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On 25 October 1963 the Times Literary Supplement published a short article entitled "The Soho Recipe," taking the appearance of Richard Fifoot's bibliography of the Sitwells as an occasion for reflecting on the series of Soho Bibliographies (p. 876). That series, begun in 1951 by Rupert Hart-Davis,[1] has been influential in the twentieth-century development of author bibliographies, particularly in regard to the division of material into sections and the assignment of reference letters and numbers to individual items within those sections. If in some respects the Soho volumes were uniform enough to suggest that a "recipe" lay behind them, in other respects their practice varied, as the TLS article pointed out;[2] and the questions raised in that article stem from the fundamental issue of whether uniformity of plan and technique among bibliographies is desirable. The article recognizes that without fuller rules the practices of each Soho volume are bound to "depend as much upon the temperament of the bibliographer as upon the tractability of the material," and it understands at the same time that more detailed rules could be "oppressive." Yet it cannot resist wishing for more uniformity in the treatment of certain matters, asserting that the reader has a right to find "agreement, or explicit reasoned disagreement, when two or more bibliographers describe the same book."

There is, in fact, good reason not to believe that the reader of a bibliography has any such right, and the line of argument is implicit in what is said elsewhere in the article. Although the piece unfortunately


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does not pursue these issues very far, it is essentially enlightened in its approach, for it sees that questions regarding the presentation of material in a bibliography cannot be divorced from a consideration of the particular nature of the sources involved and the individual aims of the bibliographer. Differing Soho treatments of publishing history and "the biographical element in bibliography," as the TLS writer correctly states, result not simply from the extent of the preserved documents in each case but also from "the degree of enthusiasm and understanding which the individual has brought to his task." The "understanding" is crucial: when one understands that bibliographical research is historical research and that bibliographies are historical studies, one perceives that biography and publishing history are not separable from bibliography. One should also then see how naive it is to suggest that different treatments of the "same book" ought to agree or be in "explicit reasoned disagreement." Different bibliographical accounts of a book, even of the same copies of a book, may have different emphases, details, and arrangements, in the same way that accounts of any other kind of historical event are likely to vary according to the historian who is ordering the material. And if specific facts and figures are at odds, there are explanations other than that an error has occurred: perhaps the copies examined do not match, or perhaps the examiners have observed different tolerances in measuring or in reporting measurements. Sometimes scholars, in bibliography as in any other field, may find it appropriate to comment on the differences between their own accounts and those of their predecessors; at other times they may feel that the defects of previous reports, and the advances made by their own, are obvious and that the point requires no explicit statement.

In some respects the TLS writer proceeds admirably from the recognition that bibliography is a branch of historical scholarship and calls attention to the fact that bibliographies vary according to the interests and points of view of their authors; at times, however—as in the expectation that two descriptions of a book will agree—the piece seems to reflect the narrow, but quite common, view that bibliographies are merely compilations, rather mechanically assembled. That a descriptive bibliography is actually a historical study has been understood since at least the time of Sadleir's Trollope bibliography (1928), which explicitly makes the case for an author bibliography as "a commentary on the book and publishing crafts" of a particular period. An author bibliography (as opposed to a simple guide to the identification of first editions) is a historical account of the production and publication of an author's works—and is therefore a partial biography of the author and a partial


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history of publishing in the period.[3] Its value, as with any other presentation of the results of historical research, depends on the thought that has gone into the assessment of the evidence and on the coherence of the overall conception, which determines the degree of relevance of specific data and the relative space and detail to be accorded them. What constitutes responsible handling of evidence and effective presentation of conclusions is the same in bibliography as it is in any other historical investigation; in bibliography as in other fields different people may find different patterns in the material, and more than one account can be responsible. (Whether or not any of them has arrived at the "truth" will of course remain an open question.) Fredson Bowers was certainly right, in his Principles of Bibliographical Description, to speak of bibliographies as "written," not "compiled."[4]

All this is a necessary preamble to a discussion of the arrangement of material in a descriptive bibliography. Without seeing bibliography in the context of historical research in general, one might infer from such a discussion that definite rules for the arrangement of bibliographies could be prescribed. The fact that some parts of bibliographies are set forth in a formulaic way and not in straightforward expository prose has no doubt contributed to the notion that a bibliography is a compilation, subject to mechanical rules. What would it mean to ask how a history of a battle or a biography of a statesman should be arranged? Methodological reflections on the writing of such works can be useful, one but cannot set up a specific order in which the material must be presented.[5] This obvious point has not always seemed so obvious in relation to bibliography. But once a bibliography is recognized as a history, one must further recognize that the arrangement of its contents has to grow out of the nature of the material and out of the bibliographer's own approach and aims. There are always people, in all fields, who wish


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to be told what to do and who will proceed unthinkingly to follow instructions. Whether bibliography has more than its share of such people is hard to say; certainly anyone who has been associated with the publishing activities of a bibliographical society knows that requests come in from would-be bibliographers who want to know what arrangement of material the society prescribes for the bibliographies it publishes. Would a biographer ever write to a publishing firm asking whether its biographies were to be chronological or thematic in arrangement? Probably not, but in any case the point is clear: scholars of intelligence, who understand what they are doing, will work out in each instance the arrangement of material that serves their purposes.[6] Persons who need to be told how to organize their material have not given sufficient thought to their subject to produce useful results.[7]

These, then, are reasons for not writing on the subject of the arrangement of bibliographies. In spite of them, I propose to do so, now that I have tried to make clear the context for my remarks. Discussions of methodology can be salutary in any field, and I intend here simply to set forth some of the considerations involved in thinking about the problem of arrangement in bibliography. My comments are meant to encourage such thinking, not to imply that a single scheme of arrangement can, or should, be declared standard for all situations.[8] The present


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moment seems an appropriate one for examining these matters, because in recent years some bibliographies have appeared that focus new attention on the question of arrangement—particularly as a result of increased examination of twentieth-century authors[9] and the attendant problems created by newer methods of plating. The first order of business is to look into the arrangement of the descriptions of the various editions, impressions, and issues of a single work. Then there is the question of how those composite entries fit into the bibliography as a whole—how, that is, the various kinds of material (books, contributions to books, contributions to periodicals, and so on) can be arranged in relation to one another. Finally, I should like to comment on the numbering of the entries, for reference numbering inevitably reflects the arrangement given to the material.