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One of the most basic problems of arrangement in a descriptive bibliography results from the obligation to identify the relationships among editions, impressions, and issues of individual works. The problem of arranging entries for a single work is not entirely distinct from that of the arrangement of the whole bibliography: if one decided, for example, that chronology were to take precedence over all other considerations, impressions would be scattered under the years in which they appeared and would not be gathered together as parts of a single edition. One would still specify the edition relationships in words, of course, but the physical arrangement would be determined by chronology—which is to say that classification is a different matter from arrangement (even though the clearest arrangements are likely to be those that reflect classification). Most bibliographers do, for obvious and good reasons, adopt a chronological arrangement within each section of a bibliography.[10] But chronology does not dominate, if it prevails only within each section. Furthermore, chronology is violated within a section if all editions and printings of a given work are grouped together. Readers are legitimately interested in the full history of a single work, but there is also a defensible interest in what happened in each year of an author's career—the mixture of first printings of new works and later printings of earlier works.[11] Since there is reason to have the material both ways, the

approach chosen as the basic one should be complemented by an index that provides access from the other approach. One can argue that normally the most sensible basic arrangement is one that brings together all printings of a single work, for each entry can then build efficiently on those that went before and can conveniently be used in conjunction with them. More is gained by having each impression placed in the context of the printing and publishing history of the work than is lost by having the impressions of different works in the same year dispersed and retrievable only through a chronological index. This issue has rarely posed a problem, and bibliographers of authors have generally followed this plan, taking up an author's separately published works in the order of their publication and completing the publication history of each work before passing on to the next work.[12] However, they have not as routinely provided a chronological index, which—I think it hard to deny—ought to be a regular accompaniment to this scheme of arrangement.

Where a difficult problem can enter is at the next step, after one has decided to group together the entries for the editions and printings of a single work—because the best order for those entries is not always readily apparent. There are many simple cases, of course, in which the order implied by the classification into editions, impressions, and issues can be followed without question: the successive impressions (subdivided into issues where necessary) of the first edition are followed by those of the second edition, and so on. But complications frequently arise that tempt one to add further organizing principles, superseding those inherent in the basic terms of classification. Although such situations occur fairly often in connection with books of the past two centuries (because of the growth of transatlantic republication of writings in English and the use of plates), earlier books can pose these problems as well. Even the chronological ordering of editions can be brought into question when, for example, a work appeared in a succession of editions on both sides of the Atlantic (and perhaps in other English-speaking areas). Should the editions be entered chronologically under each country, thus placing geography ahead of chronology as an organizing principle? Should this principle be followed when duplicate plates from

one country are sent to another country, thus placing geography ahead of the classification into editions? Should it be followed when sheets with cancel titles are exported to another country, thus placing geography ahead of the classification into impressions? Within a single country, when duplicate plates are used during the same period of time by two publishers (as might happen if one publisher had the paperback rights or the rights to include the work in a cheap series), should impressions be grouped under each publisher, thus subordinating the chronology of impressions to the classification into plate families? Is the situation similar when a single publisher designates certain printings as part of a series? If plate families do not consistently coincide with particular publishers (or series), do the plate families or the publishers (or series) take precedence?

These questions suggest that the problem of arrangement is not entirely separable from that of classification. (Arrangement need not follow classification, but an arrangement implied by the classification cannot be hastily dismissed, either.) And some people have regarded such questions as posing a serious challenge to the validity of the traditional system of classification, at least for books of the past two centuries. I do not think it necessary here to reopen the whole question of classification, which has in any case been extensively discussed already.[13] But I do think it appropriate, at the cost of some repetition, to affirm that 19th- and 20th-century printing technology, in which plating, photography, and computerization have reduced the need for resetting, has not made the edition-impression-issue classification any less relevant or helpful. The fact that many works printed in those years never reached a second edition because various means were available for reproducing the original typesetting does not render the concept of edition superfluous: it refers to the basic fact that all copies deriving from a single act of typographic composition, however diverse they may appear to be (even to the point of exhibiting different typefaces), are inextricably linked by that common origin. That works in sufficient demand to require more than a single press run were likely to appear in earlier centuries in a succession of editions (not subdivided into impressions) and in later centuries in a succession of impressions (of a single edition) suggests that the scheme of classification—far from being defective—is serving (as it should) to reveal fundamental differences in the physical relationships among copies in different periods.

A question of more serious import concerns the relative emphases on printing and on publishing in the classification. There are times

when printing history would entail one arrangement and publishing history another, and bibliographers are faced with deciding which arrangement should take precedence. When they look at the standard classification to determine whether it is built on one of these approaches rather than the other, they find that it involves both and are then sometimes critical of it and may decide to revise it, separating terms relating to printing from those relating to publishing.[14] Without doubt the edition-impression-issue hierarchy does involve both considerations, but whether that fact points to a flaw is far less certain. What the bibliographer is describing is published (or distributed) pieces,[15] since the activity of publishing postdates that of printing. Yet grouping copies according to publisher or to publisher's imprint dates (or copyright or copyright-page dates) leaves something to be desired, since impressions are sometimes not differentiated in these ways by the publisher but are always a fact not simply of printing history but of publishing history as well.[16] Because publication is an activity that involves the distribution of physical objects, the study of publication cannot be divorced from an understanding of the production history of those objects. It is not surprising, therefore, that the basic terms edition and impression refer principally to printing but that publishing enters more explicitly into the division of impressions into issues: a cancel title with a new date, for instance, does not affect the printing history of the work, for the sheets are of the same impression as those with the earlier title; but it reflects a publishing (that is, a marketing) decision, and the copies with the new title form a discrete publishing unit. Publishing decisions frequently leave their mark on the physical books; and even if the bibliographer's aim were limited to the classification of physical books, publishing history could not be divorced from printing history in the classification.

Even though the mixture of printing and publishing considerations cannot be regarded as a defect in the system—it is, rather, a necessary element—there remain situations in which an emphasis on printing in the ordering of entries results in a different arrangement from the one that would emerge from an emphasis on publishing. Although this dilemma derives ultimately from the fact that the classification involves

both printing and publishing, one must recognize that the practical question of what to do in such instances is usually concerned not with the classification but only with the physical arrangement on the printed pages of the bibliography. Thus if one were to decide, in a case where an American publisher issued English sheets with an American imprint (on a cancel or an integral title), to place the American issue at the head of a line of American issues and impressions carrying the same publisher's imprint, one would not be quarreling with the classification of the American issue as an issue—as a part of an impression—but would simply be emphasizing, through physical arrangement, the publishing history over the printing history. It is crucial to remember that these questions do not require the choice of one approach at the expense of the other: the main entry can be placed where it would fall in the publishing (or printing) history, and a cross reference can stand at the appropriate spot to reflect the other approach (or a separate chart or tree can delineate the second approach).[17] Still, one has to decide on one place or the other for the principal statement, and the decision is not without significance; it should be made thoughtfully in terms of efficiency of presentation, convenience for use, the overall conception of the work, and the particular nature of the materials involved. That more than one physical arrangement, reflecting somewhat different classification schemes, can be compatible with the larger edition-impression-issue framework is to be welcomed, not regretted; such flexibility within an accepted convention allows one to accomplish the basic task of classification in a way that can readily be understood by others and at the same time permits one to present the account in a way that emerges naturally from the material.[18] Only those who hope to avoid thinking (and who believe that bibliography can be a mechanical process) would wish to be told that a predetermined arrangement is obligatory.

Nevertheless, the importance of having an established level of classification that falls between edition and impression is undeniable, for it would supply a standard means for placing together (both in thought and on the printed page) any impressions that constitute a separate

group within the entire series of impressions. Fredson Bowers recognized this point years ago, in his Principles of Bibliographical Description, when he discussed the concept of "subsidiary edition" (or, for short, "subedition" or "sub-edition")—a concept that has been insufficiently examined and used since then. A subedition, as Bowers conceived it, would be formed by impressions with a different publisher's imprint, or those with an added indication of series, or those that might popularly be called "revised edition" or "enlarged edition" (that is, those in which the text is somewhat altered, but without enough resetting to be considered a new edition, or somewhat augmented, as with a preface or a new chapter). These kinds of changes result from publishing decisions: they generally represent the kinds of alteration that would produce issues if they affected only parts of impressions rather than whole impressions. The concept of subedition therefore makes formal provision for incorporating publishing considerations into the edition-impression classification, which is based primarily on printing considerations. One could, of course, enter all the successive impressions of an edition in a single sequence, even if all the impressions from a particular publisher, or in a particular series, did not fall together—as would happen, for instance, if the original publisher continued to place new impressions on sale while a second publisher produced impressions for a cheap series. Even though one could then supply a separate outline or stemma to show the groupings of impressions according to publisher, series, or the like, the basic arrangement would be awkward, since it would not explicitly recognize that printings from a single publisher (or in a single series) normally are more closely related with one another than with printings from another publisher (or in another series). Acknowledging that impressions fall into groupings by virtue of the publishing process leads to the belief that publishing history should be allowed to supersede the strict chronological ordering of impressions and that the subedition classification should be regularly employed. Whereas most options regarding physical arrangement are best left open for the bibliographer to determine in each situation, the value of allowing certain sequences of impressions to show up clearly as distinct groups lends support to the idea of attaching to them a term—like subedition—that indicates a classification intermediate between edition and impression and thus implies a particular arrangement.

Any suggestion of a fixed arrangement, however, is not without its problems. Since subedition refers to publishing history, its use involves a potential conflict with printing history, if the groupings of impressions by sets of plates does not coincide with the grouping by publisher

or series (or other characteristics encompassed by subedition).[19] This fact has recently been explored by James L. W. West III, who suggests that the concept of plating should supplant that of subedition.[20] His article on this subject includes a valuable summary of the means thus far proposed for detecting the use of various kinds of plates; but his presentation of the concept of plating requires some further consideration, which I hope can serve as an example of how one may deal with conflicts of classification that in turn produce alternative physical arrangements. West argues that the grouping of impressions into subeditions, following Bowers's plan, with appended notes as necessary to identify replatings, "works satisfactorily for books with a simple history of plating but is not as efficient in more complicated situations" (p. 257). In addition, he says, "the root word of sub-edition is edition, a term which implies that type has been reset." Questions of terminology are obviously of a different order from questions of concept, and West is well aware of the fact, for he explicitly points out that any term can theoretically be assigned any definition. It is surprising, therefore, that he should introduce this second objection to subedition, which is an argument against using the term to refer to a group of impressions of an edition, for such an argument is irrelevant to the more substantive question of whether a publishing or a printing concept should provide the intermediate classification between edition and impression, at least for purposes of arrangement. Without explicitly raising that question, he in fact opts for printing history, for he proceeds to say that "bibliographical terms, if they are to gain general acceptance, should if possible describe what actually happens at the printing shop." This statement is not self-evident, because the bibliographer deals with published objects, and an equally good case could be made that publishing history should dominate over printing history when the arrangements deriving from the two are in conflict.

There is something askew in the argument that subedition, incorporating

the word "edition," carries "mental associations for a bibliographer which are inappropriate to what the printer has actually done" and that a "new term would be helpful"—for subedition was not meant to refer to what the printer did and is perfectly adequate to designate the various publishing practices it was intended to cover.[21] The real question is not whether the term is satisfactory but whether the concept it refers to is the most appropriate one to serve as the basis in a bibliography for the primary subdivision of an edition into distinctive groups of impressions. Although West asserts the primacy of the plating classification[22] and of the arrangement it suggests, he does recognize that in particular instances one may not manage to determine whether separate sets of plates were used. He says, "If plating did not occur (or he cannot prove that it occurred), then the bibliographer will simply use edition, impression, issue, and state as he always has" (p. 258). Does he mean that even in such situations differences in publishing arrangements are not to be acknowledged by a grouping into subeditions?[23] Whatever was meant, I believe that this question brings us to a significant point. Since subedition largely involves the kind of difference that within an impression would produce an issue, subeditions are usually recognized as such, for the differences were intended to be noticed as distinguishing discrete publishing efforts.[24] The fact that one generally knows when one is dealing with a subedition and frequently may not know when there are duplicate plates cannot in itself be an argument for or against a specific classification, for the desirability of a classification is not affected by one's failure to ascertain the information needed to apply it. Nevertheless, the bibliographer deals with surviving physical objects— normally objects that have passed through a publishing process or have in some way been distributed—and the groupings into which they fall, within an edition, as a result of the publishing process would seem to

be the natural basis for arrangement.[25] Details of production history, including the identification of platings, are an important part of the total story and should certainly be recorded; but it would be hard in most circumstances to make a convincing case that those details rather than publishing details should form the primary basis for arranging groups of impressions in a bibliography. One can of course concentrate on the printing history of a given work and write a study of that history. But bibliographers ordinarily do not stop there; instead, they concern themselves with physical entities that made their way into the world and are now before us—entities that may be made up of parts with differing printing histories but that present themselves to us as published objects. This fundamental fact must affect all thinking about bibliographical classification and arrangement.[26]

One might then ask why publishing details should not be dominant throughout, instead of adopting as basic the concepts of edition and impression, which refer in large part to printing history. Perhaps the most direct way to begin answering this question is to say that bibliographers actually use these printing terms as adjuncts of publishing history and are not focusing any less consistently on publication by adopting them. Indeed, the incorporation of subedition into the hierarchy illustrates the point. The bibliographer is interested not simply in identifying the impressions that derived from a single setting of type but in showing the varying publishing auspices under which they were released to the public. When, for example, a second publisher releases new impressions from the same setting as those released by the first publisher, the bibliographer cannot refer to the group of impressions thus created as an "edition," since that term has a well-established meaning that is broader. The adoption of a term like subedition reflects the bibliographer's view of an edition as a series of publishing units. Now it must be admitted that if this line of argument were carried to its logical conclusion, the result would be likely to satisfy no one: if, for instance, the seventh separate printing of a work to be released by a given publisher were actually the first impression of a second edition, it would be pointless not to reflect that fact in arrangement simply because it was judged to be a part of printing history, not of concern to the publisher, for whom all the impressions formed a single succession. In fact, the decision to order a new typesetting is a significant publishing decision,

just as the decision to order a new printing from previously set type or from plates is a publishing decision. Although one can recognize a kind of logic in the notion of recording printing facts in one sequence and publishing facts in a separate sequence, a bibliography produced on this plan would be extremely difficult to use: books are so inextricably the product both of printing and of publishing that classification and arrangement should be expected to take both into account. Separate outlines of the two approaches might provide helpful guidance in some complicated situations, but the basic historical account must attempt to deal with both together. Favoring the publishing concept of subedition over the printing concept of plating as the primary classification intermediate between edition and impression for purposes of arrangement is consistent with the thinking underlying the process of bibliographical description as a whole. And, one might add, it does not mean that the question of plating should be investigated or reported upon any less thoroughly.

The two approaches to arrangement can be efficiently illustrated by the simple example that West focuses on in his discussion of plating, William Styron's Set This House on Fire (1960). The two impressions published by Random House from that firm's original relief plates naturally come first. In West's proposed arrangement, the next entry is the impression distributed by the Book Find Club in 1960, because it was printed from new offset plates deriving from the first Random House impression, and it therefore represents the "second American plating" of the original edition. Following that comes the 1971 Random House impression, because it was not printed from the original Random House plates but from new offset plates made from the second impression sheets—and it therefore becomes the "third American plating":

First American plating (relief): Random House First impression, March 1960 Second impression, September 1960
Second American plating (offset from first American plating, first impression): Book Find Club First impression, July 1960
Third American plating (offset from first American plating, second impression): Random House First impression, March 1971

Arranging the entries according to the chronology of plating means that the impression distributed by the Book Find Club intrudes itself into the sequence of impressions published by Random House.[27] Since only

a single impression of the Book Find Club is involved, there is no great inconvenience here. But in a more complicated situation, there might be a succession of impressions released by a second publisher during the same time that the first publisher was also producing a series of impressions, and if one or more additional platings were ordered by either publisher, there could be a considerable amount of interspersing of the entries relating to the two firms.[28] An arrangement by subeditions would avoid this awkwardness, though obviously at the price of making the sequence of platings less readily discernible:

Parent edition: Random House[29]

First impression (original relief plates), March 1960
Second impression (original relief plates), September 1960
Third impression (offset from second impression), March 1971

Subedition: Book Find Club

First impression (offset from first Random House impression), July 1960

This system allows for the orderly expansion of the list of impressions under each subedition, whereas the other emphasizes the orderly recording of platings. There is no question in either case of concealing any information, nor even of whether one system is a better classification than the other, for each emphasizes significant facts and both can be defended. The only question is which provides a better arrangement for the printed pages of a bibliography, where one entry must follow another (unlike a stemma, where simultaneous sequences of events can be shown side by side). What gives an edge to the subedition approach is, as I have suggested, its emphasis on books as published products. Since the impressions coming from a single publisher or published in a single series are likely to be closer to one another in physical appearance (title-page design, binding, and so on) than they are to the impressions from another publisher or series, a practical result of arranging entries by subedition is that similar impressions, many of which can be treated in abbreviated form ("the same as X except for . . ."), are grouped

together and cross reference among them facilitated. As concepts of classification, subeditions and platings are both unquestionably important; as a plan of arrangement in a bibliography, giving priority to subeditions is likely to be more appropriate.

Having arrived at this point, we are still left with what many would regard as the chief conflicts that produce difficulties of arrangement. I believe, however, that the line of thinking followed thus far prepares us for considering these other problems. Perhaps the central question —for it involves the others—is how to treat publication of an edition in more than one country.[30] Geography is not an element in the basic classification scheme, but publication history is, and it would obviously be possible to gather entries together according to country of publication, thus setting geography ahead of chronology as the primary organizing principle. If editions were never shared between countries, the problem would be relatively simple, though the best arrangement would still not be an obvious or easy matter to decide. What would be involved is whether a single chronological sequence of editions would be more, or less, useful than separate chronologies of editions under each country. Strong cases could be made for both approaches in particular instances, and I do not think a single rule on this point could fit all situations. The problem is often more complicated, however, for editions frequently are split between countries: among the possibilities are sheets issued with cancel title leaves and new impressions produced from offset plates. The further question in these cases is whether the description of a single edition, or a single impression, should be split up because parts of it were published in different countries. This question is significantly different from the one concerning the ordering of whole editions, for editions by definition are discrete entities, originating in separate acts of typographic composition. One can more comfortably contemplate the rearrangement of whole entities than a scheme of arrangement that necessitates the splitting up of entities and the entering of the resulting parts under different headings. The latter may be defensible, but the question is a more ponderable one.

The difficulty is to some extent illustrated by West's example. In discussing Set This House on Fire, West asserts, "In a descriptive bibliography, it would be much better to separate the American publication history distinctly from the British" (p. 264). After listing the three platings of the "First American Edition," he proceeds to a parallel heading, "First English 'Edition,'" and records two further platings (Hamish

Hamilton, 1961, and Jonathan Cape, 1970). Since of course the English platings do not constitute a different edition, he is forced to place the word "edition" in quotation marks in his heading and thereby to acknowledge that the American and English headings, though assigned parallel status, are not parallel in concept—unless one changes the concept from one based on typographic composition. In this particular instance, because of its simplicity, the grouping together of the two English platings (or subeditions, for in this case they coincide) causes no difficulty; indeed, they would appear at the same point (but without the heading) in a chronological arrangement, assuming that the 1971 plating were included with the other Random House impressions. But the awkwardness of the "edition" heading calls attention to the inherent problem, when impressions are split off from the edition of which they are a part. And there is is the further problem—not illustrated by this example from Styron—of parts of impressions (i.e., issues) that are released in different countries (and presumably by different publishers). Segregating entries by country may therefore require splitting up impressions as well as editions.

Although I do not hesitate to recognize—as I have already pointed out—that bibliographical classification and arrangement involve a mixture of printing and publishing concerns, I still find something anomalous in the proposal at once to classify according to plating and to arrange according to country. Whether one chooses to give precedence to platings or to subeditions as subdivisions of each edition, one will then find in many cases that an arrangement by country works against such classification, since impressions from the same plating may be published in different countries, as may issues of an impression from a subedition. One might at first think that arranging by country would entail no more problems than arranging by subedition, since each publisher (or series) determining a subedition must be located in some country. The significant difference is that nationality adds another level to the classification and causes editions—not merely subeditions or platings—to be broken up. West rightly observes, "Increasingly in modern books, the American and British manufacturing histories overlap or derive from one another" (p. 265); but this fact would appear to be an argument against, rather than for, the separation of the records for the two countries. In all but the simplest cases it would probably be helpful to provide an outline of the publishing history in each country, with references to the relevant entry numbers. The question at issue is not whether the publishing history of a book in each country should be conveniently accessible but whether nationality provides the most desirable arrangement for the descriptive entries themselves. Unless we are to abandon

classification by edition (and I see no justification for that), it would seem that keeping together all the entries dealing with parts of a single edition, rather than separating them by country, would in most cases make those entries easier to use and would present a more coherent account of the international intertwining of the printing and publishing histories of individual editions. In proposing this generalization, I have no wish to deny the usefulness of a country-by-country outline (in effect, a form of index to the entries) or to rule out the possibility of arranging whole editions by country of origin. The latter would serve little purpose if the former were provided; but my point is the desirability of avoiding the dispersal of the descriptions relating to a single edition.

This approach can be extended to the treatment of issues: if impressions (or groups of them forming subeditions) are to be described under the editions of which they are a part, issues should be described under the impressions of which they are a part.[31] Scattering the description of a single impression poses the same problems as breaking up the entries for a single edition. If an issue bearing the imprint of a second publisher were given an entry independent of the rest of the impression on the ground that a different publisher is involved, the issue would have been accorded the status of a subedition, and yet its relationship to the parent edition would be very different from that of a subedition. As long as we are not giving up the classification into impressions, it would normally be desirable—for similar reasons to those already offered for the treatment of whole editions—to keep the descriptions of whole impressions intact. When the publisher of an issue turns up elsewhere in the record of an edition as the publisher of an impression, cross references could be provided, if the situation is complicated enough to warrant them, in order to facilitate reference to the full role of a given publisher in the history of an edition.[32]

A rule of thumb, simply stated, therefore might be to treat editions and impressions as entities, not splitting off any of their constituent parts for description under some other heading.[33] This rule would allow

for subeditions (or alternatively for platings), since any rearrangement they involve is of whole impressions, and it would not prevent the placing of nationality ahead of chronology for the arrangement of whole editions.[34] But in preserving intact the descriptions of individual impressions and editions, it fosters coherence in the basic historical account, which can then serve as a point of reference for any supplementary outlines or other aids that one may wish to provide. The following list of entries shows—for a purely hypothetical edition—what the arrangement might look like in a specific instance:

Knopf parent edition

First impression (relief plates): March 1921
Second impression American issue: July 1921 British issue: Cape, August 1921 [For Cape and Florin Books subeditions, see below][35]
Third impression: June 1924
Fourth impression (offset plates from third Borzoi Books impression): April 1930
[For Knopf Borzoi Books and Knopf (London) subeditions, see below]

Boni & Liveright Modern Library subedition

First impression (offset plates from second Knopf impression): December 1921
Second impression: June 1922

Cape subedition

[For Cape issue of second Knopf impression, see above]
First impression (offset plates from second Knopf impression): January 1922
Second impression Cape issue: November 1922 Cape Florin Books issue: March 1923 [For Cape Florin Books subedition, see below]

Cape Florin Books subedition

[For Cape subedition and Florin Books issue of second Cape impression, see above]
First impression (offset plates from second Cape impression): July 1923

Knopf Borzoi Books subedition

[For Knopf parents edition, see above]

First impression (offset plates from third Knopf impression): August 1924
Second impression: February 1926
Third impression: December 1927
[For Knopf (London) subedition, see below]

Knopf (London) subedition

[For Knopf (New York) impressions and Knopf Borzoi Books subedition, see above]
First impression (offset plates from third American Knopf impression): July 1927
Second impression (offset plates from first British Knopf impression): September 1928

If this edition were organized by country, impressions would have to be broken up; and if it were organized by plates, the sequence of impressions by publisher would be disturbed. It could not be arranged by country and by plates at the same time, any more than the present arrangement by subedition is compatible with either of those approaches. Something must be sacrificed in the basic arrangement, but the loss can be made up by descriptive phrases and cross references at appropriate points, as suggested here, supplemented by separate schedules or stemmata and a thorough index. A central idea underlying the arrangement shown here is that the orderly listing of impressions by subedition allows for the most efficient use of a bibliography, given the fact that impressions from one publisher or series are likely to display more affinities in physical details with each other than with impressions from another publisher or series. This belief may not hold true in every case, but I think it carries enough weight to be worth proposing as a norm. Anyone who has thought through the rationale for this approach will be in a position to see when another arrangement would be preferable. A successful arrangement must be the product of careful thought about the material, not automatic dependence on a predetermined pattern.