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Introduction
David Foxon was perhaps the most distinguished British bibliographer of the second half of the twentieth century. His general contribution to bibliography has been widely admired and honoured, and his catalogue English Verse, 1701-1750 (1975) has given his name to half a century of separately published poems.[1] But, while his work has been influential, particularly on the study of the book trade, on the history of pornography, and on eighteenth-century editing, it has been little discussed. This neglect is at least partly due to the fact that Foxon founded no school of bibliography, formulated no theory of bibliographical enquiry, and initiated no general programme of research. Yet the body of his work as a whole displays an impressive consistency of approach and an awareness of the values, motivations, and intentions directing it. My aim in this essay is to provide a record of his life and work in the context of some of the social and intellectual currents of his time. More broadly, I hope to draw attention to the combination of humanist and technical virtues that often informs bibliography but is less frequently identified in discussion of it.
A fruitful approach to Foxon's work, I believe, is through an analogy with the `ordinary language philosophy' that formed such an important part of the intellectual atmosphere of post-War Oxford. Foxon breathed this same atmosphere, and, like J. L. Austin, the movement's leading figure, he came to Oxford after serving in war-time intelligence.[2]
The second link with Oxford's ordinary language school lies in the way Foxon uses language. In their writing the philosophers aimed at an easy style, consciously engaging with the readership as a social group, but capable of the strictest technical demonstration. Philosophers like J. L. Austin or H. P. Grice move easily from discussing what might be said by this sort of person in this sort of social situation to a technical expression
Thirdly, ordinary language philosophy was so constituted that it had a ready reply to scepticism, rebutting sceptical challenge by asking, `Why raise that question here and now? What in the situation calls for it?' Foxon always knows what in the immediate social or academic situation gives rise to a question and who might be interested in the answer. Abstract issues have no application. In adopting this approach he contrasts with that drive for definitiveness of research, system, and even sometimes scientific methodology, which has been such an important strand in bibliographical discourse since the War.[5] These claims to foundations and demonstration left bibliography and textual criticism vulnerable to sceptical challenge in the 1990s.[6] Foxon belongs to the alternative broad tradition sketched by Keith Graham: `Deeply rooted in the English intellectual tradition is a feeling for concreteness and particularity, a mistrust of abstract, high-flown generalizations and an insistence that even speculative thought should be anchored in the concreteness of tangible, everyday experience.'[7] Graham reports that a colleague responded to this claim by saying, `Well, could you give me an
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