University of Virginia Library

I

Bibliography, as Greg remarked in 1914, "suffers from its name."[1] The problem is not, however, that the word can no longer be precisely defined on the basis of its etymologically derived parts. Some of its current uses, as will be noted later, do in fact correspond quite closely to the combination of βιβλιον and γραøω, but even if this were not so, verbal meaning does after all vary with time and place, and it is neither unusual nor any cause for concern if our usage of the word does not coincide with that of Dr. Johnson or Lucian. The problem today in English lies rather in the multiplicity of meanings assigned to the name "bibliography," as well as in the relationship between them, for bibliography "is not 'a subject' but a related group of subjects that happen to be commonly referred to by the same term."[2]

It is through the application of a variety of descriptive adjectives to the term "bibliography" that its various "subjects" are usually differentiated. These adjectives, like so much other fundamental terminology in the field, have gained acceptance as a result of the persistent efforts of Professor Bowers to provide bibliography with a theoretical basis. Robert Heilbroner, in a recent article on Karl Marx, has maintained that the reason "why Marx asserts and reasserts his intellectual thrall" in the social sciences is "not because he is infallible," but rather "because he is unavoidable."[3] The same may be said of the "intellectual thrall" Anglo-American bibliography finds in the work of Fredson Bowers, and while we obviously cannot claim, as Heilbroner does for Marx,

that Professor Bowers created "a whole new mode of inquiry," we can nevertheless say that Bowers has essentially created the basis upon which the whole "mode of inquiry" known as bibliography views itself and defines its various activities. Any discussion of the general nature of bibliography must, therefore, be founded upon the fundamental pronouncements of Professor Bowers, according to whom there are four—or sometimes five—distinct but related branches of bibliography: enumerative, analytical, descriptive, textual, and—sometimes—historical.[4]

In the area of descriptive bibliography there was a call not long ago to replace the work of the "splitters" with that of the "groupers," in other words to cease expending so much energy on the description of minute details of individual documents and to begin to concentrate on the assemblage of broader bibliographic data of more demonstrable value to critics and collectors.[5] A similar tendency to replace splitting with grouping is already apparent in some current efforts to categorize and define the various branches of bibliography. Paul Dunkin, for example, has recently seen fit to define all bibliography as simply that field of study designed "to locate books."[6] Most grouping efforts, however, have attempted to split bibliography into two broad categories. Probably the clearest and best received of these has been Lloyd Hibberd's suggestion that the subject be divided into "physical bibliography" and "reference bibliography,"[7] about which distinction more will be said

later. Another of the most recent attempts to accomplish a general grouping may be found in the current Encyclopaedia Britannica article on "Bibliography" by Sir Frank Francis, who conservatively divides the entire field into "descriptive bibliography" and "critical bibliography."[8] Aside from Francis' surprising choice of the old and ambiguous term "critical bibliography"[9] to describe "the study of books as material objects," the most remarkable part of his article is his apparent combination of descriptive bibliography in the sense of Bowers with enumerative bibliography.[10]

The suggestion that descriptive bibliography replace its "splitters" with "groupers" was understood by its originator to be "a call back to the past" (Liebert, p. 10), and it may appear that recent grouping efforts in the area of general definition are similar attempts to return to a pre-Bowers state of innocence. This would be, however, an incorrect assumption, for Professor Bowers, unlike Greg, has in fact never denied that bibliography is divisable into two broad categories. On the contrary, he actually adopted this perspective in his own Encyclopaedia Britannica article:

The next question we must ask, then, is whether such a bifocal view of the word "bibliography" is justified, especially since the second meaning—the study of books as material objects—appears to be limited to

English usage. According to Rudolf Blum, who has made a thorough study of the history of the use of the term in French and German speaking countries, many influential continental bibliographers included at one time the physical history of printed matter as part of the subject of bibliography. One of the first of these was the Viennese scholar Michael Denis, whose widely used Einleitung in die Bücherkunde (Vienna: Trattner, 1777-78) was divided into two parts: "Bibliographie" and "Literargeschicht." While the second part has an enumerative function, listing the main literature of various disciplines, the first part, "Bibliographie," is devoted to such matters today referred to in English as historical bibliography.[11] Blum maintains (col. 1112), furthermore, that it was Denis who probably provided the basis for the distinction made by Jean François Née de la Rochelle between "literary bibliography" and "typographical bibliography":

As a result primarily of the categorical formulations of J. S. Ersch and C. G. Schütz, the term in German was already restricted to its enumerative meaning by the late eighteenth century. Historical bibliography was given the separate designation "Geschichte des Buchwesens," which it still has today (Blum, cols. 1149-1153). In France, however, the state's sudden acquisition of rare and valuable books confiscated from private libraries during the Revolution brought about a requirement for extensive research into historical bibliography.[13] Enumerative and historical bibliography were thus necessarily fused in French bibliography throughout much of the nineteenth century, and it was not until 1934, according to Malclès (p. 7), that bibliographie in France was officially restricted to its enumerative sense.

English usage apparently never abandoned the double view of the term. The 1830 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana still includes both meanings in its definition: bibliography "is, therefore, divided into two branches, the first of which has reference to the contents of books, and may be called for want of a better phrase, intellectual bibliography; the second treats of their external character, the history of

particular copies, etc., and may be termed material bibliography."[14] In his 1892 inaugural address, Copinger was still making use of the same terminology.[15]

Professor Bowers' division of bibliography into two general categories is, consequently, the latest stage in this process. Yet here must be injected a word of caution, for between Copinger and Bowers something happened which is usually referred to as the New Bibliography. It is not to be assumed that the uniquely Anglo-American New Bibliography simply carried forward the old meaning of material bibliography. On the contrary: we might even go so far as to say that the New Bibliography actually eliminated material bibliography as an independent subject and squeezed aspects of it into the other side of the field in a way not unlike that which occurred in France and Germany in the previous two centuries. Copinger's idea of material bibliography was "for example, Brunet's Manuel; Ebert, &c." (p. 31), names which today are primarily associated with enumerative, or at most proto-descriptive bibliography. Professor Stokes clouds the issue somewhat when he suggests that Hibberd's divisions are similar to the old divisions (p. 21), for material bibliography—as it was understood when the term was in current use—is quite a different thing from Hibberd's "physical bibliography" or Lancour's "Book as Physical Entity,"[16] since it knew practically nothing of the recovery of the mechanical processes of individual book production. Indeed, what was essentially new about the New Bibliography was that it did not so much augment nineteenth-century material bibliography as replace it with something different which today goes under the name of analytical bibliography.

There is, therefore, no such established term as analytical bibliography in French or German because there is to no great extent any such thing.[17] Any objections to the continued use of the designation "analytical

bibliography" on grounds that it is either antiquated or that it does not coincide with the meaning of the term "bibliography" in other Western European languages are consequently unfounded.[18]

It may be accepted, then, as an established condition, that the subject of bibliography in English is divisible into two broad categories or divisions—one primarily concerned with the listing of documents, the other with the study of documents as material objects—and that other branches of bibliography may be arrayed as subdivisions beneath these two divisions. What has not yet been sufficiently established, however, is a precise definition of these divisions and subdivisions in relation to each other. Professor Stokes, who has written an entire book on the categories of bibliography, provides a thoughtful and useful exposition of the characteristics of Bowers' five distinctive categories, yet although Stokes' purpose is "to bind up the parts and create a mutual awareness of interdependency" (p. 9), he does not believe in strict categorization. His book, therefore, is mainly descriptive: it contains no final conclusion and the reader is consequently left "to bind up the parts" for himself on the basis of the preceding descriptions.

Hibberd's laudable effort to divide bibliography into two generic categories acceptable to all bibliographers is weakened somewhat by his preference for subdividing these two categories into a set of phases rather than into distinct disciplines or activities. Also, it is incorrect to believe, as many bibliographers seem to, that Hibberd's "reference bibliography" is "the term suggested for what has been called 'enumerative' or 'systematic' bibliography."[19] The fact is that Hibberd (p. 128) includes all five of Bowers' branches, including enumerative bibliography, under the category of "physical bibliography." Enumerative bibliography is, in Hibberd's scheme, the first phase of both physical and reference bibliography (p. 130).[20]

It should, of course, be noted at once that Hibberd's aim—like that of Stokes—is not to posit hair-splitting definitions but rather apparently to throw light on the characteristics or processes of his two categories with the ultimate goal of showing that they are "not antagonistic but complementary" (p. 133). This is hardly surprising since both Hibberd and Stokes have relied heavily—as one must—on Professor Bowers' definitions which are themselves to a very great extent based on principles of reciprocal applicability. That is indeed the current trend which Professor Bowers has established in the definition of bibliography. His distinctions have always been immensely practical and are based less upon what a thing is than on what it does or rather how it can be used. Professor Stokes' rejection of abstract definition in favor of a description of applications (the "only valid definition of an orange is to eat one" [p. 10]) is indicative of this trend.

But bibliography not only does, it also is. Thanks especially to the work of Professor Bowers the field is fairly well established as a legitimate discipline, and we who have inherited this legacy need no longer feel constrained to provide pragmatic justifications for its every activity. It is now possible—and necessary—to view bibliography and its various branches as entities unto themselves and to define them no longer from the standpoint of their applicability to each other or to allied disciplines, but rather on the basis of their own characteristics, which is only to say on the basis of how as activities they relate to their objects of study. This is important: for if we intend to establish exactly how the various branches relate to each other, we must first define them on the basis of their separate relationships to their objects.

And what is, generally speaking, bibliography's object of study? In all cases it is the same: material media designed and used for the transmission of information. Since information is essentially immaterial,[21] it must be encrypted into a material sign system by some "emitter" (as an author) in order to be transmitted to some receiver (e.g. the reader) and subsequently decrypted. The objects of study of bibliography are material sign systems. It is therefore reasonable to make use of some of the elementary concepts of semiotics—the science of signs—in order to determine

the relationships of the various branches of bibliography to their objects and ultimately to each other.