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In 1949 Fredson Bowers's Principles of Bibliographical Description provided a new point of departure for descriptive bibliography by consolidating what had gone before, subjecting it to critical scrutiny, adding new points when necessary, and offering a detailed and carefully reasoned codification of procedure. He included in his book several examples of bibliographical descriptions, demonstrating his various recommendations in concrete form. In the nearly four decades since, a number of theoretical discussions of descriptive bibliography have been published, often extending or modifying the arguments of the Principles, though in no way detracting from its stature as the one indispensable statement in the field. They are in the nature of footnotes or postscripts to it. The extensions have had largely to do with the description of paper, type, and binding; and the modifications, especially in regard to the concepts of issue and state, result at least in part from taking more fully into account the conditions and products of nineteenth- and twentieth-century publishing. I think it may be a good idea at this time to bring together in one place references to these scattered discussions and to offer a new exemplary description that illustrates many of the points that have been made.

I present below a bibliographical description of Melville's Redburn that attempts to show not only how a single edition might be described but also how one might combine with that description, as one ought to do in an author bibliography, the description of later editions, in order to form a complete publishing history of the work, down to the present. Previous sample descriptions have not gone beyond a single printing, but recent commentary has dealt not only with the techniques of description but also with those of classification and arrangement. Of course, one does have actual published bibliographies at hand as examples, and there are now many of them that make considerable advances over all but

a few earlier efforts; but in the nature of things they all have their deficiencies. Although my own effort here inevitably has its deficiencies, too, it is accompanied (as an actual description is not likely to be) by a commentary that suggests, from time to time, other possible approaches. I have chosen Melville largely because I have a Melville bibliography in progress (in conjunction with the work on the Northwestern-Newberry Edition) but also in part because he is a nineteenth-century author (whose books therefore appeared in publishers' bindings) with numerous twentieth-century editions (and thus can illustrate some of the recent discussions particularly well). I do not think of this description as a contribution to Melville studies, though in fact it does place on record some points not previously published; it is primarily a sample of descriptive techniques, and therefore I have abridged the sample at many points, whenever I thought that no additional technique—not already illustrated—would be shown by providing the whole description.

What I am particularly concerned to demonstrate is that descriptive bibliography is a form of biographical, and thus historical, scholarship. One can no more prescribe a single form for it than one can for any other historical work. Each bibliographer-historian's choice of detail and manner of presentation will create one version of the past, and that is all that any historian can accomplish. Nevertheless, there are responsible ways of setting forth the evidence of past events and ways less responsible. What I show here seems to me responsible, but I have no wish to suggest that it is the only responsible approach. It is a sample, nothing more; but I hope it, with its commentary, can help to suggest a general way of thinking that will be of use to others, even if in various details of presentation they decide to follow another form. I also hope that it can demonstrate the integral place of textual history in the story a bibliography has to tell. That a bibliography is one kind of literary and publishing history is suggested by the fact that much of the same research underlies a literary biography, a scholarly edition, and a descriptive bibliography. Ideally a bibliography and an edition at least, if not a biography, emerge as products of the same research, and I am fortunate to be able to present facts in this description that have been turned up in the course of research for the Northwestern-Newberry Edition. I acknowledge here the assistance of Harrison Hayford, Richard Colles Johnson, and the others who have played a role (or are still playing one) in the great Newberry Library Melville Collection and in the Northwestern-Newberry Melville Project.

In the commentary, running along the bottom of the pages of description presented here, I have referred in a shorthand form to Bowers's Principles and a number of essays written since his book. The list below

identifies these references and provides in the process a core listing of the theoretical literature of descriptive bibliography from 1949 on:

Bowers, Fredson
Principles Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949).
1953 "Purposes of Descriptive Bibliography, with Some Remarks on Methods," Library, 5th ser., 8 (1953), 1-22. Reprinted in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, ed. John Bush Jones (1974), pp. 12-41; and in Bowers's Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing (1975), pp. 111-134.
1966 "Bibliography and Restoration Drama," in Bowers and Lyle H. Wright, Bibliography: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar (1966), pp. 1-25. Reprinted in Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing (1975), pp. 135-150.
1969 "Bibliography Revisited," Library, 5th ser., 24 (1969), 89-128. Reprinted in Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing (1975), pp. 151-195.
Bridson, Gavin D. R.
1976 "The Treatment of Plates in Bibliographical Description," Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 7, part 4 (1976), 469-488.
Gaskell, Philip
New Introduction A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972; corrected 2nd printing, 1974).
Greg, W. W.
1959 "Introduction," in A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, 4 (1959), i-clxxiv, esp. cxxxi-clviii.
Margadant, Willem Daniel
1968 "Descriptive Bibliography Applied to Botany," in Early Bryological Literature (1968), pp. 1-33.
Stevenson, Allan
1949 "New Uses of Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence," Studies in Bibliography, 1 (1948-49), 151-182.
1952 "Watermarks Are Twins," Studies in Bibliography, 4 (1951-52), 57-91.
1954 "Chain-Indentations in Paper as Evidence," Studies in Bibliography, 6 (1954), 181-195.

1961 "A Bibliographical Method for the Description of Botanical Books," in Catalogue of Botanical Books in the Collection of Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt, 2 (1961), cxli-ccxliv.
1962 "Paper as Bibliographical Evidence," Library, 5th ser., 17 (1962), 197-212. Reprinted, with excisions, in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, ed. John Bush Jones (1974), pp. 128-147.
Tanselle, G. Thomas
1966(1) "The Identification of Type Faces in Bibliographical Description," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 60 (1966), 185-202. Reprinted, with a "Postscript," in Journal of Typographic Research, 1 (1967), 427-447.
1966(2) "The Recording of Press Figures," Library, 5th ser., 21 (1966), 318-325. Reprinted in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, ed. John Bush Jones (1974), pp. 173-183.
1967 "A System of Color Identification for Bibliographical Description," Studies in Bibliography, 20 (1967), 203-234. Reprinted in Tanselle's Selected Studies in bibliography (1979), pp. 139-170.
1968(1) "Tolerances in Bibliographical Description," Library, 5th ser., 23 (1968), 1-12. Reprinted in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, ed. John Bush Jones (1974), pp. 42-56.
1968(2) "The Use of Type Damage as Evidence in Bibliographical Description," Library, 5th ser., 23 (1968), 328-351 [with corrigendum, 24 (1969), 251]. Reprinted in part, with an added "Note" and illustrations, in Journal of Typographic Research, 3 (1969), 259-276.
1969 "Copyright Records and the Bibliographer," Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 77-124. Reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979), pp. 93-138.
1970 "The Bibliographical Description of Patterns," Studies in Bibliography, 23 (1970), 71-102. Reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979), pp. 171-202.
1971(1) "The Bibliographical Description of Paper," Studies in Bibliography, 24 (1971), 27-67. Reprinted in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, ed. John Bush Jones (1974), pp. 71-115; and in Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979), pp. 203-243.
1971(2) "Book-Jackets, Blurbs, and Bibliographers," Library, 5th ser., 26 (1971), 91-134.
1975 "The Bibliographical Concepts of Issue and State," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 69 (1975), 17-66.

1977 "Descriptive Bibliography and Library Cataloguing," Studies in Bibliography, 30 (1977), 1-56. Reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979), pp. 37-92.
1980 "The Concept of Ideal Copy," Studies in Bibliography, 33 (1980), 18-53.
1982 "The Description of Non-Letterpress Material in Books," Studies in Bibliography, 35 (1982), 1-42.
1984 "The Arrangement of Descriptive Bibliographies," Studies in Bibliography, 37 (1984), 1-38.
1985 "Title-Page Transcription and Signature Collation Reconsidered," Studies in Bibliography, 38 (1985), 45-81.
Vander Meulen, David L.
1984 "The Identification of Paper without Watermarks: The Example of Pope's Dunciad," Studies in Bibliography, 37 (1984), 58-81.
1985 "The History and Future of Bowers's Principles," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 79 (1985), 197-219. Reprinted in Fredson Bowers at Eighty (1985), pp. 25-47.

Many other relevant pieces are cited in the documentation to these articles and therefore need not be cited here. I should perhaps note that Gaskell is listed here not for his chapter on descriptive bibliography but for the historical chapters that make up the bulk of his book and that provide essential background for any bibliographer. And I should point out that in some small details the sample below does not always match the precise form set forth in my essays: what I am concerned to maintain is the approach to descriptive bibliography on which they rest, not (as I hope they make clear) an inflexible manner of presentation for every detail, even though a degree of uniformity is of course desirable. I should also perhaps mention, for the record, the most significant discussions of descriptive bibliography that preceded Bowers, for the list can reasonably be limited to five:

A. W. Pollard and W. W. Greg, "Some Points in Bibliographical Descriptions," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 9 (1906-08), 31-52. [Followed by Falconer Madan, "Degressive Bibliography," pp. 53-65.] Reprinted in Alfred William Pollard: A Selection of His Essays, ed. Fred W. Roper (1976), pp. 116-129.
A. W. Pollard, "The Objects and Methods of Bibliographical Collations and Descriptions," Library, 2nd ser., 8 (1907), 193-217. Reprinted in Alfred William Pollard: A Selection of His Essays, ed. Fred W. Roper (1976), pp. 98-115.

Falconer Madan, E. Gordon Duff, and S. Gibson, "Standard Descriptions of Printed Books," Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers, 1 (1922-26), 55-64.
Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927).
W. W. Greg, "A Formulary of Collation," Library, 4th ser., 14 (1933-34), 365-382. Reprinted in Greg's Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (1966), pp. 298-313.

These lists leave out actual examples of bibliographies (except those by Greg and Stevenson, cited for their introductions), but there are several recent ones that repay study, as well as such earlier classic works as Michael Sadleir's Trollope (1928), Frederick A. Pottle's Boswell (1929), A. T. Hazen's Strawberry Hill (1942) and Walpole (1948), and Richard L. Purdy's Hardy (1954). If I were to add some post-Bowers bibliographies to my list, the first one to go on would be David L. Vander Meulen's 1981 dissertation, A Descriptive Bibliography of Alexander Pope's Dunciad, 1728-1751, an extraordinary piece of work that makes several innovations in descriptive technique. Among the other bibliographies that next deserve to be noted are David Gilson's Jane Austen (1982), for its unusually thorough notes on paper, typography, and binding (those on typography by Nicolas Barker); and James L. W. West III's William Styron (1977) and Stuart Wright's Randall Jarrell (1986), for their attention to textual variants (and the Styron for its concern with platings as well). There are many other recent bibliographies, with excellences in one or another feature, that one can profit from examining, such as William B. Todd's Burke (1964), Warner Barnes's E. B. Browning (1967), Daniel Heartz's Pierre Attaignant (1969), B. C. Bloomfield and Edward Mendelson's Auden (rev. 1972), Joan St. C. Crane's Robert Frost (1974), C. William Miller's Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Printing (1974), James A. Grimshaw's Robert Penn Warren (1981), William S. Peterson's Kelmscott Press (1984), and the volumes in the Pittsburgh Series in Bibliography (1972- ). For a record of bibliographies, one can consult T. H. Howard-Hill's Bibliography of British Literary Bibliographies (1969; supplemented by his Shakespearian Bibliography and Textual Criticism: A Bibliography, 1971, pp. 179-322) and G. T. Tanselle's Guide to the Study of United States Imprints (1971). The pages of the Library, the Book Collector, and the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America will keep one abreast of new bibliographies through critical reviews. Three examples of particularly good reviews, all from PBSA, are James B. Meriwether's review of Frederick Woods's Churchill (60 [1966], 114-122), Hugh Amory's of Sidney L. Gulick's Chesterfield

(74 [1980], 286-294), and David L. Vander Meulen's of David Gilson's Jane Austen (79 [1985], 435-442). I have attempted to provide an assessment of the bibliographies in American literature (Studies in Bibliography, 21 [1968], 1-24) and in eighteenth-century English literature (Eighteenth-Century English Books Considered by Librarians and Booksellers, Bibliographers and Collectors [1976], pp. 22-33), as well as to place the development of descriptive bibliography in the larger setting of bibliographical history ("Physical Bibliography in the Twentieth Century," in Books, Manuscripts, and the History of Medicine, ed. Philip M. Teigen [1982], pp. 55-79; "The Evolving Role of Bibliography, 1884-1984," in Books and Prints, Past and Future [1984], pp. 15-31). It is in the context of all this work that the following sample should be viewed.

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