Whenever physical objects are produced in groups of supposedly
identical exemplars, close scrutiny will inevitably disclose differences
among them. Whether such differences are of any significance is a relative
matter, depending on the degree of precision required for a given purpose.
Some objects are made with such precision that elaborate equipment is
required to detect differences, whereas other objects can serve their function
well and be considered "identical" even if certain differences among them
are easily visible to the naked eye. Copies of books that publishers present
to the public as identical may actually vary from one another in a variety
of ways, and a basic task of the analytical bibliographer is to determine
what level of difference is of potential significance in a particular instance.
Imperfections in the weave of the binding cloth or differences in the amount
of inking of the type pages may prove to be insignificant, but the presence
on some copies of a
completely different cloth or the appearance in them of a difference in what
is printed at a given point would deserve to be reported and analyzed by the
bibliographer. A central truth that affects everything a bibliographer does
is the fact that books are not meant to be unique items and are normally
printed in runs of what purport to be duplicate copies. Manuscripts are by
their nature unique, and anyone analyzing the physical details of a
manuscript has only the one object to examine.[1] But anyone wishing to discuss the
physical
features of a particular edition or printing can never be content with a single
copy, because one cannot know whether it corresponds with other copies.
The totality of the evidence consists of all the copies; although one must
frequently make generalizations without seeing every copy, such
generalizations will be subject to revision as further copies are examined.
In one way or another, all bibliographical
analysis has to contend with the fact that a group may not be adequately
represented by any one of its members.
This point has of course long been recognized, at least since the time
when the nineteenth-century incunabulists inaugurated the serious physical
analysis of printed books. And it was repeatedly discussed just after the turn
of the century by Pollard, Greg, and McKerrow in their pioneer work
linking analytical bibliography and textual study. Pollard, for example,
writing in 1907 on descriptive bibliography, recognized that one object of
a description is to provide information that "may be used to ascertain
whether other copies are complete and perfect."[2] At about the same time, he and
Greg, in
another basic article on descriptive bibliography, noted, "one of the first
things that the bibliographical beginner learns is that the individuals which
constitute an edition are frequently not identical,"[3] and they went on to explain how
various
combinations of corrected and uncorrected formes can turn up in copies of
Elizabethan books. Greg, in his Malone Society Reprints (1907-35), and
McKerrow, in his edition of Nashe (1904-10), reported some of the
differences among copies of individual editions, and McKerrow devoted a
whole section to discussing this problem in his influential "Notes on
Bibliographical Evidence" of 1913,[4]
which was expanded as An Introduction to Bibliography
(1927).
Although the term ideal copy was not introduced into these
discussions as a way of defining the object of a bibliographical description,
it is clear that the distinction between a description of a single copy and a
standard description of an edition, based on the examination of multiple
copies, was well understood. As early as 1934 Greg spoke of the "ideally
perfect copy,"[5] and his work over
the decades leading to the completion of his great Bibliography of the
English Printed Drama to the Restoration (1939-59) shows his
practice in describing "ideal" copies, even though it was not until 1959 that
his introduction appeared with the formal statement
that each of his descriptions represents "a standard or ideal copy" (IV,
cxlviii). Meanwhile Fredson Bowers had brought these ideas to a focus in
the first sustained analysis of the concept of
ideal copy, in a
1947 article
[6] and then in his
Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949).
In this as in other respects, Bowers's book clarified principles and
procedures that had been evolving over the previous fifty years or more; the
concept of ideal copy was not new, but he provided a
workable
formulation of it that has been standard ever since. That bibliographical
descriptions must attempt to establish what the ideal copy in
each case consists of would seem, at this late date, to be so widely accepted
as to entail no further debate. And it would also seem to go without saying
that the concept is equally crucial for the scholarly editor: if a descriptive
bibliography of the work to be edited does not already exist, the editor must
in effect produce one in order to be prepared for the job of editing. Yet,
strangely, some bibliographies still appear that are based on the examination
of only one or two copies of each item (in some cases following the
erroneous assumption that more extensive investigation is unnecessary for
twentieth-century books).
And, similarly, some scholars still try to produce texts without engaging in
much, if any, collation between copies of the same edition. The term
ideal copy probably lends itself to misinterpretation, since it
is
not meant necessarily to imply a copy that is free from all error; but failure
to comprehend the concept cannot be excused because of the infelicity of
the term used to label it.
Perhaps the most flagrant recent misunderstanding of the concept
occurs in an article by Lorene Pouncey, who is misled by the word "ideal"
into thinking that ideal copy represents an unattainable goal,
which must continue to elude us as our conceptions of the ideal go on
evolving; she reaches the extraordinary conclusion that ideal
copy is "an absurd notion of analytical bibliographers . . .
recognizable as part of the human 'habit of perfection.'"[7] Although the extent of her
confusion is
obviously not shared by the bibliographical world at large, there do seem
to be some aspects of the concept that genuinely require
clarification. What I shall say here should be regarded as a footnote to the
basic discussion in Bowers's
Principles (pp. 113-123,
404-406).
But because Bowers treats the subject largely in the context of descriptive
bibliography, there is some point in making more explicit its relevance to
editing. Indeed, there is no better way of understanding the interdependence
of descriptive bibliography and editing than by thinking about
ideal
copy. Whether we use that term is not important; but defining the
concept and thinking through its implications are essential, because it goes
to the heart of bibliographical scholarship. A renewed examination of this
matter may also be opportune because of its bearing on the vexed question
of the relation between library cataloguing and descriptive
bibliography—a question that is now receiving considerable attention
as
a result of the work on the eighteenth-century short-title catalogue and the
efforts to improve the standards for
the machine-readable cataloguing of antiquarian books and special
collections.
