Compiling English Verse, 1701-1750
By the time the Wise discoveries were in print, Foxon was launched on his catalogue of English verse. In the early fifties, after the publication of Donald Wing's short-title catalogue, 1641-1700 (New York, 1945-51), the Bibliographical Society had been considering the possibility of preparing a similar catalogue for the eighteenth century. A working-party was set up, under Harold Williams, to see whether the project should be taken further and Foxon took on the responsibility of estimating how many entries there might be. When it was decided not to go ahead with the proposed project, Foxon decided to embark on his own verse catalogue for the first half of the century. What he decided to aim at was `a short-title catalogue with frills' (English Verse, 1701-1750, xi): something that offered more bibliographical information than STC and Wing, but less than Greg's Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (London, 1939-59). The project would give him more scope for bibliographical sophistication than his cataloguing at the Museum, and allow him to pursue his long-standing interest in the poetry of the period.
As Foxon records in the preface to his catalogue, a stimulus for his work was Fredson Bowers's paper on his proposed bibliography of the
Restoration drama, read to the Bibliographical Society on 18 November 1952.
[19] `This lecture was my inspiration', he declared nearly twenty years later.
[20] Foxon decided that, like Bowers, he would consult multiple copies, but that, whereas Bowers intended to use microfilms, he would use the position of signatures as a means of identification:
The points that impressed me most were the number of unrecorded variants, issues, and even editions which could be found only by personal examination of multiple copies, and his argument that the more copies a bibliographer has examined, the more safely can his descriptions be condensed. It became clear to me that though my catalogue could not provide full bibliographical descriptions, any attempt to produce a reliable work must involve seeing as many copies as possible myself and not relying on published catalogues or other second-hand sources. As a check against concealed editions, reset sheets, and reissues I decided to adopt Falconer Madan's practice of recording the position of signature letters relative to the text above them, a method of identification I had already come to trust and one which was far cheaper and easier than the use of microfilm.
(
English Verse, 1701-1750, vii)
Although Foxon recognized the limited precision Madan's method gave him, he continued to value its economy and utility.
Foxon's first task was to make a skeleton catalogue with pencil entries (including shelfmarks where available) in preparation for detailed information in ink when he had seen the copies. He used forms on pressure-sensitive pads of six slips each, ordered from the Stationery Office. The slips (8″ x 5″) consisted of eight central boxes (4 full-length and 4 half-length), with the borders forming larger boxes (1″ deep at the top, 1½″ wide at the side). In the centre top went the title; to the left the date; to the right the location. In the central division were recorded: imprint; collation; pagination; half-title, errata, frontispiece, advertisement, watermark, press-figures; ornaments; miscellaneous. The recording of first lines began later, proposed by someone during Foxon's stay at Harvard—he always regretted that he could not acknowledge his debt by naming the proposer. The top slip would be used to create the main entry in the catalogue, the five subsidiary slips to create the indexes.
Foxon began his work by reading the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, before moving on to author-bibliographies and Dobell's poetry catalogues from before the War. He read in the BM Catalogue and visited the Bodleian at weekends to consult the catalogues there. An interest from the beginning was printer's ornaments, which in this period provide opportunities for printer identification.
Foxon established a file of printer's ornaments, even though he found it difficult to get the quality of pictures he wanted, but it was soon clear that a photographic record of all printer's ornaments would be too expensive and cumbersome. During his period at Harvard in 1959, however, he had access to a Polaroid camera with close-up lens, which helped him to identify Edinburgh piracies in the period, piracies that had, for example, perplexed the bibliography of Pope. The files of these ornaments have been given to the National Library of Scotland.
Serious work on examining books for the catalogue began only on a visit to North America from 1959 to 1961. For this Foxon applied for a Harkness Fellowship from the Commonwealth Fund. These annual awards enabled about thirty British men and women in their late twenties or early thirties (Foxon was a little old at thirty-six) to go to America for a year or more. The scheme was administered with personal and financial generosity. It provided around $300 a month, a rented car for six months (Foxon had a special arrangement for a year), and appropriate introductions. Foxon went for eighteen months, carrying his catalogue slips in a single large suitcase inherited from his father-in-law. Nominally he was at Harvard and Yale, but he managed to fit in many of America's scholarly libraries in his nine months of travel between the two. It was an exciting time to be in the States, coinciding with John Kennedy's nomination for the presidency, and Jane and Deborah came out to join Foxon for a three-month holiday. They met in Quebec and drove across America to California and back.
