University of Virginia Library

IV

A new era in the annals of Studies opened with Volume 46 (1993), for that volume marked the beginning of David L. Vander Meulen's editorship. That the years since then can be called a new era does not point to any difference of approach that Vander Meulen has brought to the position but only signals the fact that a change of editorship after forty-five years is obviously a major event in the life of any journal. Not that many journals have ever experienced such an event, for an editorial tenure of that length is as rare among scholarly journals as it is among general-circulation periodicals. And when the editor is also one of the great figures in a field, the situation is rarer still. If one tries to think of other major bibliographical scholars who have edited journals for long periods, one is bound to think first, in the English-speaking world, of R. B. McKerrow, who founded the Review of English Studies and edited it for fifteen years, and A. W. Pollard, who edited The Library for thirty-one years. But Bowers's forty-five-year editorship far surpassed both their terms--indeed, almost equaling the two combined.

Because Bowers at the same time published a large body of his own scholarship--some three million words, plus sixty-eight volumes of editions--and was a busy teacher and administrator, it is sometimes assumed that he spent little time on Studies. Nothing could be farther from the truth: Bowers was in fact an extremely active journal editor. No distinguished journal can exist without constant attention, and the SB editorship was a basic fact of Bowers's life, a continuous and demanding activity that existed alongside his other projects. His shaping hand is reflected throughout the published contents, as a result of his solicitation of articles and his treatment of them after he received them. Of course, the character of the journal derives, even more fundamentally, from his receptiveness to all kinds of work. He conducted SB with an open-mindedness that surprised some people, who thought that the assertiveness of his own writing indicated a lack of openness to other points of view. But just as the uncompromising quality of his public statements emerged from a principled and reasoned position, not from personal pique or stubbornness, so his standards for SB concerned cogency and scholarly responsibility, not a particular line of thinking.

But what was time-consuming about this approach was the way he worked with potential contributors. Solicitation of articles, which he engaged in continually,[34] was of course a compliment and an incentive

to the authors; but equally important was his recognition of bibliographical talent at an early stage and his supportive (if rigorous) criticisms that helped to give both reassurance and direction to those possessing it. He frequently invited his graduate students to contribute to Studies, when he saw that they had appropriate material, and thus helped to launch several of them on notable careers as publishing scholars. As for those who were not his students, Bowers's record of discovering talent extended from Allan Stevenson and William Todd, in the first two volumes, to Adrian Weiss, whose exciting and innovative investigations of Renaissance type fonts appeared in the final three volumes that Bowers oversaw. In the last of them, which was published nine months after Bowers's death, Weiss movingly recorded his indebtedness to Bowers: Weiss gave voice to sentiments that had been felt by many earlier contributors as well. I can testify myself to the friendly support that underlay his letters to me, from the time of our first correspondence about SB in 1962; his encouraging inquiries (and, sometimes, tentative hints) regarding my work in progress were as important to me as his sensitive and shrewd comments on the work actually submitted. I cannot imagine being read by a more responsive and understanding reader, or receiving more constructive and meaningful encouragement; and I know that my feelings are shared by many others. It seems apparent that a considerable portion of the contents of SB might never have existed without Bowers's perceptively chosen words at the right moments.

Once an article was received, Bowers gave it immediate and detailed scrutiny. The easy way in which prose flowed forth profusely from him enabled him to give copious advice, in the form of extremely long letters. It was not uncommon for potential contributors to receive letters of six, eight, ten, or more single-spaced--and sometimes unparagraphed--pages

(often with a postscript in his notoriously difficult handwriting). Frequently such letters were the by-products of the actual process of reading: he would go through articles at the typewriter and type out a running commentary as he read. This procedure sometimes resulted in his having to say, at some later place in a letter, that an earlier point he had made should now be disregarded; but even these adjustments of opinion were useful to the authors, who were thus alerted to spots in their articles that might at first be misleading or misunderstood. The authors always knew that their work was receiving Bowers's concentrated attention and that his suggestions grew out of an understanding of--and respect for--what they were trying to accomplish.[35] The appreciative comments of Curt Bühler and George Walton Williams, quoted above, are suggestive of the gratitude felt by many contributors.

The intensive labor of Bowers's style of editorship was borne largely by Bowers himself. Before Vander Meulen's arrival in Charlottesville, only one assistant was recorded on SB title pages: L. A. Beaurline, a member of the Virginia English department, was named there in Volumes 17 through 27 (1964-74), first as Assistant Editor (1964-65) and then as Associate Editor (1966-74). And three other names made brief appearances as "Assistants to the Editor" in 1974-77, listed among the Society's officers at the back of the volumes.[36] When Bowers retired from the English department in 1975 at the age of seventy, he had made no arrangements for a successor as editor, and in any case he wished to continue editing the journal. But finding a successor was much on his mind in the years that followed. It happened that he met David Vander Meulen in the North Library of the British Museum in the spring of 1978 and, seeing the kind of work Vander Meulen was doing, invited him to submit the results of his research to SB. After a few years, Vander Meulen did send Bowers two pieces that derived from his work for a remarkable 1981 dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. The dissertation was a descriptive bibliography of Pope's Dunciad from 1728 to 1751, and it set new standards for bibliographical description, both in thoroughness and in the development and use of new techniques. Bowers published the two articles in Volumes 35 and 37 (1982 and 1984) and recognized

that the dissertation was a comparable landmark to William B. Todd's Chicago dissertation some three decades before, in the early days of SB. Vander Meulen thus joined the distinguished circle of young scholars who had benefited from Bowers's encouragement at significant moments in their lives.[37] Bowers suggested to the English department that Vander Meulen be interviewed for a position; an offer was made in December 1983, and Vander Meulen agreed to join the department in the autumn of 1984.

It was understood that part of Vander Meulen's time was to be spent assisting Bowers with Studies, and it did not take Bowers long to see that Vander Meulen, with his thorough knowledge of bibliographical and textual work and his judiciousness, would be an ideal successor. Bowers continued as editor until his death in the spring of 1991, and Vander Meulen thus had the opportunity of working with him for nearly seven years, gradually taking over many of the responsibilities for reading submitted articles and seeing the volumes through the press. Bowers's increasing reliance on Vander Meulen was reflected in the way Vander Meulen's name was reported in print. Although his name did not appear in Volume 38 (1985), the first one with which he was associated, it was given on the copyright pages of the next two volumes, first as "Assistant to the Editor" (39) and then as "Assistant Editor" (40). Beginning with the next volume (41), his name moved to the title page beneath Bowers's, first labeled "Assistant Editor" (41-43) and then "Associate Editor" (44-45). Volume 45, which appeared early in 1992 and was thus the first to come out after Bowers's death, contained the following announcement on the recto of the leaf preceding the opening of the first article:

Most of the editorial work for that volume was handled by Vander Meulen, but Bowers's name was allowed to remain as editor, and it was the next volume (46) in which Vander Meulen was first named as editor on the title page. At the top of the copyright page of Volume 46, the following appeared: Since that time Bowers's name has continued to be recorded as "Founding Editor" on the copyright page, and beginning with Volume 48 (1995) there is another listing below it: "Assistant to the Editor / Elizabeth Lynch."

The volume dedicated to Bowers (46) contains the "survey of his career" promised in the preceding volume, in the form of my 154-page monograph entitled "The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers," which not only discusses his professional life but presents a considerable amount of information about his personal life as well. In a journal known for its lengthy articles, it is perhaps fitting that the longest of all should have been devoted to Bowers himself. This biography was followed by a thirty-page checklist of Bowers's published work and a two-page chronology of his career, both prepared by Martin Battestin on the basis of Bowers's own versions that had appeared in his 1975 volume of collected essays. (The biography, checklist, and chronology, along with a preface by Vander Meulen and an index, were also published by the Society as a separate hard-cover volume.) The presence of all this material made Volume 46 distinctive, but in other respects it and the succeeding volumes under Vander Meulen's editorship have included the same kinds of articles that have characterized the journal from the beginning. Several of the same contributors, such as MacD. P. Jackson, G. E. Bentley, Jr., and Ralph Hanna III, have reappeared in these volumes, and the newcomers have included such a major figure as Paul Needham. Some of the particularly important articles have indeed been by first-time contributors, such as--to name only two--Ann R. Meyer's on the editing of King Lear (47) and Maura Ives's on the bibliographical description of periodicals (49).

Vander Meulen is clearly continuing the tradition of being hospitable to all kinds of bibliographical scholarship. A new interest that one may discern in the most recent five volumes is an effort to promote work on the history of bibliography, especially in the form of biographical studies of important bibliographers.[39] My biography of Bowers has been followed

by an illuminating discussion of Allan Stevenson by Paul Needham (47) and a graceful memoir of J. D. Fleeman by David Fairer (48). The latter piece is in fact part of a series of "Essays in Honor of J. D. Fleeman," as the table of contents for Volume 48 is headed. All but two of the articles in the volume are part of this grouping, which constitutes the first instance in which a volume of Studies has been designed as a Festschrift or has had an overall theme. Given SB's strong record in eighteenth-century studies and its new interest in biography, a Festschrift for a distinguished bibliographer of Samuel Johnson seems entirely in order. And not surprisingly the list of contributors to Volume 48 is one of the most stellar in the history of the journal, consisting of James McLaverty, O M Brack, Jr., Keith Maslen, Hugh Amory, James E. Tierney, Gwin J. Kolb, Robert DeMaria, Jr., Anne McDermott, Donald D. Eddy, Donald W. Nichol, Thomas F. Bonnell, Ann Bowden, William B. Todd, Pamela Dalziel, and B. J. McMullin. Vander Meulen's five volumes have thus shown some innovation, but strictly within the established tradition: the character of the series has been maintained.

I hope some idea of that character has been conveyed in the preceding pages, and perhaps a brief statistical retrospect is in order at this point. Over the past half-century, Studies has published the work of 509 writers, who have contributed 930 pieces filling 13,682 pages.[40] Twenty writers have contributed more than five times:

                         

G. Thomas Tanselle	36
Arthur Sherbo	28
Fredson Bowers	25
William B. Todd	16
Curt F. Bühler	15
G. E. Bentley, Jr.	10
Robert K. Turner, Jr.	10
Matthew J. Bruccoli	9
Ralph Hanna III	9
Rollo G. Silver	9
Louis Daniel Brodsky	8
Martin C. Battestin	7
Cyrus Hoy	7

             

George Walton Williams	7
Cyprian Blagden	6
John Russell Brown	6
Emily Lorraine de Montluzin	6
MacD. P. Jackson	6
C. William Miller	6
Dennis E. Rhodes	6

Since some of these scholars have tended to contribute short pieces, a perhaps more meaningful indication of which writers are most responsible for shaping the character of Studies is a ranking according to the number of pages their contributions cover. Those who have contributed more than 125 pages are as follows:[41]

                           

G. Thomas Tanselle	1468
Fredson Bowers	518
Arthur Sherbo	286
G. E. Bentley, Jr.	237
William B. Todd	236
Emily Lorraine de Montluzin	193
Martin C. Battestin	175
Rollo G. Silver	164
David L. Vander Meulen	163
Cyrus Hoy	161
Adrian Weiss	150
Edgar F. Shannon, Jr.	147
Robert K. Turner, Jr.	146
D. F. McKenzie	142

These lists dramatize the extent to which SB has fostered a group of loyal contributors, who repeatedly return to its pages. But these figures should be balanced against the fact that the total number of contributors is 509--hardly a closed circle.

For the past half-century Studies in Bibliography has been at the heart of bibliographical developments. Its fifty volumes, essential reading when they were published, will continue to be essential reading--not only because they are central to the bibliographical history of the times but also because they contain an extraordinary number of fundamental articles of permanent interest. This fact has been recognized by the decision to mark the anniversary by placing the entire run of Studies on the Internet. From now on, readers will have access to all the material

in Studies through the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia's site on the World Wide Web (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/bsuva/), with the advantages for searching and downloading that are provided by electronic publication.[42] Studies will continue to appear in printed form (printed from Linotype), and the text of new volumes will be added to the electronic database as well.

Although SB is by no means the first scholarly journal to appear in electronic form, it is the first to have its entire--and sizable--back file made available on the Internet without charge. This action makes a clear statement: that the whole file is of permanent value and that any available technology for making it widely accessible will be used. One hopes that the Society's handling of SB will be followed by those responsible for other journals in the electronic future. Certainly the anniversary of Studies in Bibliography is being marked in a forward-looking spirit; and, with an experienced new editor fully in control, there is every reason to regard the journal's future with confidence.