Analytical Bibliography

Course Description

“I walked away with a much finer eye; more attuned to certain details I may have otherwise missed. I certainly feel this has broadened my horizons as a researcher.” — 2017 student An introduction to techniques for recognizing, recording, and understanding the traces preserved in printed books of the hand-press period which give evidence of the methods of their manufacture. Besides revealing details of early printing technology, analytical bibliography can uncover facts about now-lost manuscripts that served as copy for the typeset texts. Topics covered in this course may include skeleton formes, press figures, type recurrence, chainlines and watermarks, standing type and multiple impositions, shared printing, woodcut and type wear, forgeries, and the use and limitations of facsimiles and mechanical collation aids. Although provenance and bookbinding evidence will be out of scope, we may give some attention to post-publication alterations of individual copies that can confuse interpretation. Our approach will be practical rather than academic, with emphasis on observation rather than lectures. The week will begin with an intensive hands-on session with RBS printing equipment, covering typesetting, imposing, and other pressroom practices. With this experience as a foundation, the remaining sessions will draw on original materials (when possible) and photocopies as sources for investigation. The course will assume some familiarity with historical bibliography and book anatomy (see the reading list). Although none of the other RBS courses in bibliography (the G series) are prerequisite, G-45 will rely to some extent on the vocabulary and collation formulary which are developed by the others in much greater depth. Graduates of any of those courses should expect a bit of overlap, but will have a valuable leg up on the topics to be discussed. G-45 will not attempt to rigorously teach or critique styles of description. Rather, it will explore features not normally treated in bibliographies, but more often developed at article- or book-length. In their personal statements, prospective applicants should describe any experience they have had with hand-typesetting and printing. This information will be useful in planning the course.

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Advance Reading List

Required Reading

Blayney, Peter W. M. The First Folio of Shakespeare. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1991. Page for page, this may be the best introduction to the bibliography of early modern books ever written. Try to start with this before proceeding to Gaskell. It is now out of print and priced like a rare book, but the Folger has made a PDF available at: https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/6/63/BlyFFS.pdf.

Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Winchester and New Castle, DE: St. Paul’s Bibliographies & Oak Knoll Press, 2009 (reprint of the corrected 1974 printing; any except the 1972 first printing is fine). Still the standard introduction to historical bibliography, with frequent references to analytical matters along the way. Try to have read (selectively) pp. 5–12, 40–141, 164–170, and 311–320, and become familiar with the basics of the collation formulary on pp. 328–332. You may want to bring a copy of Gaskell to class. The more basic imposition diagrams following p. 87 will play a central role in the course, though RBS practice format sheets will be available.

If you find yourself overwhelmed by bibliotopology, try watching the video presentation The Anatomy of a Book: I. Format in the Hand-Press Period, written by Terry Belanger and directed by Peter Herdrich. If after watching the video you still feel unsure with the basic impositions and foldings, you should take either G-10 or G-20 before tackling this course.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. Bibliographical Analysis: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Although the course will not follow Tanselle’s historical approach, you will find it very useful to be familiar with Chapters 1 and 2 of this book. (We will not cover the topics in Chapter 3.) Tanselle’s tightly reasoned exploration of the values and pitfalls of different types of evidence goes beyond what we will be able to cover in a week, and its reading list (with accompanying chronological and subject indexes) cannot be bettered for the Anglo-American sphere. Don’t worry if everything doesn’t make sense at first—that’s what the class is for. Tanselle’s list of works cited is supplemented by his own Introduction to Bibliography (2002), pp. 255–365.

McKenzie, D.F. “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices.” Studies in Bibliography 22 (1969): 1–75. Reprinted in his Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, edited by Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez, S.J. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002). McKenzie rocked the little world of bibliography with his demonstration that some common assumptions about printing shop work-flow were not borne out by the records of an actual eighteenth-century establishment. This is a complex and technical article, but try to follow the general lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that shops were often printing more than one job at once. McKenzie’s caveats about the implications of this, notwithstanding Tanselle’s criticisms in #3, need to temper any bibliographical investigation.

Wilkinson, Hazel. “Printers’ Flowers as Evidence in the Identification of Unknown Printers: Two Examples from 1715”. The Library Seventh Series 14:1 (March 2013): 70–79. Optional but recommended as an example of analytical bibliography in action.

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Course Evaluations

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Course History