University of Virginia Library

II

Ideal copy, as this account of it is intended to make clear, cannot be divorced from textual considerations. The fact that descriptive bibliography is concerned with physical details has caused some misunderstanding on this point and has led some people to think that ideal copy is unrelated to textual matters and therefore to editing. Ideal copy does, of course, refer to physical features of a book, but the inked type-impressions that transmit the text are physical features, and textual differences among copies are physical differences. Textual correctness is obviously something else, and descriptive bibliography is not concerned with it; but textual differences among copies cannot be ignored in descriptive bibliography, or in the concept of ideal copy. The idea that analytical bibliography—which underlies both descriptive bibliography

and editing—does not require a knowledge of the meaning of the texts printed in the books under analysis has frequently been held in exaggerated form, largely as the result of some overstatements on Greg's part (made in the course of trying to explain the aims of what was then a relatively new field).[27] It is true, of course, that the analytical bibliographer is not concerned with the meaning of texts in the way that an editor is; but a knowledge of the language of the texts is always helpful to an analytical bibliographer, and sometimes essential (as in recognizing variant spellings in compositor analysis). Analytical and descriptive bibliographers would often leave their work undone if they did not take note of textual differences in their accounts of physical differences among copies.

The relation of the textual interests of descriptive bibliographers and those of editors can be somewhat clarified by considering the use that editors of both critical and noncritical editions might make of bibliographical descriptions. Noncritical editions provide the more obvious starting point, because a noncritical edition is one that aims to reproduce exactly a particular manuscript or printed text—without, that is, calling upon the editor's critical judgment to provide emendations. For a noncritical edition of a manuscript, there is no question about what copy to follow, since a manuscript is unique; there may of course be a question about which of the various manuscripts of a given work is to be reproduced, but once a particular manuscript is settled upon as worthy of reproduction, there is no further choice to be made among copies. But with printed material the situation is different. Even after one has decided which edition—or impression or issue—of a work is the one to be reproduced, one still must face the problem of which copy should be used, since one obviously cannot assume—for books of any period—that all copies are the same. Whether the noncritical edition is to be a photographic reproduction or a new setting of type, it will contain that form of the text present in the copy selected, since no emendations are to be made, and the copy should therefore be chosen carefully. Of course, the copy used must be specified in the noncritical edition, and some editors may argue that the choice of copy is not crucial, so long as readers know exactly where they stand—so long as they are told that the noncritical edition follows the text of a particular copy and that it is thus limited to the documentary evidence present in that

copy. But surely in most cases it would be foolish to reproduce a copy that had been altered over the years if another copy existed that was closer to the form (or one of the forms) in which the book originally appeared. Comparison of extant copies, then, is a necessity even for editors of noncritical editions, so that they will be in a position to determine what features of particular copies have resulted from alteration occurring since the time of the publisher's release of those copies. In addition, they may find that copies of a given issue differ among themselves in containing variant states of the text, and they have the problem of choosing—even among copies that have not been altered by individual owners—the copy that is most desirable from a textual point of view. Some editors of noncritical editions have long recognized the usefulness of pointing out textual differences between the copy reproduced and other copies. Even when an editor feels that it is not feasible to provide a full list of variants, some statement is called for—beyond the identification of the particular copy—generalizing about the issue as a whole and what relation the reproduced copy bears to it. Just because editors of noncritical editions do not have to make critical choices among individual variant readings does not absolve them of the responsibility for knowing what variants exist within the edition they are concerned with; choosing a copy for reproduction is itself a critical choice, and it should be as informed a choice as possible. When a descriptive bibliography has sorted out the various states comprising the ideal copy (or, it might be better to say, the ideal copies) of an issue, the editor of a noncritical edition can use this information with great profit. But when that bibliographical work has not been performed, the responsible editor of a noncritical edition has no alternative but to undertake the task. Editing, even of noncritical editions, cannot be divorced from descriptive bibliography and from the concept of ideal copy.

Charlton Hinman's Norton Facsimile (1968) of the Shakespeare First Folio provides the natural focus for a discussion of this point. The Folger collection of eighty copies of the Folio made feasible Hinman's detailed study of the printing of the volume[28] and put him in possession of a thorough knowledge of the various mixtures of corrected and uncorrected formes present in different copies. Because each of the copies contains a mixture of earlier and later states of the text of those pages known to exist in variant states, a photographic reproduction of any one copy—though it would be useful in showing one of the forms in which the book appeared—would be limited to the chance combination of sheets present in that copy. What Hinman conceived was the idea of

photographing the latest state of the text of each page, from whatever copies these states were found in, and bringing these photographs together; the resulting facsimile is not a facsimile of any extant copy but a collection of facsimiles of individual pages. In the end Hinman found it necessary to utilize thirty copies as the sources for photographs, and he carefully records the copy used for each page. The Norton Facsimile is a noncritical edition because Hinman does not introduce editorial emendations into the text as it appears in the Folio; but because there is no such thing as the text of the Folio, he has clearly exercised his informed editorial judgment in deciding which of the Folio texts of each page is to appear in his facsimile. This approach is the logical result of a search for the most appropriate copy to reproduce.

Whether or not the result should be thought of as representing the ideal copy is a question that has engendered some disagreement. Hinman himself, after describing the basis for his choice of pages, calls it the first facsimile that undertakes to reproduce "such an 'ideal' copy of the First Folio" (p. xxiv). Those who object to this application of the term are apparently under the misapprehension that the concept of ideal copy has nothing to do with textual variants. Actually, the basis for possible criticism of the statement lies elsewhere. In the first place, if this collection of pages were claimed to be the ideal copy, one could object that the book appeared with various combinations of sheets and that the bibliographical concept of ideal copy must accommodate the divergent forms that in fact appeared; this combination of pages might indeed be an ideal copy, or one of the forms of ideal copy, but cannot be the ideal copy. Second, whether it is an ideal copy depends on whether it would have been a physically possible form for the printer to have issued. Obviously in preparing a facsimile text one cannot pick and choose among readings on the same page, combining a reading from one copy of the page with a reading found only in a different copy at another point on the page, if there is no evidence that these two readings ever existed simultaneously on the same page. But as long as it was physically possible for sheets printed with first formes in the latest state of alteration to be perfected with second formes in the latest state and for successive sheets in such a state to be assembled into individual copies of the completed book, one can legitimately posit that combination of "corrected" formes as falling within the range of copies encompassed by ideal copy. The fact that such a copy does not actually exist is not in itself a deterrent to the classification, since the extant copies are a random assemblage, and the combinations of sheets in them are also produced by chance. But the degree of likelihood that such a copy ever existed, if one is in a position to weigh that likelihood, may indeed be a

deterrent. If one had been able to see every copy as issued, and none contained all the corrected formes, one could not think of such a copy as an ideal copy, even though it was technically possible, for ideal copy is a historical concept applicable to the copies of a book as issued. But when one has access to less than the full evidence, what is possible becomes less easy to rule out.

In any case, the question whether the Norton Facsimile can be considered to represent an ideal copy is of more use as an exercise in thinking about the implications of the concept than for any practical purpose it might serve. A thorough bibliographical description, after all, would record the various states of each forme (and, in the documentation, the combinations present in examined copies), but it would not endorse particular combinations of those states, except where there is evidence that certain states are linked together. And Hinman's facsimile—though it may indeed, as he claims, be a "reproduction of what the printers of the original edition would themselves have considered an ideal copy" (p. xxii)—need not be labeled an "ideal copy" except to the extent that it presents one of the possibilities that ideal copy for this book apparently embraces. What it does, to be more precise, is to single out from the various forms in which the book appeared or conceivably appeared the one that makes most sense, in Hinman's view, to reproduce for purposes of textual study. The historical question of whether a copy could have appeared, or did appear, in this form is of less moment for such purposes than the value for reference of having this particular assemblage of material. One should not forget, however, that editors and other students of the text cannot limit themselves to "corrected" formes, which are often less correct—at least as far as accidentals are concerned—than "uncorrected" formes.[29] They must be fully apprised of all variant states of the text and must therefore consult, or prepare for themselves, the information that a bibliographical description provides.

What Hinman did with photographs, some collectors have done with originals: to insert material from one copy into another copy. Of course, Hinman could move single pages, whereas those who are recombining originals cannot move less than a single leaf (containing a type page from an inner and from an outer forme). The practice of

"making up" copies by inserting leaves to replace those that are missing has been variously discussed, and with considerable feeling. One prominent instance concerns the Scheide copy of the Gutenberg Bible, in which several missing leaves were replaced after it came into the Scheide collection. Writing about this copy in The Scheide Library (1947), Julian Boyd says that there are two schools of thought on the matter. Some would hold that the copy should have remained in exactly the form in which it was received; others, he believes, would take the point of view This passage, apparently meant to defend the practice of making-up, does not give it as good a defense as might be constructed and in the process exhibits a number of confusions—confusions that a careful consideration of the concept of ideal copy would have set straight. It is true of course that a great many variables determine the particular combination of sheets brought together for each copy of a book and that individual copies cannot be expected to consist throughout of sheets that were first off the press, or second off the press, or third off the press, and so on. (In any case, the order "off the press" can refer only to the printing of second formes; the order in which the white paper was printed is likely to be very different from the order of perfecting.) But this fact cannot be taken to suggest that all mixing of sheets has the same status regardless of the point in the history of a copy when it takes place. The point where the "trusteeship" of a copy begins, to put the question in those terms, is the moment when the copy is released from the control of its producer. Even though the sheets of that copy may be mixed (or even deficient), the combination and arrangement of sheets present in it are evidence of one form in which the book emerged from the process of its production; any physical alteration made in the copy after that point, even if it brings the copy nearer to the form intended by the printer, violates the integrity of the historical evidence.

To say that the "alteration of the condition" of a book by binders is accepted "unquestioningly" is to confuse the issue in several ways. First of all, it is one thing for a binder, in the process of binding a book that was not published in an edition casing, to rearrange certain leaves within a copy, as specifically called for by the printer (e.g., moving a half-title from the end to the beginning). It is quite another for that binder to undertake to remedy what are presumed to be defects in the copy by inserting leaves that were not originally part of the copy. If binders have often thought of this latter procedure as a routine part of their business, and if their clients have sometimes accepted the practice "unquestioningly," these attitudes do not justify the practice or provide grounds for later owners to continue it. Making up copies, whether by early binders or by later collectors, remains a tampering with the evidence. Furthermore, the situation is not simply one of continuing to mix sheets in the way that they were originally mixed; what is inserted later is hardly ever a sheet (a whole piece of paper as folded according to the format) but a leaf, thus mixing together a leaf from one sheet with the remaining leaf or leaves from another sheet. Students of the text naturally need to ascertain the order of any stop-press alterations and must therefore work out just what was on the press at any one time; but one can never know whether the text of inserted leaves is identical to that of the missing leaves, and inserted leaves obviously cannot stand as satisfactory substitutes for the originals. Of course, one should normally be able to tell that such leaves are disjunct, and one would then look at them with particular skepticism; but still one needs to know whether they are true cancels or later insertions, both for textual purposes and as a general matter of understanding the nature of the preserved evidence. Finally, there is the point about the "interchangeability" of leaves printed from movable type. The invention of movable type clearly has nothing to do with the matter, since other ways of preparing printing surfaces (such as that used for block books) were also intended to result in identical copies. The important point, however, is that the intention to produce identical copies cannot be accepted by the historian as equivalent to the deed; one cannot assume that all copies of a leaf were in fact identical and that missing evidence can simply be replaced by its supposed duplicate.

For all these reasons bibliographers and editors always try to be alert to the possibility of alterations made during the process of binding or other alterations made by individual owners. Books not issued in publishers' bindings or casings, as well as rebound or recased copies of

those so issued, must always be examined with unusual severity; and in some cases one remains so unsatisfied as to rule such copies out completely as sources of evidence. Certainly one should have no faith in rebound copies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century books if copies in publishers' casings are plentiful (though one should still examine them on the chance that they might contain otherwise unknown textual variants). There is no way of rationalizing the making up of copies to give them the same status as books that have not been tampered with. A much better, and far simpler, defense of the Scheide Bible would have been to say that, since certain leaves were missing from it, no further damage was being done to the copy by replacing those leaves, so long as the known facts about each inserted leaf were clearly indicated in order to prevent any misinterpretation of the evidence. This may not be a very strong defense, but at least it says that the insertion of leaves, if done properly, causes no serious harm, even if it provides no great benefits, either. In making such a point, one of course assumes that the leaves used for replacement are already disjunct and that another copy of the book, however imperfect, is not being destroyed to provide a supply of leaves. The loss of evidence that may result from dismembering even an imperfect copy is not offset by any important gain when leaves from it are made to serve a cosmetic function in another copy. John Carter, discussing made-up copies in his ABC for Book Collectors (5th ed., corr., 1974), warns his readers against copies containing leaves from wholly different editions (resulting, he says, from "faking-up"). But whereas such "bibliographical felony," as he describes it, is naïve and easily detectable, the subtler activity of inserting leaves from the same edition is no less a felony and is equally productive of fakes. The argument made for the Scheide Bible is by no means unique, but it provides a convenient occasion for showing why editors of noncritical editions must be concerned with the concept of ideal copy and why their work and that of descriptive bibliographers are inseparable.

What is true of editors of noncritical editions is also true of editors of critical editions; and it is worth considering briefly why this is so, since one might at first think that establishing the forms of ideal copy would be less important to the critical editor, whose aim is not to produce a facsimile or an exact rendering of a single documentary text. The goal of the critical editor is to construct a text that conforms as closely as possible with some particular standard—normally, in scholarly editing, the author's intention. It may be that none of the documentary texts meets this standard, and the critical text constructed by the editor may be different from any that has gone before. Critical editors are not limited, in other words, to readings that have appeared in print in a

given edition;[30] they may combine readings from different editions and make corrections on their own authority (corrections that had not previously been made in any edition), so long as in their informed judgment the available evidence justifies such emendations as bringing a text more into line with its author's intention. In order to be in a position to use this editorial freedom responsibly, they must have a thorough knowledge of all relevant evidence, the primary part of which is the physical evidence.[31] Even when they are certain that a particular reading requires to be corrected in a given way, their thinking must still be grounded on the firm base of knowing all the readings that have appeared at that point in authorized editions. If they do not make a search among copies of the same impression or issue—with or without the benefit of a descriptive bibliography—they will not know whether the correction they are proposing was in fact already present in one state of one of the sheets of the book. The difference between the descriptive bibliographer and the critical editor can be illustrated by a situation in which a printer makes a stop-press correction but through a mischance simultaneously creates an error in the following line. The editor will choose the two correct readings, one from each state; the bibliographer will record the two states as alternative forms for ideal copy but cannot contemplate the two correct readings together, since there is no physical evidence that the two ever existed together on the same page. Despite their differences in the use of the information, both editor and bibliographer must make the same search for evidence: both must in effect define ideal copy, because both must be aware of all states of an issue.

That states result from inadvertent as well as intended alterations and that later states are not always more correct than earlier ones is demonstrated over and over in editorial work. For example, progressive

deterioration of type or variations in inking during the course of an impression may create what appear to be textual errors in books of all periods. Many editors of The Tempest have printed one line as "So rare a wondred Father, and a wise," believing—even after checking a number of copies of the Folio—that the last word is indeed "wise" (printed of course with a long s). Jeanne Addison Roberts, however, after examining many more copies of the Folio, has discovered that the word originally read "wife" and that the crossbar of the f shows various stages of progressive damage in most copies, making it look like a long s.[32] The lesson for editors is clear. Similarly, there are many instances in the original printings of Melville's work where letters or marks of punctuation failed to print; the spaces for them are present, but nothing appears in the spaces in any copies thus far examined. In "The Piazza," no punctuation follows the phrase "this weariness and wakefulness together," and the following word, "Brother," appears to start a new sentence; presumably a period is missing, though conceivably the mark was an exclamation point (the passage is in direct discourse). In Moby-Dick there is an unusually large space following the word "almanack" at the end of the first clause of a sentence in Chapter 99; an editor will probably insert a semicolon there because the English edition (set from proofs of the American) has a semicolon. But a comma would also be appropriate, and there is no way of knowing what mark the compositor set unless a copy turns up with the mark printed. Even when there is no question what is missing—as when, in Mardi, the phrase "crossing his wooden eg" appears—the editor who has located no copy containing the missing letter will have to list the correct form as an emendation. In the English edition of White-Jacket the word "very" in the phrase "very industriously" (in Chapter 54) is not present, though there is a space for it. Since the American edition is the copy-text, an editor does not of course need to report "very" as an emendation, but its absence in the English edition must be recorded in the list of variants between the two editions. If, however, a copy could be found in which "very" prints—and that is certainly possible, since the book was printed from type, not plates—the situation would be reported differently.[33] These few examples are enough to suggest the way in which the editor of a critical edition is dependent on the facts uncovered in a search for the range of states that define ideal copy for a given issue. Critical editors can in any case make the emendations they consider necessary, but their range of options may be altered by the states located in an extensive examination of multiple copies—and what is regarded as an emendation or a variant may also be affected. There is no escaping the conclusion that the concept of ideal copy is as vital to the editor as to the bibliographer. Even though the concerns of editors are with texts as intellectual constructions, they must recognize that as full a knowledge as possible of the vehicles that physically convey those texts is essential to their work.

Whether differences among copies of an issue are the result of accident or design, whether they improve or worsen the product, they qualify—so long as they were present in copies at the time of issue—for recording as states by the bibliographer and for examination as relevant textual evidence by the editor. Bibliographers, and theorists of descriptive bibliography as well, have been reluctant in the past to insist on the presentation of textual evidence in descriptive bibliographies;[34] it is tempting to say that an edition is the place for such information and to argue that further deterrents should not be brought forward to interfere with the production of descriptive bibliographies. But it is equally difficult not to agree with the view that textual differences are physical differences and that states of an issue or impression cannot be satisfactorily sorted out without taking textual variants into account. The notion that descriptive bibliographies should limit themselves to details necessary for identification, instead of providing fuller historical records, has now been discredited; but in any case, it is impossible to know what is necessary for identification—indeed, how many states there may be for identification—without being as fully acquainted as possible with all the differences among copies, including textual differences. A number of bibliographies during the last generation have incorporated the results of textual collation.[35] But where the interdependence of description and textual study has been particularly felt is in the large series of editions published in connection with, or following the guidelines of, the Center for Editions of American Authors and its successor, the Center

for Scholarly Editions.[36] Bibliographies of varying quality existed for the authors that have been edited, but none was really satisfactory in providing the kind of history of publication that editors need. These editors therefore undertook much of the work that goes into producing a descriptive bibliography as part of their editorial research, and as a result the editorial matter in most of these editions now amounts to the most thorough bibliographical treatment we have of the works in question. Formal bibliographies have been planned in some cases to accompany these editions in due course, and such an arrangement—a bibliography and an edition emerging from the same research—is the best one imaginable. An edition must, in any case, establish the detailed printing and publishing history of a work and must in the process distinguish among impressions, issues, and states. And it should be likewise recognized that a descriptive bibliography cannot adequately record the printing and publishing history of a work without utilizing information secured through textual collation.