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Notes
This work is surveyed in Hugh Lloyd-Jones's introduction to Alan Harris's translation of Wilamowitz (History of Classical Scholarship, 1982). The history of classical scholarship and the history of bibliography are in fact linked, a major connection being the history of textual criticism. Two basic works on the textual criticism of the classics are L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson's Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (1968, 1974) and E. J. Kenney's The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (1974). See also some of the essays of M. D. Feld, such as "The Early Evolution of the Authoritative Text," Harvard Library Bulletin, 26 (1978), 81-111, and "A Theory of the Early Italian Printing Firm," ibid., 33 (1985), 341-377. There are a number of biographies of prominent editors of the classics: an impressive recent example is Anthony Grafton's Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. I: Textual Criticism and Exegesis (1983). See also C. O. Brink, English Classical Scholarship: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman (1986).
Although we do have such works as Howard Mumford Jones's The Theory of American Literature (1948, 1965) and Jay B. Hubbell's Who Are the Major American Writers? (1972).
The Center is housed in the Manuscript Department of Perkins Library and publishes a newsletter reporting current acquisitions.
See Lloyd Hibberd, "Physical and Reference Bibliography," Library, 5th ser., 20 (1965), 124-134.
An earlier standard work is Ernest D. Grand, "Bibliographie," in La grande encyclopédie, 6 (1888), 598-682. Besterman's reflections appear in his lecture Fifty Years a Bookman (1974). See also Lester Condit, "Bibliography in Its Prenatal Existence," Library Quarterly, 7 (1937), 564-576; John Webster Spargo, "Some Reference Books of the 16th and 17th Centuries: A Finding List," PBSA, 31 (1937), 133-175; John F. Fulton, The Great Medical Bibliographers (1951); Jesse H. Shera, "The Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography in America, 1642-1799," in Essays Honoring Lawrence C. Wroth (1951), pp. 263-278; Archer
See, in particular, his helpful survey of "The History of Bibliography," pp. 7-10, and his annotated list of "Major Writings on the Compiling of Bibliographies, 1883-1983," pp. 161-181. Krummel is at present undertaking further work on the history of enumerative bibliography. His forthcoming essay for Library Quarterly, "The Dialectics of Enumerative Bibliography: Observations on the Historical Study of the Practices of Citation," concludes, "The history of bibliography is close to the very essence of the history of learning."
The preface to the first volume of the revised STC (1986) concisely recounts the origins and development of the undertaking, describing A. W. Pollard as "the pre-eminent force in bibliographical studies in the first half of this century" (p. vii).
Jackson, "The Revised STC: A Progress Report," Book Collector, 4 (1955), 16-27; Pantzer, "The Serpentine Progress of the STC Revision," PBSA, 62 (1968), 297-311; Wing, "The Making of the Short Title Catalogue 1641-1700," PBSA, 45 (1951), 59-69; Alston, "Progress toward an Eighteenth Century STC," Direction Line, 4 (Autumn 1977), 1-15. The ESTC, in particular, has generated a considerable primary literature that will provide material for the future historian: there is the project's newsletter, Factotum (1978- ), its Occasional Papers, and such books as R. C. Alston and M. J. Jannetta's Bibliography, Machine-Readable Cataloguing and the ESTC (1978). Other related projects, like the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, now have newsletters as well (on this project, see also G. Averley and F. J. G. Robinson, "The Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue," Library Association Rare Books Group Newsletter, 22 [November 1983], 15-20).
McCrimmon, Power, Politics and Print: The Publication of the British Museum Catalogue, 1881-1900 (1981); Chaplin, "The General Catalogue of Printed Books, 1881-1981," British Library Journal, 7 (1981), 109-119; Smith, "The National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 Imprints," Book Collector, 31 (1982), 445-462 (see also In Celebration: The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, ed. John Y. Cole, 1981); Norris, A History of Cataloguing and Cataloguing Methods, 1100-1850, with an Introductory Survey of Ancient Times (1939); London, "The Place and Role of Bibliographic Description in General and Individual Catalogues: A Historical Analysis," Libri, 30 (1980), 253-284. On the British Museum, see further F. J. Hill, "'Fortescue': The British Museum and British Library Subject Index," British Library Journal, 12 (1986), 58-63.
The history of the changing scope of Sabin's Dictionary (which, though a subject bibliography, is also concerned with recording editions and contains a considerable amount of bibliographical analysis) reflects the complex of factors that influence the final form a bibliography takes. See R. W. G. Vail, "Sabin's Dictionary," PBSA, 31 (1937), 1-9; and cf. the article by Thomas R. Adams cited in note 38 below.
These works are all cited below. See also Clarence S. Brigham, Fifty Years of Collecting Americana for the Library of the American Antiquarian Society, 1908-1958 (1959); W. A. Munford, Edward Edwards (1963); William L. Williamson, William Frederick Poole and the Modern Library Movement (1963); Edward Miller, Prince of Librarians [Panizzi] (1967); Margaret B. Stillwell, Librarians Are Human (1973); Keyes D. Metcalf, Random Recollections of an Anachronism (1980); and Philip J. Weimerskirch, Antonio Panizzi and the British Museum Library (1982). The Scarecrow Press has established a series called "Autobiographies and Biographies of Noted Librarians." A list of "Biographies of Librarians and Library Benefactors" is included in Harris and Davis's American Library History (see note 15 below), pp. 184-218.
A historical study of a library reference work is Stuart J. Glogoff, "Cannons' Bibliography of Library Economy and Its Role in the Development of Bibliographic Tools in Librarianship," Journal of Library History, 12 (1977), 57-63.
Such as Ernest A. Savage's The Story of Libraries and Book-Collecting (1909) and Old English Libraries (1911), James Westfall Thompson's The Medieval Library (1939) and
Such as William D. Johnston's of the Library of Congress (1904), Arundell Esdaile's of the British Museum library (1946), Edmund Craster's of the Bodleian from 1845 to 1945 (1952), Walter Muir Whitehill's of the Boston Public Library (1956), Phyllis Dain's of the New York Public Library (1972), Edward Miller's of the British Museum (1973), Philip Gaskell's of Trinity College (Cambridge) Library (1980), Ian Philip's of the Bodleian in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1983), and J. C. T. Oates's and David McKitterick's of Cambridge University Library (1986). Some libraries have published substantial accounts in their own journals: e.g., "The Founding of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery," Huntington Library Quarterly, 32 (1969), 291-373 (and as a separate); William Bentinck-Smith, Building a Great Library: The Coolidge Years at Harvard (1976), originally published in the Harvard Library Bulletin; and William S. Dix, "The Princeton University Library in the Eighteenth Century," Princeton University Library Chronicle, 40 (1978-79), 1-102. Interim substitutes for full-scale histories have been provided by various anniversary volumes and exhibition catalogues, such as The Houghton Library, 1942-1967 (1967), Major Acquisitions of The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1924-1974 (1974), and The Lilly Library: The First Quarter Century, 1960-1985 (1985), and by chronologies, such as John Y. Cole's For Congress and the Nation (1979). (A broader history in the form of a chronology is Elizabeth W. Stone, American Library Development, 1600-1899 [1977].)
Examples for American library history are Michael H. Harris, A Guide to Research in American Library History (1968); Harris and Donald G. Davis, Jr., American Library History: A Bibliography (1978); and the series of state checklists sponsored by the Journal of Library History.
Some historical surveys of the scholarship devoted to these areas have been produced. See note 41 below.
Listings of currently available books are one kind of reference tool that arises as a by-product of the relationship between publishers, dealers, and buyers; records of copy-rights constitute a similar tool that emerges from legal requirements affecting the activities of publishing and bookselling. Several book-length studies have treated such works historically: Adolf Growoll, Book Trade Bibliography in the United States in the Nineteenth Century (1898) and Three Centuries of English Book Trade Bibliography (1903); R. C. B. Partridge, A History of the Legal Deposit of Books throughout the British Empire (1938); Le Roy H. Linder, The Rise of Current Complete National Bibliography (1959); and Joseph W. Rogers, U. S. National Bibliography and the Copyright Law (1960). See also G. T. Tanselle, "Copyright Records and the Bibliographer," Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 77-124; reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979), pp. 93-138. The history of a related reference tool, auction records, has been discussed by V. H. Paltsits in "The Beginning of American Book Auction Records during the First Quarter Century," American Book Prices Current 1943-44, pp. xi-xiv. For historical surveys of the work on publishing, see G. T. Tanselle, "The Historiography of American Literary Publishing," SB, 18 (1965), 3-39; and Joe W. Kraus, "The History of Publishing as a Field of Research for Librarians and Others," Advances in Library Administration and Organization, 5 (1986), 33-65. See also note 41 below.
Such as John Lawler's Book Auctions in England in the Seventeenth Century (1898), Bernard Quaritch's Contributions towards a Dictionary of English Book-Collectors (1892-1921), Charles and Mary Elton's The Great Book-Collectors (1893), William Y. Fletcher's English Book Collectors (1902), Carl L. Cannon's American Book Collectors and Collecting (1941), and Donald C. Dickinson's Dictionary of American Book Collectors (1986).
Other important works of bibliophilic history that reflect a thorough understanding of bibliographical evidence are Seymour De Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts (1930); Ruth S. Granniss, "American Book Collecting and the Growth of Libraries," in Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt et al., The Book in America (1939), pp. 293-381; and Edwin Wolf
"The Literature of Book Collecting," in Book Collecting: A Modern Guide, ed. Jean Peters (1977), pp. 209-271.
This volume has also been discussed by Robin Myers in Antiquarian Book Monthly Review, 6 (1979), 148-153—as part of a series on "Key Works in Bibliography" (other installments deal with Bowers, Greg, Hinman, McKerrow, Sadleir, and Simpson; most are cited individually below).
"Physical Bibliography in the Twentieth Century," in Books, Manuscripts, and the History of Medicine: Essays on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Osler Library, ed. Philip M. Teigen (1982), pp. 55-79; and "The Evolving Role of Bibliography, 1884-1984," in Books and Prints, Past and Future: Papers Presented at the Grolier Club Centennial Convocation (1984), pp. 15-31.
I have also made these points in two other essays that deal more narrowly with the history of descriptive bibliography: "The Descriptive Bibliography of American Authors," SB, 21 (1968), 1-24; "The Descriptive Bibliography of Eighteenth-Century Books," in Eighteenth-Century English Books Considered by Librarians and Booksellers, Bibliographers and Collectors (1976), pp. 22-33.
Both in the body of the lecture and in an appendix, "Henry Bradshaw and the Development of the Collational Formula," which is the most detailed historical account of the formula yet written.
In connection with studying the origins of the Bibliographical Society, one should take a look at W. H. K. Wright's "The Library Association, 1877-1897: A Retrospect," Library, 1st ser., 10 (1898), 197-207, 245-254.
Barwick says that the Bibliographical Society in London "has done more to encourage and develop scientific bibliography than any other in the world," and he makes the charitable observation on the Bibliographical Society of America that "Its work is scientific when necessary, but its scope is very wide."
Some of the same material appears in her The Work of a Book Club (1937), a pamphlet that includes a biographical sketch of Granniss by Jean B. Barr (with a list of Granniss's writings).
See also A. W. Pollard, "Bibliographische Klubs in England," Zeitschrift für Bücher-freunde, 1 (1897), 99-101.
Other examples are the Historical Sketch of the Club of Odd Volumes (1950); Russell H. Anderson's The Rowfant Club: A History (1955); David Magee's The Hundredth Book: A Bibliography of the Publications of the Book Club of California & a History of the Club (1958); Robert E. Spiller's The Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia: The First Eighty Years, 1893-1973 (1973); James Moran's The Double Crown Club: A History of Fifty Years (1974); Philip Ward and David Chambers's "Twenty-Five Years of the P.L.A. [Private Libraries Association]," Private Library, 3rd ser., 3 (1980), 116-122, 160-167; 4 (1981), 73-86; and Stephen Parks's The Elizabethan Club of Yale University and Its Library (1986), with a historical essay by Alan Bell.
One should turn to the latter list for a fuller record than I am providing here. For the other figures discussed below, as for Bradshaw, I am selective in my references but always mention checklists of writings by and about them.
My survey of the influence of Greg's "Rationale," which includes an analysis of the essay itself, is an example of a historical study that is also part of the analytical literature of the subject. See "Greg's 'Rationale of Copy-Text' and the Editing of American Literature," SB, 28 (1975), 167-229; this essay and the two later essays that continued the survey (in SB in 1981 and 1986) are now gathered in Textual Criticism since Greg: A Chronicle, 1950-1985 (1988).
A basic work, which appeared shortly after Housman's death, is A. S. F. Gow's A. E. Housman: A Sketch, together with a List of His Writings and Indexes to His Classical
Before the New Bibliography, the editing of printed texts was not usually based on bibliographical investigations, and the history of earlier editing is therefore on the fringes of bibliographical history. But there has been considerable attention to Capell and other early editors of Shakespeare: e.g., Thomas R. Lounsbury, The First Editors of Shakespeare (Pope and Theobald) (1906); R. B. McKerrow, "The Treatment of Shakespeare's Text by His Earlier Editors, 1709-1768," Proceedings of the British Academy, 19 (1933), 89-122; Alice Walker, "Edward Capell and His Edition of Shakespeare," ibid., 46 (1960), 131-145; S. K. Sen, Capell and Malone and Modern Critical Bibliography (1961); R. G. Moyles, "Edward Capell (1713-1781) as Editor of Paradise Lost," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 6, part 4 (1975), 252-261.
Roland, "'Dry, Dusty, Tedious, Accursed, Hateful Bibliography': Osler and British Bibliography," in Books, Manuscripts, and the History of Medicine (see note 22 above), pp. 9-27; Barker, "Geoffrey Keynes," Book Collector, 31 (1982), 411-426 passim. See also Geoffrey Keynes: Tributes on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (1961), which contains a checklist; and Mary Kingsbury, "Book Collector, Bibliographer, and Benefactor of Libraries: Sir William Osler," Journal of Library History, 16 (1981), 187-198.
Some examples of booksellers' recollections (besides Muir's and Randall's): James Lackington's Memoirs (1791) and Confessions (1804), Henry Stevens's Recollections of Mr. James Lenox of New York (1886), Walter T. Spencer's Forty Years in My Bookshop (1923), Charles E. Goodspeed's Yankee Bookseller (1937), Charles P. Everitt's The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter (1951), Maurice L. Ettinghausen's Rare Books and Royal Collectors (1966), Harold C. Holmes's Some Random Reminiscences (1967), E. Millicent Sowerby's Rare Books and Rare People [Voynich, Sotheby's, Rosenbach] (1967), David Low's "With All Faults" (1973), David Magee's Infinite Riches (1973), Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern's Old & Rare (1974) and Between Boards (1977), John H. Jenkins's Audubon and Other Capers (1976), Harry W. Schwartz's Fifty Years in My Bookstore (1977), H. P. Kraus's A Rare Book Saga (1978), O. F. Snelling's Rare Books and Rarer People [Hodgson's] (1982), and George Sims's The Rare Book Game (1985). Among collectors' memoirs, at least Henry R. Wagner's Collecting, Especially Books (1941) and Bullion to Books (1942) and Wilmarth Lewis's Collector's Progress (1951) and One Man's Education (1967) should be mentioned. Many valuable shorter pieces also exist—such as the four by Gordon N. Ray that form the first section of the forthcoming volume of his essays, Books as a Way of Life. A unique work in this field is the two-volume set (Four Oaks Farm, Four Oaks Library, edited by Gabriel Austin, 1967) dealing with the collection formed by Donald and Mary Hyde and with its setting; essays by various hands cover different aspects of the library and the farm, some of those in the Farm volume making particularly clear the social context of scholarship —most notably Mary Hyde's essay on "The Guest Book" (pp. 38-86), generously illustrated with photographs of the visitors. Another essay of Mary Hyde's that conveys this same sense is "Grolier Watching by a Lady, 1943-1966," in Books and Prints, Past and Future (see note 22 above), pp. 1-13.
Such as S. H. Steinberg's in Proceedings of the British Academy, 53 (1967), 449-468; James Moran's in Monotype Recorder, 43 (1968); Brooke Crutchley's in Two Men: Walter Lewis and Stanley Morison at Cambridge (1968); those of Nicolas Barker, Douglas Cleverdon, and others in Stanley Morison, 1889-1967: A Radio Portrait (1969); and Douglas Cleverdon's in Stanley Morison and Eric Gill, 1925-1933 (1983).
For example, Victor Scholderer's Fifty Essays in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Bibliography (1966) and Essays in Honour of Victor Scholderer (1970), both edited by Dennis E. Rhodes, and A. F. Johnson's Selected Essays on Books and Printing, edited by P. H.
Few Americans before Bowers and Hinman have been mentioned here, particularly in connection with analytical bibliography and textual study. The earlier American tradition, which had emerged in the study of Americana, made little advance in analytical bibliography and indeed often neglected the physical analysis of books. For some discussion of this point, see my essay "The Bibliography and Textual Study of American Books," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 95 (1985), 113-151 (esp. 114-125), reprinted in Needs and Opportunities in the History of the Book: America, 1639-1876, ed. David D. Hall and John B. Hench (1987), pp. 233-271. Some biographical accounts of figures in this tradition are Victor Hugo Paltsits, "Wilberforce Eames: A Bio-Bibliographical Narrative," in Bibliographical Essays: A Tribute to Wilberforce Eames (1924), pp. 1-26; Randolph G. Adams, "Henry Harrisse," in Three Americanists (1939), pp. 1-33; Edward G. Holley, Charles Evans, American Bibliographer (1963); Walter Muir Whitehill, "George Parker Winship," in Analecta Biographica (1969), pp. 1-14; the volume edited by Scott Bruntjen and M. L. Young on Douglas C. McMurtrie: Bibliographer and Historian of Printing (in the "Great Bibliographers" series, 1979); and Michael Winship, Hermann Ernst Ludewig: America's Forgotten Bibliographer (1986). For a historical sketch of the recording of Americana, see Thomas R. Adams, "Bibliotheca Americana: A Merry Maze of Changing Concepts," PBSA, 63 (1969), 247-260. A bibliographer who did regularly record the structure of books was Thomas J. Holmes, bibliographer of the Mathers; his autobiography is The Education of a Bibliographer (1957).
Greg also discussed the beginning of analytical bibliography, with special reference to Pollard, in "The Hamlet Texts and Recent Work in Shakespearian Bibliography," Modern Language Review, 14 (1919), 380-385.
Among the longest sketches are those on John Payne Collier (pp. 29-32), William Blades (pp. 38-40), William Carew Hazlitt (pp. 41-47), Alexander Dyce (pp. 47-49), and Falconer Madan (pp. 59-61).
See B. J. McMullin, "Indexing the Periodical Literature of Anglo-American Bibliography," SB, 33 (1980), 1-17; and G. T. Tanselle, "The Periodical Literature of English and American Bibliography," SB, 26 (1973), 167-191. In addition to the periodical indexes cited in these essays, there are some guides that list monographic as well as periodical contributions, such as T. H. Howard-Hill, Index to British Literary Bibliography (1969- ); Robin Myers, The British Book Trade from Caxton to the Present Day: A Bibliographical Guide (1973); and G. T. Tanselle, Guide to the Study of United States Imprints (1971). For individual areas of book production, there are some guides of uneven quality: B. H. Breslauer's The Uses of Bookbinding Literature (1986) is excellent (with both an essay and a listing), as is Gavin Bridson and Geoffrey Wakeman's Printmaking & Picture Printing: A Bibliographical Guide to Artistic & Industrial Techniques in Britain, 1750-1900 (1984); less satisfactory are the lists of Vito J. Brenni, such as Book Illustration and Decoration: A Guide to Research (1980), Bookbinding: A Guide to the Literature (1982), Book Printing in Britain and America: A Guide to the Literature and a Directory of Printers (1983), and The Art and History of Book Printing: A Topical Bibliography (1984). Irving Leif's An International Sourcebook of Paper History (1978) was given a substantial supplement shortly after its publication: Kate Frost, "Supplement to Leif: A Checklist of Watermark History, Production, and Reproduction Research," Direction Line, 8 (Spring 1979), 33-56. See also notes 15 and 20 above.
I am not suggesting that the concepts of bibliography and textual criticism are limited to objects carrying verbal messages; they have often been applied to musical texts and are increasingly being used in connection with films. But the bulk of bibliographical and textual work in the past has focused on the transmission of verbal messages; and there is no indication that verbal messages, in one form or another, will be less central to human affairs in the future.
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