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Notes
"Problems in the Bibliographical Description of Nineteenth-Century American Books," PBSA, XXXVI (1942), 124-136. See also Rollo G. Silver's "Problems in Nineteenth-Century American Bibliography," PBSA, XXXV (1941), 35-47, which discusses the lack of information about technological developments in nineteenth-century printing and publishing. — I should note here, as the context ought to make clear, that this survey deals only with book-length separately-published descriptive bibliographies; it does not take up checklists of secondary material or brief contributions to descriptive bibliography published in journals. Also I should explain that I have generally abbreviated the titles of bibliographies to the name of the author treated.
Cf. Fredson Bowers, "Purposes of Descriptive Bibliography, with Some Remarks on Methods," Library, 5th ser., VIII (1953), 19. The point was made as early as 1928 in Michael Sadleir's pioneering Trollope: bibliography, he said, "can be made to illustrate, not only the evolution of book-building, but also the history of book-handling and the effect of a gradually perfected book-craft on the aims and achievements of authorship." His Trollope, he went on, "is not only a reference work for collectors of that particular author but also a commentary on the book and publishing crafts of mid-Victorian England" (p. ix).
Falconer Madan, "Degressive Bibliography," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, IX (1906-09), 53-65. See also the series of letters on "The Degressive Principle" in TLS, 4 August (p. 716), 11 August (p. 732), 1 September (p. 781), and 22 September 1966 (p. 884).
See Madeleine B. Stern, "The Mystery of the Leon Brothers," Publishers' Weekly, CXLVII (1945), 2228-32.
See Lyon N. Richardson, "On Using Johnson's American First Editions and Other Sources," American Literature, IX (1937-38), 449-455. Lesser checklists continued to appear in these years, such as those of William Targ at the Black Archer Press in Chicago or H. W. Schwartz at the Casanova Press in Milwaukee.
See Gilbert M. Troxell's review, labeling it "unsatisfactory," in the Saturday Review of Literature, VII (27 December 1930), 494; P. H. Muir said that it "falls short of many of the essential requirements of a modern work," in "Bibliographies Reviewed," Points: Second Series (1934), p. 53.
A. W. Pollard and W. W. Greg, "Some Points in Bibliographical Descriptions," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, IX (1906-09), 31-52; Pollard, "The Objects and Methods of Bibliographical Collations and Descriptions," Library, 2nd ser., VIII (1907), 193-217.
Also in 1922 Michael Sadleir included a descriptive bibliography of Melville in his Excursions in Victorian Bibliography (pp. 222-233); though briefer than Minnigerode's it provides some additional information, such as the measurement of pages in inches.
Robert E. Spiller, in American Literature, V (1933-34), 372-374, criticized the subjectivity of its biographical and critical comments but considered it "a monument of scholarship." When completed, the whole work was widely reviewed: by Spiller again in American Literature, XIII (1941-42), 75-76; by R. L. Rusk in American Historical Review, XLVI (1941), 922-924; and by Thomas H. Johnson, calling it "a land-mark in American bibliographical scholar-ship" in the New England Quarterly, XIV (1941), 158-161.
E. K. Brown, in American Literature, V (1933-34), 288-290, noted some omissions in the Davis work and its "cursory" attention to English editions.
The earlier (1936) Wesleyan exhibit catalogue of Frost is not descriptive but does give information on binding states.
American Literature, VI (1934-35), 361-364. Langfeld then reviewed Williams's later work in VIII (1936-37), 223-225.
"If You Must Write a Bibliography," Colophon, n.s. II (1936-37), 165-175. Bowers, in Principles, p. 368, comments on the weakness of his position. (One may note here, parenthetically, that Lillian Lippincott's 1937 book, the third so-called "bibliography" of Robinson within seven years, was not descriptive in any sense.)
Blanck, p. 134. Cf. Thomas H. John-son's comment, in the Literary History, that it is "one of the finest single-author American bibliographies" (III, 772), or J. A. Pollard's description of it as "superb" in the New England Quarterly, X (1937), 596-597.
Library, 4th ser., XIV (1933-34), 365-382. At this time John Carter pointed out the way in which author-bibliographies in the preceding twenty-five years had assumed a "predominant place in the total of bibliographical output" — "Stocktaking, 1941," Publishers' Weekly, CXL (1941), 2241-45. Also at this time David Randall and John T. Winterich were providing, in the columns of Publishers' Weekly, a series of excellent bibliographical descriptions of famous novels. Among the American works included were Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ethan Frome, Two Years Before the Mast, Ben-Hur, and Portrait of a Lady — CXXXVII (1940), 255-257, 1181-82, 1931-33; CXXXVIII (1940), 191-192, 1173-75; CXXXIX (1941), 860-862; CXL (1941), 186-187.
The work was actually a rewriting of an earlier bibliography which had appeared in the pages of Heartman's American Book Collector and then separately in 1932.
See reviews by Theodore Hornberger in American Literature, XIII (1941-42), 179-180, and by C. H. Faust in New England Quarterly, XIV (1941), 566-568 (remarking on the incompleteness of the lists of copies and reprintings).
The seven authors are Lew and Susan Wallace, Maurice and Will Thompson, Mary Hannah and Caroline Virginia Krout, and Meredith Nicholson.
Such as Ernest J. Halter's Collecting First Editions of Franklin Roosevelt (1947), which provided no title-page transcriptions but did discuss bindings in some detail; Louis and Esther Mertins's The Intervals of Robert Frost (1947), called a "critical" bibliography but without indication of pagination, collation, or other usual features; Thomas S. Shaw's Carl Sandburg (1948); Carl J. Weber's Jacob Abbott (1948), and Clara C. and Carl J. Weber's Sarah Orne Jewett (1949), with no title-page transcriptions, and notation only of the total number of pages, measurement, and color of cloth; Lucille Adams's Huckleberry Finn (1950), not descriptive at all but with some discussion of bindings; Lee Samuels's A Hemingway Check List (1951); Guy R. Lyle and H. T. Brown's Christopher Morley (1952), supplementing Lee; and Sophie K. Shields's Edwin Markham (1952).
This system was called "highly usable" by C. T. Miller in the New England Quarterly, XXI (1948), 558-559, who also commended the "detailed collations" and considered the work "a model for bibliographies of difficult and extensive subjects." Cf. E. F. Walbridge's review in PBSA, XLII (1948), 264-266.
See the review by John S. Van E. Kohn in PBSA, LII (1958), 326-328, and the letter from R. Toole Stott about color terminology on pp. 329-330; C. W. Barrett reviewed it for the Library, 5th ser., XIV (1959), 68-69.
See Matthew J. Bruccoli's comments on the Nathan in PBSA, LV (1961), 265-266, which point out its failure to take adequate account of later impressions.
Some of the faults of the Anderson are enumerated in my review in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, III (1962), 106-112. As for Norris, an early effort to tackle the problem of plated books was Willard E. Martin's "The Establishment of the Order of Printings in Books Printed from Plates: Illustrated in Frank Norris' The Octopus," American Literature, V (1934-35), 17-28. Other lists of these years, which are not — and do not call themselves — bibliographies, have served in the absence of more detailed treatment: catalogues of library exhibits, like Joan Baum and Roland Baughman's L. Frank Baum (Columbia, 1956), or those prepared by John D. Gordan for the New York Public Library and Richard Gimbel for the Yale Library; or checklists of library holdings, like the series from the Barrett Library of the University of Virginia (for example, Bret Harte, 1957; Charles Timothy Brooks, 1960; Edwin Lassetter Bynner, 1961.)
See, for example, his remarks on Davis's Wharton (17 June 1933, pp. 1975-76), Langfeld-Blackburn's Irving (18 November 1933, pp. 1757-58), Robertson's Poe (21 April 1934, pp. 1540-43), Johnson's Mark Twain (22 February 1936, pp. 917-918), or Yost's Millay and Clymer-Green's Frost (15 May 1937, pp. 2034-36). — It should be noted here that, because of the general state of bibliography-reviewing, no attempt has been made in this article to list all the reviews; the ones cited represent a sampling of those which are above the average level or unusual in some respect.
Curt F. Bühler, James G. McManaway, and Lawrence C. Wroth, Standards of Bibliographical Description (1949), p. 118.
This point is often made but cannot be overemphasized. One recent statement of it is by R. A. Sayce, who suggests that the knowledge of compositorial practices which can serve to localize the work of unidentified printers might be considerably furthered if additional (and more detailed) elements were included in bibliographical descriptions. See his "Compositorial Practices and the Localization of Printed Books, 1530-1800," Library, 5th ser., XXI (1966), 45. This more inclusive approach does not, of course, absolve the bibliographer from the chore of arranging material into meaningful (or suggestive) patterns.
There has been an increasing awareness of the importance of English editions of American writers, from the time of I. R. Brussel's Anglo-American First Editions (1936) to Roland L. Shodean's "English Editions of American Authors 1801-1863" (Master's thesis, University of Chicago, 1958) and the recent paper, "Transatlantic Texts," read by Matthew J. Bruccoli to the Bibliographical Society (15 March 1966). Such work as Clarence Gohdes's "A Checklist of Volumes by Longfellow Published in the British Isles During the Nineteenth Century," in Bulletin of Bibliography, XVII (1940), 46ff., will be a great help to the future Longfellow bibliographer, but there has been very little research along these lines.
When the Centennial Edition of Sidney Lanier was being prepared — and for many years it was the only scholarly collected edition of an American author — provision was made for a "bibliography" (by Philip Graham and Frieda C. Thies, in VI [1945], 379-412), but it was only a checklist, with no description.
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