University of Virginia Library

II

Having decided the arrangement of the material relating to a single edition and to the editions of a single book[36] leaves untouched the larger question of the arrangement of the bibliography as a whole—the arrangement, in other words, of the entries for all the various publications that are a part of the author's career. That this question may seem less urgent suggests how entrenched a particular approach to overall arrangement has become and indeed is an interesting reflection of the

history of the development of author bibliography. Most bibliographies today, as in the past, begin with a section describing the author's separate publications (whether book, pamphlet, or broadside), usually in chronological order; this section is followed by one (or several) recording books contributed to in some way by the author and then by one listing contributions to periodicals. The precise plan varies, but the general movement from separate publications to periodicals prevails.[37] The emphasis on books, with the concomitant subordination of periodical contributions, is achieved both by placing the books first and by according them detailed description, in contrast to the simple listings provided for the periodical pieces. Although one must admit that books generally are of greater significance and influence than periodical contributions, one must also acknowledge that this arrangement is an outgrowth of the original role of bibliographies as guides for collectors, who were (and have continued to be) more interested in books (including those containing the first book publication of pieces by the collected author) than in periodicals. Even though the trend from Sadleir onward has been to recognize bibliographies as works of historical scholarship—which in fact serve collectors much better than the overly simple guides did—the plan of arrangement has never outgrown its origins and comes to us now trailing its Wise-Sadleir-Soho lineage.[38] It is thus so widely accepted that it is generally not even thought of as an issue, whereas the treatment of an edition on a level of detail that would involve subeditions and platings is new enough to seem a pressing problem. The arrangement of individual works, however, has a more profound effect on the shape of a bibliography as a whole than does the arrangement of the editions of those works and their impressions.

Actually there is much to be said for the traditional arrangement of works in a bibliography, even if it is not what historically underlies the arrangement. Certainly collectors interested in writers' careers should not have neglected periodicals, for contributions to periodicals may have been more important in establishing the authors' reputations than were separate book or pamphlet publications. Similarly, anthology appearances,

also neglected, may play a greater role than book-length publications in extending a writer's influence.[39] Even so, form of publication is a basic fact that can serve as a useful principle of organization. Placing books first, contributions to books second, and contributions to periodicals third need not imply decreasing interest for collectors; it can simply refer to basic differences in type of publication, differences that form a natural basis for division into sections.[40] But however natural such an arrangement may seem, one should be aware in using it of other possible approaches that are thereby being rejected. In particular, chronology is being put in second place, taking over only within each section and not determining the overall order of entries in the bibliography. One could argue that the course of a writer's career might be better shown by a single chronological record of all the works, regardless of their length or their form of publication, arranged according to the dates of the first publication of each.[41] Readers of bibliographies, accustomed to the convention of describing books in considerable detail and periodical pieces in simple listings, might object that an overall chronological arrangement would result in an awkward mixture of single-line entries and multi-page descriptions. This objection is of course based on purely formal considerations and does not affect the logic of the arrangement. Besides, there is no reason why contributions to periodicals cannot be described as fully as separate publications are: they are equally a part of the author's career, and some of them may be more important than some of the books and pamphlets. In making these points, I am not arguing that a single chronological arrangement is necessarily preferable to the conventional plan; indeed, I think that the usual division into sections according to the type of publication may well be more appropriate in many situations. What I do wish to suggest is that bibliographers who choose the conventional arrangement should give some thought to what they are doing and not adopt it simply as a matter of routine. As with the presentation of any other research, the form should grow out of the special requirements of the material. The conventional scheme, though it was shaped by an old-fashioned and narrow approach to book collecting, can still be justified, but it is not law. Bibliographers should think the question through in each instance, taking into account the problems raised by the career they are dealing with.

If one decides that there is good reason after all to separate the description of those books, pamphlets, and broadsides wholly or substantially written by the author from the treatment of composite publications (containing some work by the author along with work by other writers), one still has to consider what arrangement is best within these two categories. Whereas all the separate publications by an author—whether books, pamphlets, or broadsides—are usually kept together in a single chronological section,[42] the composite publications are normally divided into at least two sections, one for periodicals and one for books. The latter section (called "Contributions to Books" or a similar phrase) is sometimes further subdivided and in any case (whether subdivided or not) is likely to contain several kinds of items, as far as publication history is concerned: contributions (pieces written for, or at any rate first published in, a particular book—e.g., as an introduction or as a contribution to an anthology); collected pieces (writings for a periodical, now first collected in book form);[43] and appearances (pieces appearing in book publication for at least the second time). These distinctions are legitimate but have often been made by bibliographers primarily in order to focus attention on "firsts," following the lead of many book collectors in the older tradition. The first two of these classifications, referring to books containing the first publication in book form of pieces by the author, are sometimes described in considerable detail; but the items in the third group, not involving first book publication, are apt to be given abbreviated entries, or not even listed at all (as often happens with school and college anthologies). Frequently, however, this last category (especially the anthologies) plays a crucial role in the establishment of an author's reputation. And as far as textual significance is concerned, one cannot rule out any printing (even in an anthology) that appeared during the author's lifetime, at least not until one has investigated its publication history.[44] (Printings that prove to

have no significance for establishing the author's intended text are still of textual interest historically: it is important to know, for instance, precisely what text of a particular work was encountered by thousands of readers in a popular anthology.)

These points do not in themselves constitute an argument for or against placing contributions, collected pieces, and appearances together in a single section, but they should be kept in mind in thinking about the question. Firstness, after all, is not the only criterion of significance; and if non-first appearances in books are relegated to a separate section, the reason cannot be that they are less important than the other categories. However the entries are finally arranged, the bibliographer must make clear in some way which of these categories each entry falls into.[45] The trouble with some of the "Contributions to Books" sections in bibliographies is not that they mix unlike items but that they fail to comment adequately on the publication history of each item. Whether such a section should be subdivided (or whether indeed it fails to include enough and should incorporate contributions to periodicals as well) is a matter to be settled only by considering the nature of the author's publication record. In some cases separate sections will appear appropriate and helpful, and in other cases they will not. If division is decided upon, it will not necessarily be limited to the three categories I have mentioned, for further categories may be required by the material. Donald Gallup, for example, in his bibliography of T. S. Eliot (1969), gathers books containing letters by Eliot into a separate section. It is also worth noting that he places books edited by Eliot in the same section with books that have original contributions by him, whereas a bibliographer dealing with a different author might decide to create a separate section for books edited by that author. One might, in the case of an author who contributed many poems and stories to composite volumes, divide the entries by genre, recording the poems in one section and the stories in another. One might do the same thing, of course, for contributions to periodicals:[46] it is important to remember that a division between first printings and later printings or between verse and fiction is applicable to periodical pieces as well as to pieces in composite volumes and may on occasion be worth making for periodical pieces.

The central point, here as elsewhere, is to think about the categories that are most useful in a given situation and not to accept mechanically any plan simply because it has already been used for a different body of material and has achieved a measure of acceptance.

The amount of detail recorded for individual items is, as I have said, a separate matter from the arrangement of those items. Nevertheless, the two questions continually intersect, as the foregoing has made plain. Sometimes the implied reason for the separate listing of a certain category of material is the difference in the treatment accorded it, which in turn reflects its perceived importance. These factors are not entirely separable, therefore; and if a formerly subordinated category is shown to deserve fuller treatment, there is then no formal reason for its segregation, though there still may be a substantive reason. The general issue of the relative elaboration of detail deemed appropriate for different entries is still referred to by the label Falconer Madan gave it in 1906, when he spoke of "degressive" bibliography.[47] Although this is not the place for a full consideration of the "degressive principle,"[48] I think it fair to say that the idea of giving more extended treatment to some materials than to others is generally accepted; in any report of research—or in any piece of writing, for that matter—one must decide which are the principal aims or emphases of the work and which are the subordinate ones and then adjust the relative proportions accordingly. One cannot be faulted simply for giving less attention to certain matters or certain editions, for one cannot do everything; what is significant is the intelligence with which the decisions to emphasize or subordinate are made. Bibliography is not the only field in which such decisions are often made unwisely; but the frequent failure to understand that descriptive bibliographies are scholarly accounts, not mechanical compilations, has meant that some conventional practices in the field have been routinely accepted without sufficient examination of what rationale justifies them. Bibliographers do sometimes give evidence of having thought about why they have decided to describe in less detail editions published after the authors' deaths; but it is rare indeed to find that they have thought about why they simply list, rather than describe, contributions to periodicals or why in many cases they

describe books contributed to by an author in less detail than books entirely written by that author. Are not composite volumes books, with all the potentialities for variation, in both text and physical makeup, that other books have? And are not periodicals the same as composite volumes, being printed matter made up of contributions by various writers? Why, then, has the custom grown up of giving them slighter description, or none at all?[49]

In large part the reason is that collectors have not in the past been very interested in these kinds of material. Books containing original contributions (or even pieces first collected in book form) have elicited greater interest than posthumous editions or periodical pieces, and these degrees of attention are still often reflected in bibliographies (even those by bibliographers who understand that in part they are writing publishing history). A defensible argument can in fact be made for these proportions, but only on different grounds. As a chronicler of an author's career, one cannot justify downgrading periodicals or classroom anthologies or late editions, or even the less severe subordination of books with original contributions or with first reprintings in book form: all these publications have played their roles, small or large (often very large indeed), in the author's career. One may of course decide, as in any research, to focus on certain aspects of one's subject or on certain events or publications; but some forms of publication are not inherently less in need of full description than others, for all are printed items, in which production history and textual content continually intersect. The justification for giving some classes of publication less detailed treatment is more convincingly made on practical grounds: one may have to cut down somewhere in order to make the task manageable enough to complete at all. A natural place to cut may seem to be composite volumes and periodicals, for one may feel that these publications, involving many authors, are not primarily the responsibility of the bibliographers of the individual authors included in them. A considerable duplication would indeed result if such books and periodicals were extensively described in the bibliographies of all the authors appearing in them; the preferable situation would clearly be for bibliographers to write separate descriptive bibliographies of individual periodicals and of specific

groups of anthologies.[50] But research cannot be forced into such orderly paths, and scholars cannot very responsibly adduce the possible future duplication of effort as a reason for not pursuing in the present certain lines of inquiry relevant to their subjects. They can say that they are focusing on books wholly written by an author, rather than books and periodicals contributed to by that author, simply because they find the former a more interesting subject and because they do not have the time or energy to deal with the latter. Such reasoning is hard to quarrel with, even when it results in bibliographies that seem to many people to have obvious deficiencies. But one may indeed protest if the basis for proceeding in this fashion is the idea that periodicals and books with contributions do not deserve or require so thorough a treatment—or if the bibliographer is following, without examination, the notion that bibliographies are always done this way.

The same thinking applies as well to late or posthumous editions and printings of the author's own books. Some of the discussion concerning the degressive principle has centered on the question whether full attention to such editions and printings would not involve shifting the focus of the bibliography from the author to the printing and publishing history of a later period. As long as one recognizes, however, that an author's text is inextricably bound up with the printing and publishing process and that later editions and printings—with the particular texts they contain—are crucial for understanding the course of an author's reputation and influence, one cannot defend abbreviating their treatment on these grounds.[51] One can simply declare that one is dealing only with printings appearing during the author's lifetime, or during any other specific period, for one is naturally free to set—indeed, must set—limits to the scope of one's work. The decision to use (for instance) the date of the author's death as the dividing line between full and shorter entries can be respected (though not welcomed) if it is made for practical reasons—but not if it results from the bibliographer's belief that

sound bibliographical theory requires, or at least supports, the distinction and that later printings are more properly treated by the student of printing and publishing than the student of the author. My point, as before, is that bibliographers should think about each situation in its own terms and not complacently accept some preconceived plan. Degressive descriptions are certainly defensible, but the categories offering the best candidates for less detailed treatment are not necessarily the same from bibliography to bibliography. Whether the decision to give certain items less full treatment precedes or follows the decision to group the entries for those items in a separate section, the two questions are related. What we must avoid—or else bibliographical scholarship will suffer—is allowing a particular arrangement, which often implies particular levels of detail, to become so established that we accept it without thinking about how it contributes to the ultimate goals of our work.