 | Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography |  |
IDEAL COPY
"The Concept of Ideal Copy," was published in Studies in Bibliography,
33 (1980), 18–53, and was reprinted,
in a translation by Katia Lysy, in
Filologia dei testi a stampa, ed. Pasquale Stoppelli
(1987), pp. 73–105. As
I complained there, the phrase "ideal copy" is
unfortunate, and I can
only reiterate, even more emphatically, that it should never
have been
invented. My essay does not appear to have affected, to any
significant
extent, the way the term has been used since 1980; and
countless bibli-
ographies and bibliographical discussions have continued to spread
con-
fusion by assuming that the concept has something to do with
textual
correctness and that any given impression or issue can have only one
ideal
copy. The basic point underlying Fredson Bowers's
discussion was simply
that a descriptive bibliography (as opposed to a catalogue of
a collection)
should not include in its basic descriptions any features of books
that
result from their post-publication lives. To put the matter the other
way
round, the descriptive bibliographer does record in a basic description
all
the forms that were published (as defined in the next paragraph). The
variant forms
of an impression (including its stop-press alterations) are its
"ideal
copies"—though they should not be called that. If we were to say
that a description
focuses on "copies as published," not on a single "ideal
copy," most of the problems
would go away.
Defining what "as published" means is straightforward for books pub-
lished in
edition-bindings (that is, most books from the early nineteenth
century onward,
first in boards with labels, meant to be temporary, and
then in cloth): it simply
refers to whatever forms the finished product
(printed sheets and insertions plus
binding) took—even when certain leaves
were expected to be removed (as in Frances Ann Kemble's
Records of Later
Life
[1882], where the second leaf is headed "Slips for Librarian to
paste
on Catalogue Cards"). But for books not published in
edition-bindings
(including most books before the nineteenth century), the
descriptive bib-
liographer's focus must be, as I stated in 1980, on
the structure "specifi-
cally called for by the evidence of the sheets." In the
former case (books
published in edition-bindings), intention plays no role, since
the finished
product may not have fully conformed with what the printer or
publisher
intended; in the latter (books not published in edition-bindings), the
ob-
ject to be described has to be the sheets (and insertions) in their
intended
structure, rather than in whatever arrangements resulted from the
work
of the various binders employed by the printers, publishers, or
booksellers
(not always different persons) or by the owners of specific copies.
The role of intention in these matters can perhaps be clarified by
considering a
passage in David McKitterick's
Print, Manuscript, and the
printing process leads to variability in the printed results, and he there-
fore questions the bibliographer's focus on something as seemingly fixed
as an "ideal copy" (pp. 136–138). Although he speaks of my definition as
"careful," he says that it "cannot embrace one of the fundamental points
about early printed books: that they can remain physically uncompleted
after they have left the printer's or publisher's control." But my definition
does embrace this fact because it refers simply to the forms that "were
released to the public by their producers," however variant or "uncom-
pleted" those forms were. Printers, he says, expected and accepted varia-
tions among copies, and he thus finds the idea of printers' intentions to be
"unrealistic" (unless defined as "heterogeneous compromises"). Printers,
however, clearly did have intentions: to carry out the publishers' inten-
tions (a point discussed further below), if indeed the printers and publish-
ers were not the same people. Those intentions were evidenced by clues in
the printed sheets (both as to the expectation of a particular structure and
as to the acceptance of textual variants). Printers and publishers obviously
recognized that they could not control what would happen to those sheets
in the hands of other people; but it does not follow that bibliographers are
being unrealistic when (for the period before publishers' bindings) they
follow the printed marks of intended structure as a way of distinguishing
forms as meant to be published (including, of course, stop-press variants)
from forms as modified later. Making this distinction does not deny the
variability among copies or the continuity of the whole process (from
printer to reader).
Internal evidence for an intended structure generally takes the form
of signatures,
supplemented by lists of contents (including illustrations)
and indications of
insertion points on separately printed material. In most
cases what the
bibliographer describes differs from the bundles offered
by printers (to publishers,
booksellers, binders, or the public) only in the
placement of cancels (whether
printed on the text sheets or separately
from them) and plates printed by intaglio
processes (or, occasionally, sepa-
rately printed letterpress charts or tables).
Sometimes, however, there is
another source of evidence: printed instructions to
binders. They call for
some comment that I did not provide in 1980.
The main situations in which such instructions occurred have been
surveyed, with
most interesting examples, by B. J. McMullin in
"Print-
ers' Instructions to Binders" (Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America,
104
[2010], 77–104). Besides giving the locations of plates and
cancels
(or any other matter to be inserted), these instructions were used
when
the sequence of signatures was unclear or complex and when the com-
ponents
of a volume were distinct units without an obvious order. (In a
supplementary note
the same year, on pp. 353–359, McMullin gives an
the edge of a cancellans.) The subject of "ideal copy" naturally comes
up in McMullin's discussion, and he concludes (pp. 103–104) that each
bibliographer must decide whether to describe "the printer's ideal copy"
or "the publisher's ideal copy." This conclusion, however, by separating
the printer's and the publisher's intentions, is at odds with the generally
accepted (and I think correct) view that the entities to be described are
either (a) copies as printed, bound, and published (if in edition-bindings)
or (b) copies as intended by the printer and publisher to be formed from
the published materials (if not in edition-bindings).
Furthermore, his statement is misleading in suggesting that the pos-
tulated
decision for bibliographers has a wider area of application than
it actually has.
If, along with McMullin, one were to define the
printer's
ideal copy as "the collection of leaves that the printer intended to
supply
the publisher with (and thence the binder)," there are only two ways
this
assemblage of leaves (that is, sheets) would differ from the materials
for
the "publisher's ideal copy": (1) in its inclusion of binders'
instructions
printed either on an integral leaf that carries no other text (except
possibly
a binding label) or on a separate piece of paper; and (2) in its inclusion
of
any leaves to be canceled, along with their replacements. (Incidentally,
the
last phrase of McMullin's definition should properly
read "to supply the
binders with, sometimes by way of publishers, booksellers, or
individual
owners"—in order to make clear that more than one binder would
have
been involved, and to accommodate the variety of possible sequences,
given
the overlapping of the printing/publishing/bookselling functions.)
When binders'
instructions are printed on a leaf containing other text
(such as a title page, a
table of contents, an errata list, and so forth),
that leaf clearly is part of the
copy intended by the printer and publisher
(or printer-publisher). But when copies
survive with either of the kinds of
leaves mentioned just above (numbered 1 and 2),
the bibliographer would
be justified in not including them in a basic description
(reporting them
instead in appended notes).
In summary it must be said that McMullin's definition of
"printer's
ideal copy" makes the printer's intention more restricted than it
clearly
was. Printers (as their instructions to binders show) were looking
ahead,
just as much as the publishers/booksellers, to the form that readers
were
to receive. In his Foxcroft Lecture of 2012 (What Readers Should Ignore on
the Printed Page: Communication within the Book
Trade, published in 2014),
McMullin at
first recognizes this point: "the ultimate aim of both par-
ties [printers and
binders]," he says, was "to ensure that the purchaser/
reader obtained what the
bibliographer would call an 'ideal' copy" (p. 5).
But near the end, when he asks
whether printed instructions to binders
"form part of the ideal copy," he again says
that "from the printer's point
not helpful to use ideal copy in two ways, especially since the kind of "ideal
copy" that bibliographers are concerned with is the same for printers,
binders, publishers, booksellers, and readers. Binders' instructions thus
pose no challenge to the standard procedure for dealing with books that
were not published in edition-bindings.
One must remember that, in the period before edition-bindings, books
could appear
in a kind of publisher's binding, for booksellers can be as-
sumed to have offered
books in a variety of forms in addition to batches of
sheets—that is, in full
bindings or in gatherings, sewn or not, and with or
without some form of attached
wrappers or boards. This much has long
been recognized in a general way; but the
first person to give the mat-
ter systematic attention and to search extensively for
surviving evidence
is Nicholas Pickwoad, who publicized
his research in a lecture, "Unfin-
ished Business," delivered several times in
2012–15. He has located some
130 examples of what he calls
"incomplete" or "unfinished" bindings,
dating from 1485 though the
eighteenth century. These are book blocks
that are sewn in a permanent fashion and
sometimes have boards at-
tached to them but have not been finished with any
covering material
(though they are ready for that operation). Pickwoad distinguishes
them
from the "temporary" bindings that were already well known—book
blocks with
intact deckle edges, inexpensive sewing structures, and simple
wrappers (or cheap
boards) meant only to protect the sheets until they
could be given permanent
structures and conventional covers. (See Jona-
than E.
Hill, "From Provisional to Permanent: Books in Boards,
1790–
1840," The Library, 6th ser., 21
[1999], 247–273.) Pickwoad suggests the
possibility that these two
categories of "binding" may have constituted
standard practice for the initial
offerings of books in the hand-press pe-
riod. Aaron T.
Pratt has also suggested that books of all genres with short
texts
(especially quartos with fewer than about 96 pages) were generally
sold in
stab-stitched form in shops (see "Stab-Stitching and the Status of
Early English
Playbooks as Literature," The Library, 7th ser., 16
[2015],
304–328).
Examples of unfinished or temporary bindings are understandably
difficult to
locate, since most were not left in their original state. (Some of
the structural
results of the binding process are discussed by Pickwoad in
"Binders' Gatherings,"
The Library, 7th ser., 15 [2014], 63–78.) But
when
they can be identified, the makeup of their sheets can be regarded as
one
of the forms of ideal copy for the books concerned. However, given
their
scarcity (aside from the late-eighteenth- and
early-nineteenth-century
boards-and-label instances)—as well as the possibility that
their makeup
may not differ very often from what the bibliographer would have
defined
Pratt's important research may not affect the collation and contents para-
graphs in most bibliographical descriptions (though they may sometimes
cause a paragraph on binding to be added).
Understanding these points is all the background one needs in order
to see how
pointless most of the discussions of ideal copy are. But the
three
most extensive post-1980 treatments should perhaps be mentioned.
First
is Rolf E. Du Rietz's "Buyer's Emissions and Ideal
Copies" (Text [Upp-
sala], 5.1 [1994], 2–38),
which focuses on books from the period before
edition-binding became standard. In
the language of his classification
scheme, "buyer's emissions" are primarily the
bound copies whose con-
tents were arranged by binders for individual owners.
Because "original
emissions" (the forms released by publishers) rarely survive (or
can be
identified) from this period, bibliographers must use "buyer's
emissions"
as sources for ideal-copy descriptions. Du
Rietz apparently believes that
this fact undercuts my idea that ideal copy does not encompass decisions
made by individual
owners or binders. But the precise forms of "buyer's
emissions" are not what
bibliographers would describe (except in notes
on examined copies); rather, they
would use the evidence available in
those copies in order to determine the order of
contents that was intended
by the publisher—a pre-publication event. (Indeed, even
if some "origi-
nal emissions" survived, only those in temporary or unfinished
bindings
would constitute varieties of ideal copies, and the bibliographer's
proce-
dure would otherwise remain the same.) Du Rietz is
correct, when try-
ing to understand my definition of ideal
copy, to suggest that my phrase
"evidence of the sheets" may involve, among
other things, understanding
(in his words) the "generally accepted contemporary
conventions"; but
even so his discussion finally blurs the crucial distinction
between the
forms of extant copies and the forms to be described in
bibliographers'
basic entries. Perhaps the most useful part of his article is his
detailed
consideration of the binding up of serials and of works published in
parts
or fascicles—though he does not make clear that these situations
(where
the publisher has two intentions, one or both of which are often
fully
carried out by the publisher) are very different from the one that is
his
primary concern.
The second extended treatment of ideal copy occurs in Stanley Boor-
man's
Ottaviano Petrucci: Catalogue Raisonné
(2006), an extremely thorough
account of this early sixteenth-century
printer of music. In the 400–page
introductory section (which discusses Petrucci's life and the printing and
publishing conditions of
his time), there is a chapter entitled "Ideal Copy:
Petrucci's View of the Book, Its Character, Function, and
Destination"
(pp. 247–264). It begins with the "bibliographical concept," which
"exists
copy as it was intended to be issued by the printer or publisher" (p. 248).
This definition at first seems excellent, until one learns what "intended"
covers for Boorman. Intention is central to the chapter: as its subtitle sug-
gests, his use of ideal copy is not primarily bibliographical but rather refers
to all the aspects of text and design that the printer felt were essential "to
make people like his books." In a later chapter, "Bibliographical Concepts
and Terminology," the definition of ideal copy embodies this point: "an
ideal copy represents a book as issued by the printer and publisher, once
they were satisfied that the details of appearance and content were as they
wished to see them" (p. 450). (Their satisfaction, of course, does not mean
that they had noticed everything they would have liked to notice; to bring
about such an ideal copy, at least as far as the text is concerned, would
require a critical edition.) One clue to the printer/publisher's intention is
any in-house corrections (stop-press, handwritten, or stamped), and thus
those corrections become, for Boorman, part of ideal copy (even though,
as he later notes [pp. 448, 449], the direction of some kinds of changes
is not always clear). He recognizes that he is using the term "in a slightly
idiosyncratic manner." What his usage amounts to is an expansion of
the concept to encompass a corrected text in addition to (for books not
in edition-bindings) an intended structure. The practical consequence is
simply that a record of in-house corrections appears earlier in each de-
scription (preceding the listing of contents) than is conventional. But the
basic description does what any description of an ideal copy must do (for
books not in edition-bindings): it sets forth the structure that complete
copies should consist of, drawing on the evidence of the surviving cop-
ies, all of which may be incomplete or aberrant; and Boorman carefully
supplements it with detailed accounts of the individual copies. Despite
the problem with his concept of ideal copy, therefore, the descriptions
themselves are admirable.
The third discussion is in Joseph A. Dane's
Abstractions of Evidence in
the Study of Manuscripts and Early
Printed Books (2009), which contains a
chapter called "'Ideal
Copy' vs. 'Ideal Texts': The Application of Biblio-
graphical Description to
Facsimiles" (pp. 77–94). (Dane has commented
on ideal copy
elsewhere, in this book and others, but this chapter is his most
thorough
examination of it.) Although his discussion includes a number of
questionable
pronouncements, he does show some of the inconsistencies
in Bowers's treatment of ideal copy and in comments by
Charlton Hinman
and Michael
Warren about their Shakespeare facsimiles (which
bring to-
gether pages from different copies). He is properly critical of Hinman's
notion that his facsimile of the First Folio presents
"what the printers of
the original edition would themselves have considered an ideal
copy" and
of Warren's belief that his King Lear shows the text "as the printer might
a "corrected" forme is not necessarily more correct at the points of altera-
tion, and in any case a forme (corrected or not) is likely to contain unno-
ticed errors that a printer would not "ideally" intend. The concept of ideal
copy (in either Bowers's or my formulation) has nothing to do with textual
correctness. Dane recognizes this fact here (as he did not in a passage
of his 2003 book, The Myth of Print Culture, where "missing quires" and
"printing errors" are equally to be "filtered out" in describing an ideal
copy [p. 187]). But a greater use of this recognition would have made his
discussion more acute (and considerably more concise). That composite
facsimiles can be regarded as critical editions is an obvious point scarcely
worth extensive comment, though the fact that the editors may think they
have produced ideal copies is of some interest (if irrelevant to the users).
Despite Dane's criticism of some of the ways in which the term ideal copy
has been employed, one leaves his discussion feeling that the usefulness
of the concept has not been clarified.
But the concept itself—when understood as a way of defining which
features of
extant books are to be excluded from descriptions because they
result from the
independent actions of individual owners or the vicissi-
tudes of time—is
fundamental to the work of bibliographers.
| Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography | |