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It is not customary for descriptive bibliographies to present periodical publications in the same format, or with the same level of detail, that is used for books. The practice of indexing periodical publications is so well established that one would question a bibliography that neglected to present such a record; and yet, while all seem to agree that it is important to establish the history of an author's periodical contributions, few seem to have asked whether it might not also be important to investigate those publications as thoroughly as we investigate books. G. Thomas Tanselle brings up the matter in "The Arrangement of Descriptive Bibliographies,"[1] pointing out that bibliographers rarely explain "why they simply list, rather than describe, contributions to periodicals" (25), and suggesting that bibliographers might "write separate descriptive bibliographies of individual periodicals" (26). But although a few scholars have undertaken serious bibliographical study of periodicals (such as Donald Bond's work on the Spectator and William B. Todd's work on the Gentleman's Magazine, the Examiner and the World),[2] they are exceptions to the rule.

The drawbacks of this practice for Victorian writers became apparent to me during my work on a critical edition of George Meredith's short fiction. Although Meredith, like many Victorian authors, frequently published in periodicals, bibliographical studies of Meredith[3] and other Victorian writers routinely present periodical publications in enumerative

lists, and sometimes (as often happens in the case of serialized fiction) in a note appended to a description of the book publication. Those few periodical numbers[4] that are described (mostly in bibliographies completed early in the century) usually have special significance; most often they were edited by the author, were found to include material that was not published elsewhere, or were judged to be "booklike" (special issues or annuals).[5]

The purpose of this essay, then, is to consider why and how one might create bibliographical descriptions of Victorian periodicals, and in the process, to offer a general reassessment of the distinctions between these publications and nineteenth-century books. I conclude with some suggestions for the identification and bibliographical description of nineteenth-century periodicals which, I hope, will also be useful for the description of serial publications of other eras.

Periodicals have long been regarded as bibliographical troublemakers. John Winterich's "The Expansion of an Author Collection," one of the essays included in John Carter's 1934 volume New Paths in Book Collecting, provides an early example of the usual objections:

Of course Winterich was not discouraged by the bookseller's complaints (to which I will return later on), but to this day, even the advocates of periodicals are well aware that periodicals present distinct challenges. Take, for instance, the "Preface" to John North's 1989 Waterloo Directory of Scottish Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800 — 1900: Now of course the difficulties of working with Victorian periodicals are exacerbated when one is trying to track down a few thousand different titles, but even the study of a single number of a popular periodical can be complicated by difficulties in locating copies, by extreme diversity in presentation (at the least, issue in wrappers and in bound volume), and by the destruction of valuable information that results from poor and at times negligent handling of fragile material. But we should not forget that these "nightmares" also represent a golden opportunity for research, since even the best-known Victorian periodicals have yet to be studied bibliographically.

Thanks to the efforts of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, founded in 1969, much of the scholarly groundwork for advanced bibliographical research on Victorian periodicals is already in place. The resources for what librarians refer to as the "bibliographic control" of British periodicals have flourished; American periodicals are not nearly as well charted, but the establishment of a Research Society for American Periodicals in 1990, followed by the debut of American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism and Bibliography in 1991, bodes well. The large scale indexing of nineteenth-century (mostly British) periodicals began as early as 1888, with the first volume of Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1888 — 1908), followed by the Nineteenth Century Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, 1890 — 1899: With Supplementary Indexing, 1900 — 1922 (1944) and the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824 — 1900 (1966 — 89).[6] While there is still a tremendous

amount of indexing to be done,[7] the even more basic work of enumerating Victorian periodicals is well under way; major accomplishments in this area include the Union List of Victorian Serials (1985) and the ongoing Waterloo series of directories to nineteenth-century periodicals in Great Britain and Ireland (the series includes the Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, 1824 — 1900 [1976], The Waterloo Directory of Irish Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800 — 1900 [1986], the aforementioned Waterloo Directory of Scottish Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800 — 1900, and the recently released first series of the Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals 1800 — 1900 [1995], which lists nearly 30,000 titles). The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals is especially useful because it includes references to secondary sources and locations for some titles.

In his 1978 essay "The Bibliographical Control of Periodicals," Scott Bennett took the progress that had been made in the "indexing and . . . inventorying" of Victorian periodicals as an indication that "the next bibliographic horizon for periodicals will involve analytical bibliography and textual criticsm" (50).[8] In 1980, a Manual for the Bibliographical Description of Serials Preliminary Draft was compiled by the late John Palmer and several members of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, including Bennett and John North. In a second essay, "Prolegomenon to Serials Bibliography: A Report to the Society,"[9] Bennett explains that the Manual was conceived as a first step towards producing "a bibliography of key Victorian serials" (9), and was intended to provide "detailed advice to bibliographers on what data to collect and how to record it," a goal that would demand the creation of "new models of bibliographical description that do justice to the timeliness of periodicals and to the special relations periodical communication establishes between readers and writers" (8).

Unfortunately, the Manual did not progress beyond the draft stage; however, its influence can be seen in the later volumes of the Waterloo series, in which one observes a gradual move from treating periodicals as repositories of verbal texts to acknowledging the importance of the periodical itself as a physical object. There is a striking contrast between the earlier Wellesley Index, which entirely omits any description of the

periodicals it features, and the Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, which includes images of the title-pages of over 3000 periodicals and provides some bibliographically relevant information (such as the periodical's dimensions and types of illustrations).

The draft of the Manual also offers the perfect point of departure for the descriptive bibliography of Victorian serials. Citing the absence of bibliographical study of periodicals by R. B. McKerrow, Fredson Bowers, and Philip Gaskell, the Manual quotes from Bowers's "Foreword" to Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949):

The Manual follows this quotation with the claim that "Provided that for 'book' we read 'serial publication' there can be no better statement of the intentions of this manual" (6). Except, of course, that the Manual was not intended as a guide for descriptive bibliographers but for library catalogers, and as such is primarily concerned with describing the content of the periodical rather than describing its physical elements.[10] The only mandatory physical details included in the Manual's recommendations for description are a measurement of a type page (but no further description of leaves, cover, or binding); a notification of whether the periodical is printed on anything other than "untinted paper"; a notification of any "peculiarity of printing from the letterpress type," including ink in colors other than black and printing methods other than letterpress (such as stereotype or lithography); and notification of the presence of illustrations. In providing these (albeit limited) criteria the Manual opens the door for discussion of how periodicals might be handled in a descriptive bibliography.