not to reflect that fact in arrangement
simply because it was judged to be a part of printing history, not of concern
to the publisher, for whom all the impressions formed a single succession.
In fact, the decision to order a new typesetting is a significant publishing
decision,
just as the decision to order a new printing from previously set type or from
plates is a publishing decision. Although one can recognize a kind of logic
in the notion of recording printing facts in one sequence and publishing
facts in a separate sequence, a bibliography produced on this plan would be
extremely difficult to use: books are so inextricably the product both of
printing and of publishing that classification and arrangement should be
expected to take both into account. Separate outlines of the two approaches
might provide helpful guidance in some complicated situations, but the basic
historical account must attempt to deal with both together. Favoring the
publishing concept of
subedition over the printing concept of
plating as the primary classification intermediate between
edition and
impression for purposes of
arrangement
is consistent with the thinking underlying the process of bibliographical
description as a whole. And, one might add, it
does not mean that the question of plating should be investigated or reported
upon any less thoroughly.
The two approaches to arrangement can be efficiently illustrated by
the simple example that West focuses on in his discussion of plating,
William Styron's Set This House on Fire (1960). The two
impressions published by Random House from that firm's original relief
plates naturally come first. In West's proposed arrangement, the next entry
is the impression distributed by the Book Find Club in 1960, because it was
printed from new offset plates deriving from the first Random House
impression, and it therefore represents the "second American plating" of the
original edition. Following that comes the 1971 Random House impression,
because it was not printed from the original Random House plates but from
new offset plates made from the second impression sheets—and it
therefore becomes the "third American plating":
- First American plating (relief): Random House
First impression, March 1960
Second impression, September 1960
- Second American plating (offset from first American plating, first
impression): Book Find Club
First impression, July 1960
- Third American plating (offset from first American plating, second
impression): Random House
First impression, March 1971
Arranging the entries according to the chronology of plating means that the
impression distributed by the Book Find Club intrudes itself into the
sequence of impressions published by Random House.
[27] Since only
a single impression of the Book Find Club is involved, there is no great
inconvenience here. But in a more complicated situation, there might be a
succession of impressions released by a second publisher during the same
time that the first publisher was also producing a series of impressions, and
if one or more additional platings were ordered by either publisher, there
could be a considerable amount of interspersing of the entries relating to the
two firms.
[28] An arrangement by
subeditions would avoid this awkwardness, though obviously at the price of
making the sequence of platings less readily discernible:
Parent edition: Random House[29]
- First impression (original relief plates), March 1960
- Second impression (original relief plates), September
1960
- Third impression (offset from second impression), March
1971
Subedition: Book Find Club
- First impression (offset from first Random House impression),
July 1960
This system allows for the orderly expansion of the list of impressions
under each subedition, whereas the other emphasizes the orderly recording
of platings. There is no question in either case of concealing any
information, nor even of whether one system is a better classification than
the other, for each emphasizes significant facts and both can be defended.
The only question is which provides a better arrangement for the printed
pages of a bibliography, where one entry must follow another (unlike a
stemma, where simultaneous sequences of events can be shown side by
side). What gives an edge to the
subedition approach is, as
I
have suggested, its emphasis on books as published products. Since the
impressions coming from a single publisher or published in a single series
are likely to be closer to one another in physical appearance (title-page
design, binding, and so on) than they are to the impressions from another
publisher or series, a practical result of arranging
entries by subedition is that similar impressions, many of which can be
treated in abbreviated form ("the same as X except for . . ."), are grouped
together and cross reference among them facilitated. As concepts of
classification, subeditions and platings are both unquestionably important;
as a plan of arrangement in a bibliography, giving priority to subeditions
is likely to be more appropriate.
Having arrived at this point, we are still left with what many would
regard as the chief conflicts that produce difficulties of arrangement. I
believe, however, that the line of thinking followed thus far prepares us for
considering these other problems. Perhaps the central question —for
it
involves the others—is how to treat publication of an edition in more
than
one country.[30] Geography is not an
element in the basic classification scheme, but publication history is, and
it would obviously be possible to gather entries together according to
country of publication, thus setting geography ahead of chronology as the
primary organizing principle. If editions were never shared between
countries, the problem would be relatively simple, though the best
arrangement would still not be an obvious or easy matter to decide. What
would be involved is whether a single chronological sequence of editions
would be more, or less, useful than separate
chronologies of editions under each country. Strong cases could be made
for both approaches in particular instances, and I do not think a single rule
on this point could fit all situations. The problem is often more
complicated, however, for editions frequently are split between countries:
among the possibilities are sheets issued with cancel title leaves and new
impressions produced from offset plates. The further question in these cases
is whether the description of a single edition, or a single impression, should
be split up because parts of it were published in different countries. This
question is significantly different from the one concerning the ordering of
whole editions, for editions by definition are discrete entities, originating
in separate acts of typographic composition. One can more comfortably
contemplate the rearrangement of whole entities than a scheme of
arrangement that necessitates the splitting up of entities and the entering of
the resulting parts
under different headings. The latter may be defensible, but the question is
a more ponderable one.
The difficulty is to some extent illustrated by West's example. In
discussing Set This House on Fire, West asserts, "In a
descriptive bibliography, it would be much better to separate the American
publication history distinctly from the British" (p. 264). After listing the
three platings of the "First American Edition," he proceeds to a parallel
heading, "First English 'Edition,'" and records two further platings
(Hamish
Hamilton, 1961, and Jonathan Cape, 1970). Since of course the English
platings do not constitute a different edition, he is forced to place the word
"edition" in quotation marks in his heading and thereby to acknowledge that
the American and English headings, though assigned parallel status, are not
parallel in concept—unless one changes the concept from one based
on
typographic composition. In this particular instance, because of its
simplicity, the grouping together of the two English platings (or
subeditions, for in this case they coincide) causes no difficulty; indeed, they
would appear at the same point (but without the heading) in a chronological
arrangement, assuming that the 1971 plating were included with the other
Random House impressions. But the awkwardness of the "edition" heading
calls attention to the inherent problem, when impressions are split off from
the edition of which they are a part. And there is is the further
problem—not illustrated by this example from
Styron—of parts of impressions (i.e., issues) that are released in
different
countries (and presumably by different publishers). Segregating entries by
country may therefore require splitting up impressions as well as
editions.
Although I do not hesitate to recognize—as I have already
pointed
out—that bibliographical classification and arrangement involve a
mixture
of printing and publishing concerns, I still find something anomalous in the
proposal at once to classify according to plating and to arrange according
to country. Whether one chooses to give precedence to platings or to
subeditions as subdivisions of each edition, one will then find in many cases
that an arrangement by country works against such classification, since
impressions from the same plating may be published in different countries,
as may issues of an impression from a subedition. One might at first think
that arranging by country would entail no more problems than arranging by
subedition, since each publisher (or series) determining a subedition must
be located in some country. The significant difference is that nationality
adds another level to the classification and causes editions—not
merely
subeditions or platings—to be
broken up. West rightly observes, "Increasingly in modern books, the
American and British manufacturing histories overlap or derive from one
another" (p. 265); but this fact would appear to be an argument against,
rather than for, the separation of the records for the two countries. In all
but the simplest cases it would probably be helpful to provide an outline of
the publishing history in each country, with references to the relevant entry
numbers. The question at issue is not whether the publishing history of a
book in each country should be conveniently accessible but whether
nationality provides the most desirable arrangement for the descriptive
entries themselves. Unless we are to abandon
classification by edition (and I see no justification for that), it would seem
that keeping together all the entries dealing with parts of a single edition,
rather than separating them by country, would in most cases make those
entries easier to use and would present a more coherent account of the
international intertwining of the printing and publishing histories of
individual editions. In proposing this generalization, I have no wish to deny
the usefulness of a country-by-country outline (in effect, a form of index to
the entries) or to rule out the possibility of arranging whole editions by
country of origin. The latter would serve little purpose if the former were
provided; but my point is the desirability of avoiding the dispersal of the
descriptions relating to a single edition.
This approach can be extended to the treatment of issues: if
impressions (or groups of them forming subeditions) are to be described
under the editions of which they are a part, issues should be described
under the impressions of which they are a part.[31] Scattering the description of a
single
impression poses the same problems as breaking up the entries for a single
edition. If an issue bearing the imprint of a second publisher were given an
entry independent of the rest of the impression on the ground that a
different publisher is involved, the issue would have been accorded the
status of a subedition, and yet its relationship to the parent edition would
be very different from that of a subedition. As long as we are not giving up
the classification into impressions, it would normally be
desirable—for
similar reasons to those already offered for the treatment of whole
editions—to keep the descriptions of whole impressions intact. When
the
publisher of an issue turns up elsewhere in the record of an edition as the
publisher of an impression, cross references could be provided, if the
situation is complicated enough to warrant them, in order to facilitate
reference to the full role of a given publisher in the history of an
edition.[32]
A rule of thumb, simply stated, therefore might be to treat editions
and impressions as entities, not splitting off any of their constituent parts
for description under some other heading.[33] This rule would allow
for subeditions (or alternatively for platings), since any rearrangement they
involve is of whole impressions, and it would not prevent the placing of
nationality ahead of chronology for the arrangement of whole
editions.
[34] But in preserving intact
the descriptions of individual impressions and editions, it fosters coherence
in the basic historical account, which can then serve as a point of reference
for any supplementary outlines or other aids that one may wish to provide.
The following list of entries shows—for a purely hypothetical
edition—what the arrangement might look like in a specific instance:
Knopf parent edition
- First impression (relief plates): March 1921
- Second impression
American issue: July 1921
British issue: Cape, August 1921
[For Cape and Florin Books subeditions, see below][35]
- Third impression: June 1924
- Fourth impression (offset plates from third Borzoi Books
impression): April 1930
- [For Knopf Borzoi Books and Knopf (London) subeditions, see
below]
Boni & Liveright Modern Library subedition
- First impression (offset plates from second Knopf impression):
December 1921
- Second impression: June 1922
Cape subedition
- [For Cape issue of second Knopf impression, see above]
- First impression (offset plates from second Knopf impression):
January 1922
- Second impression
Cape issue: November 1922
Cape Florin Books issue: March 1923
[For Cape Florin Books subedition, see below]
Cape Florin Books subedition
- [For Cape subedition and Florin Books issue of second Cape
impression, see above]
- First impression (offset plates from second Cape impression): July
1923
Knopf Borzoi Books subedition
- [For Knopf parents edition, see above]
- First impression (offset plates from third Knopf impression):
August 1924
- Second impression: February 1926
- Third impression: December 1927
- [For Knopf (London) subedition, see below]
Knopf (London) subedition
- [For Knopf (New York) impressions and Knopf Borzoi Books
subedition, see above]
- First impression (offset plates from third American Knopf
impression): July 1927
- Second impression (offset plates from first British Knopf
impression): September 1928
If this edition were organized by country, impressions would have to be
broken up; and if it were organized by plates, the sequence of impressions
by publisher would be disturbed. It could not be arranged by country and
by plates at the same time, any more than the present arrangement by
subedition is compatible with either of those approaches. Something must
be sacrificed in the basic arrangement, but the loss can be made up by
descriptive phrases and cross references at appropriate points, as suggested
here, supplemented by separate schedules or stemmata and a thorough
index. A central idea underlying the arrangement shown here is that the
orderly listing of impressions by subedition allows for the most efficient use
of a bibliography, given the fact that impressions from one publisher or
series are likely to display more affinities in physical details with each other
than with impressions from another publisher or series. This belief may not
hold true in every case, but I think it
carries enough weight to be worth proposing as a norm. Anyone who has
thought through the rationale for this approach will be in a position to see
when another arrangement would be preferable. A successful arrangement
must be the product of careful thought about the material, not automatic
dependence on a predetermined pattern.
