 | Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography |  |
ARRANGEMENT
I discussed the considerations underlying the overall arrangement
of a descriptive
bibliography and the numbering of its entries in "The
Arrangement of Descriptive
Bibliographies" in Studies in Bibliography, 37
(1984), 1–38.
The approach outlined there is displayed in practice in
my "A Sample Bibliographical
Description with Commentary," Studies
in Bibliography, 40
(1987), 1–30. I wish to call particular attention here to
my discussion of subedition in part I of the 1984 essay, for that concept is
one
of Bowers's most important contributions to descriptive
bibliography
and has not received the recognition it deserves. (I should
add,however,
that my ensuing comments on the role of geography in the organization
of
printing-publishing history does not conform with Bowers's view, a point
I discussed in my 1975 essay on issue and state [see above].)
The most significant post-1984 articles relevant to the subject of ar-
rangement
are two careful and thorough ones by Maura Ives. The first
is
"Descriptive Bibliography and the Victorian Periodical" (Studies in Bibli-
ography, 49 [1996], 61–94). My 1984 essay points out the
illogic of giving
full descriptions of an author's books and then simply listing
that author's
important (or even more important) part of the author's career and since,
in any case, periodicals are printed matter exhibiting the same character-
istics and problems common to books. Ives discusses these points in detail
and then goes over the few differences she sees between the description of
a periodical and that of a book (such as the periodical's "dual existence":
a self-contained individual number that is part of a larger unit). At the
end she provides a sample description (of a single number of a periodical),
which occupies slightly more than four pages of small type and includes
a historical introduction, a title-page transcription, listings of contents,
illustrations, and plates (with quasi-facsimile transcriptions), descriptions
of paper, typography, and publisher's binding, and a record of copies
examined. All this is handled in exemplary fashion, but it raises a serious
practical question: is it realistic to expect such treatment of every number
of a periodical in which an author appeared, unless the author contrib-
uted to periodicals only a few times? However desirable such treatment
would ideally be, it would normally increase bibliographers' work beyond
what most bibliographers would regard as feasible, and it would lengthen
the resultingbibliographies beyond what most publishers would be willing
to consider. From a realistic point of view, an abbreviated form needs to
be found—one that recognizes the importance of describing periodicals
but does not require a full description of every relevant issue.
One bibliography that takes a step in this direction is George
Miller
and Hugoe Matthews's
Richard Jefferies (1993), in which periodical con-
tributions
are placed first, as the "A" section. The authors "believe this
to be a more logical
arrangement in a work of this kind, and one that is
particularly appropriate in
Jefferies' case," since Jefferies
was "a literary
journalist," half of whose lifetime book publications "were
serialized in
or collected from periodicals" (p. xviii). For a great many other
writers,
as Miller and Matthews
suggest, periodical contributions precede book
publications, and one could argue
that placing them first in a bibliogra-
phy would frequently be appropriate. In any
case, Miller and Matthews
have
clearly taken periodicals seriously, and they describe their plan for
recording
periodical contributions as follows:
The entries are listed chronologically under the periodical titles which are in
al-
phabetical order. Information about the journal itself, the type of publication,
fre-
quency of issue, subject matter and editorial policy, proprietor, publisher and
printer,
editor(s) while Jefferies contributed to it,
format, price, etc. is given first. In the entries
that follow as full a reference
aspossible is given, including issue number and month
or day of issue—points often
obscured by rebinding. The text of all items is compared
with that of their
subsequent printing in book form, and any changes incontent or
the extent of any
revisions are noted. The contents of all items not subsequently printed
in book form
are summarized. Any information from documentary or other sources
notes on the background to Jefferies' association with the journal and on any possible
untraced or unconfirmed contributions toit. (p. xix)
One might object that the only element of physical description here is
"format,"
which turns out to be simply the leaf dimensions. Neverthe-
less, these
bibliographers have shown admirable independence of mind
and have demonstrated one
reasonable scheme for handling periodicals:
providing a general account ofa
periodical first, followed by abbreviated
entries for the subject's contributions to
it. The number of details in the
general account and in the entries could be
increased or lessened depend-
ing on the situation and the bibliographer's
inclination. Thus the opening
account could include notes on typography and paper
and a collation for-
mula in cases where most numbers of a journal follow the same
pattern,
and variations in the cited issues could be briefly noted.
Ives does not mention the Jefferies bibliography, but perhaps she had
it in mind
when she said that describing a single number of a periodical
is not sufficient. The
Miller-Matthews plan, however, does offer a
respon-
sible, and easily adjustable, approach. In my 1984 essay, I expressed
the
hope that full-length descriptive bibliographies of individual
periodicals
might eventually be published, with the result that bibliographers of
au-
thors would only need to cite thosedescriptions. But such bibliographies
are
not likely to be produced soon, or in quantity, and author bibliogra-
phers will
have to find realistic solutions. The important thing is for bibli-
ographers of
authors to recognize in the first place that a problem indeed
exists and that they
must think creatively about the best way to deal with
it in each particular
situation. (The so-called degressive principle, which
is what is involved here, is
discussed in the last part of section II of my
essay and more recently—but only in
connection with enumerative bib-
liographies—in D.W.
Krummel's
Bibliographies: Their Aims and Methods
[1984] pp. 46–47,
63–64.)
Ives's second article is "The Place of Musical Settings in Author Bib-
liographies,
with Examples from Christina Rossetti" (Papers of the Biblio-
graphicalSociety of America, 108 [2014], 5–39). Its
most helpful parts are
its commentary on constructingentries for musical settings
(pp. 27–31)
and its listing of relevant scholarship (pp. 33–39). The former calls
at-
tention to features that could be recorded in addition to the
standard
factsof printing and publishing history—features such as vocal
range,
instrumentation, initial key signatures and tempo notations, and
plate
numbers. (She also mentions reviews of performances, but these would
be
within scope only if secondary critical writings, such as reviews of the
author's
books, were included elsewhere in the bibliography.) The record
of scholarship
includes bibliographies that report musical settings, indexes
two admirable works, D. W. Krummel and Stanley Sadie's Music Printing
and Publishing [1990] and Krummel's The Literature of Music Bibliography
[1992]), and significant library collections. The rest of the article, for the
most part, states the obvious. Ives feels that unless an author bibliography
gives an explanation for the presence of music entries, it will usually be
"impossible for users of these bibliographies to understand why musicis
included" (p. 20). But appearances of poems in sheet music, hymnals, mu-
sic collections, and so on are simply instances of the printing or reprinting
of particular poems, and entries for them would be expected in an author
bibliography as part of an author's publication history. Such entries help
to document a work's textual history and its reputation and influence, as
Ives notes, but they do not differ in that respect from all other entries.
Whether musical settings should be recorded in a separate section is dis-
cussed in some detail; and although Ives believes that such segregation is
"almost always preferable" (sometimes with subdivisions), she recognizes
that situations must be evaluated individually. If many bibliographers will
not need a large part of the instructions offered here, Ives's discussions
are nevertheless sensible, and some of them provide suggestive reading
for anyone engaged in defining the content and placement of entries for
music in an author bibliography.
The last paragraph of a description, the record of copies examined,
is discussed
briefly in my essay (in the fifth paragraph from the end), in
order to emphasize the
distinction between the numbering of specific
copies for reference within a
description and the numbering of the entries
themselves, which of course does not
refer to individual copies. The post-
publication features of books that can be
reported under"Copies Exam-
ined" include inscriptions, annotations, bookplates, and
custom bindings.
For help in pursuing clues regarding provenance, the best guide is
David
Pearson's
Provenance Research in Book History (1994); for the
identification
and description of custom bindings, see the references mentioned
under
"Publishers' Bindings" above. Extensive provenance notes are
illustrated
in Anthony James West's "A Model for
Describing Shakespeare First
Folios, with Descriptions of
Selected Copies" (The Library, 6th ser., 21
[1999], 1–49);
and a large collection of such notes (from the same proj-
ect) can be found in Eric Rasmussen et al., The Shakespeare First
Folios: A
Descriptive Catalogue (2012).
One post-publication feature that is not often thought about is dis-
cussed by
Jeffrey Todd Knight in "Invisible Ink: A Note on Ghost
Im-
ages in Early Printed Books"(Textual Cultures, 5.2
[2010], 53–62). Knight
is speaking of offsets from adjacent items bound together
(not from
the printing process, which would be reported elsewhere in the
description);
ing (as do many other post-publication additions to books). The impor-
tance of the "Copies Examined" paragraph cannotbe exaggerated, not
only because it records the sources for the description (enough reason in
itself) but also because it fittingly completes the account by reflecting the
post-publication life of those artifacts.
| Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography | |