University of Virginia Library

Lyrical Ballads

Foxon's first essay was `Some Notes on Agenda Format', a technical
essay that established his bibliographical credentials, but this was followed
very shortly by the essay that was to be the foundation of his
reputation. `The Printing of Lyrical Ballads, 1798' was read to the
Bibliographical Society on 17 November 1953 and published in the
December issue of The Library the following year. This is his first
published encounter with T. J. Wise and to that extent represents a
meeting between the old bibliography and the new. Lyrical Ballads was
a trophy for collectors and Wise had given an account of it in his Bibliography
of the Writings in Prose and Verse of William Wordsworth
(London, 1916) and Two Lake Poets (London, 1927). Foxon addresses
librarians, collectors, and literary scholars, presenting his own conception
of bibliography in distinction to Wise's. The paper is written with
very close attention to physical evidence—point-holes, a Foxon speciality,
but also watermarks in wove paper—and after consultation of as
many copies as possible.[15] None of the resulting evidence, Foxon makes
it clear, however inconvenient, is to be overlooked, and conclusiveness
should not be claimed where it cannot be achieved. The physical evidence

is used to reconstruct the history of the production of Lyrical
Ballads, but that reconstruction depends on knowledge of the practices
of the trade, and especially of printing practices. Foxon is quite explicit
about his programme in the first paragraph: `I have tried to approach
the whole subject afresh from the point of view of the printer, and the
results suggest some modifications in the traditional story' (221).

The paper is concerned with four late changes to Lyrical Ballads:
the cancellation of `Lewti', because it would have identified Coleridge
as author, and its replacement by `The Nightingale'; the consequential
change of the Contents page; the addition of a short preface by Wordsworth;
and the replacement of a Bristol title page by a London one.
Foxon's account depends on accurate description of the surviving copies
and an explanation of the relation between leaves on the basis of the
watermarks and surviving point-holes. He first shows that the Contents
page is not a cancel, as Wise had claimed (it is conjugate with the first
leaf of its gathering) but a proper member of a half-sheet also containing
the preface. He then uses point-hole evidence to show that the halfsheet
of preliminaries (including the Contents) was printed with the
half-sheet used to replace Lewti with `The Nightingale'. The new
Contents, therefore, belongs to the same stage of printing as the substitution,
and the preface is contemporary with this change. Foxon then
turns from the preliminaries to the end of the book, and quotes Wise's
account: `O (1 leaf), followed by an unsigned quarter-sheet of two
leaves, the first of which has upon its recto the List of Errata, the reverse
blank, whilst the second is occupied by the list of Books published
. . .' From the printer's point of view this would have been an
uneconomical arrangement, and Foxon uses point-hole evidence to show
that O1 and O2 were conjugate. The presence of only one point-hole
suggests these final leaves (O4) were printed by half-sheet imposition,
and that O4 was removed for some other purpose. Foxon speculates that
it might have been the original title page. `If . . . we add the title-leaf
(which is a singleton) to the three leaves at the end, we have a respectable
half-sheet, and I think a modern bibliographer would almost automatically
assume that the four leaves were printed together' (225).

The title page of Lyrical Ballads is found in two states: one with
`Bristol: printed by Biggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman, PaternosterRow,
London, 1798.' and the other with a `London' imprint for `J. & A.
Arch'. Foxon suggests that the London title page is indeed a cancel (it
has the wrong part of the watermark), but he is perplexed by the Bristol
title page, because none of the eight copies traced has the watermark
needed to link it to O4. Foxon is willing to speculate on a solution—
`merely one attempt at stringing together the facts and some of the

hypotheses into a consistent whole' (241). He suggests that there may
have been three title pages: a `Cottle only' title page, O4, which was
abandoned when Cottle realized he needed financial help with the edition;
the Bristol title page, which was some form of proof, run off when
Cottle thought he had an agreement with Longman; and the London,
Arch, title page, which was run off on the correct paper. The abandoned
Contents page was also without watermarks, and would belong to the
same proofing stage as the Bristol title page. As became his habit, Foxon
presents a summary:

The final element in Foxon's discussion, the association of O4 with
a `Cottle only' title page has recently been challenged successfully in a
fine essay by Mark L. Reed.[16] Reed is generous in his assessment of
Foxon's essay, calling it `indispensable' and outlining much of its analysis
in defining his own position. A copy Foxon had not seen (at the
Alexander Turnbull Library) shows that the Bristol title page does
sometimes display the same watermark as the rest of the volume and
undermines the contention that it was some sort of stop-gap measure.
And a fascinating examination of a volume in the McGregor Library
of the Special Collections Department of Alderman Library, University
of Virginia, reveals a stub, likely to be of the first Contents page, with
one of the letters of the watermark in the right place. Reed's conclusion,
highly persuasive, is that the original Contents was O4 and that the
Bristol title page was printed at the same time. Reed's analysis shows

the basic soundness of Foxon's approach, and, in correcting Foxon's
conclusions, it confirms the value of examining multiple copies of a
book.

Foxon's essay brings together more elements than my brief summary
has indicated—evidence of provenance, publication history, acquittal of
Wise from one forgery charge—but the concern for easy communication
of technically complex information is thoroughgoing. Foxon presents
the essay as the fruit of collaboration (he thanks John Hayward, Howard
Nixon, Basil Cottle, and American librarians), and suggests that his
audience may be able to take the investigation further. A key group of
sentences points to Foxon's method of codebreaking. Having given the
collation of the volume, he says,

The method is to identify irregularities as the key to the whole, treat
them as individual puzzles, set about solving them, and then try to collate
the results. In this case, Foxon is able to use the evidence of the
point-holes to establish the concurrent printing of the cancel section
and preliminaries, and then sets about examining the watermark evidence
in O4. But, though he attends to individual puzzles, Foxon always
has a general aim in mind, which is to uncover the story of the printing
and publication of Lyrical Ballads to the interested parties.

The success of the Lyrical Ballads paper introduced Foxon to two
figures who were to be influential in his development: John Hayward
and William A. Jackson. Hayward, who had given a different account
of Lyrical Ballads in the Rothschild catalogue (II, 703-704), had come
to the Library in his wheelchair to check Foxon's account. Hayward
was editor of the Book Collector and he encouraged Foxon to publish a
series of bibliographical notes, often short but always of high analytical
quality, over the next fifteen years. Jackson was then rare books librarian
at Harvard and had been responsible for compiling and designing
the three-volume Pforzheimer Catalogue.[17] He was in England every
summer, working on the revision of the STC. For Foxon he provided
an important connection with a major project in enumerative bibliography
and also a link with the world of American libraries. When

Foxon went to the States on a Harkness Fellowship in 1959-61, it was
letters of introduction from Jackson that opened the doors—and even
stacks—of American libraries to him.

The articles in The Library and Book Collector established Foxon
as an authority in analytical bibliography. In 1955 he produced a lucid
and well-referenced little pamphlet for the National Book League on
The Technique of Bibliography. The approach is informal, but the
initial recommendation of McKerrow's Introduction to Bibliography
and John Carter's ABC for Book Collectors is supplemented by praise
of articles by Bowers and Stevenson.