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6. Understanding What the Gaps in Our Knowledge Might Mean

When in the late 1980s D. F. McKenzie first proposed the idea of undertaking
a multi-volume history of the book in Britain, a number of colleagues wondered
whether the state of our knowledge was as yet sufficiently advanced for
such a project.[53] Some fifteen years later, the question is still highly appropriate.
The lacunae in CHBB5 are far from trivial. They include: the sale of

Irish books in Northern England, especially post 1760; the market for Scottish
books in Ireland; the importation of books to the colonies from Scotland,
Northern England, and Ireland; and a range of issues concerning piracy
(discussed in section 7, below). Although some chapters in the volume reflect
outstanding scholarly achievement, others—often of no less merit—indicate
that many more specialist studies are needed. Nevertheless, it is the hope of
the General Editors and of the volume editors that book history will benefit
from the Cambridge History both as a source of knowledge and as a stimulus
to further investigation.

In The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, Robert Darnton indicates
that "we need to know more about the world behind the books" and
offers an important series of questions that would help lead book historians
to that knowledge:

Commenting on Darnton's professed ignorance, John Sutherland is regrettably
imperceptive when he claims, "This questionnaire tacitly admits to
vast areas of academic incompetence."[55] Book historians—perhaps more than
researchers in traditional fields or even in longer-established interdisciplinary
approaches—should be mindful of avoiding the "Sutherland syndrome":
a false belief that the admission of ignorance ought automatically be equated
with incompetence. In the case of Darnton, the charge is absurd. The real
danger, however, is that book historians—either suffering from the syndrome,
or fearing the aspersions of those who are afflicted—will themselves be inclined
neither to admit publicly what they do not know, nor distinguish
among the several causes of their nescience.

As I see it, there are three principal classes to consider: 1) errors of perception,
synthesis or analysis, or the failure to adduce what is already known;
in such cases the investigator is ordinarily unaware of his or her ignorance;
2) a lack of knowledge that points toward future research which seems
tractable, but has yet to be undertaken;[56] and 3) ignorance arising from gaps
in the historical record—surviving documentation is so often incomplete and
much that we would be delighted to study is wholly absent. The destruction
of vital Stationers' Company records in "the Blitz" of 1940 is merely a

recent instance of such losses attributable to a variety of causes, including:
the Great Fire of London in 1666; the intentional destruction of correspondence
(as when James Dodsley burned the letters of his bookselling
brother, Robert); the use of old business documents as wastepaper for bookbinding;
and the sacrifice of old letters and ledgers as "Martyrs of Pies and
Reliques of the Bum."[57] It does us no good to mourn for all that is lost,
however, any more than it did for Thomasina Coverly to weep for the library
at Alexandria in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. [58] Instead, scholars do a service to
their colleagues, present and future, by indicating when their experience
teaches them that particular instances of scholarly ignorance fall into one of
these classes. In A Nation and its Books: A History of the Book in Wales, the
editors Jones and Rees are frank about areas in which "much of the basic
research has yet to be undertaken."[59] Such admissions manifest responsible
scholarship, rather than incompetence. The candid disclosure of what we
do not know, and the careful assessment of the reasons for our incomprehension,
can help direct future investigations and lead us to more adequate
understandings.