Advanced Descriptive Bibliography

Course Description

A continuation and extension of Introduction to the Principles of Bibliographical Description (G-10), this course is based on the intensive examination of a representative range of books from the c16-c19. The goal of the course is to deepen students’ familiarity with the physical composition of books; to gain further experience in the use of Fredson Bowers’ Principles of Bibliographical Description; and to consider critically some of the uses of Bowers’ method (and its limitations) in the production of catalogs, bibliographies, critical editions, and histories of books and reading. The method of this course is essentially the same as that of G-10, Introduction to the Principles of Bibliographical Description: the close examination of books printed from ca. 1600-ca. 1875, i.e. the second century of the hand-press period through roughly the first half century of the machine-press period. The course picks up where the introductory course leaves off: it is designed to extend and deepen students’ practical grasp of the formulary developed in Bowers’ Principles of Bibliographical Description as the distillation of a method for analyzing and describing—for seeing—the physical book. The course will also cover the analysis and description of such elements as typography, paper, contents, plates, binding, &c., that can only be dealt with briefly in an introductory course. Its basic purpose is thus a systematic presentation of the elements of a full-dress bibliographical description. Lectures and discussion will also address such matters as the tailoring of description to various purposes, economizing bibliographical effort by way of the degressive principle, judging the integrity of the artifact, uses and abuses—all grounded on the principle that the more books you see, the better you know each book. The course will make considerable use of the Rare Book School laboratory collections, with special emphasis on its collection of bibliographies and accompanying examples. It is expected that the course will be useful to (interalia) scholars engaged in the production of a descriptive bibliography or similar project, collectors and dealers who routinely read or write sophisticated catalogs, and librarians whose duties require the ability to interpret and/or create complex bibliographical descriptions. In their personal statement, applicants should describe any relevant vocational or avocational work or projects. The instructor will endeavor to adapt course materials and discussion to particular topics and periods, as well as professional interests, indicated by students in their applications. This course is restricted to students who have had some formal course work in descriptive bibliography. All applicants—especially those who have not taken the RBS course G-10, Introduction to the Principles of Bibliographical Description—should explain in some detail their previous training and experience in the field.  

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Advance Reading List

Preliminary Advices

It is especially important that all students should have immersed themselves in Bowers’s Principles: as in the introductory course, chapters 5–7 will be our foundational text, but students should have some familiarity with the whole book. Bring your copy to class. Students should also be handy with Gaskell.

The further readings suggested below obviously do not constitute any sort of exhaustive list. They provide an overview of some key issues and ideas related to the practice and application of descriptive and analytical bibliography, and some elaborations of methods. Many of them contain a wealth of further references that students may want to follow up as their own interests dictate, beginning perhaps with further articles contained in the Bowers and Tanselle collections. In particular, those who can do so should find their way to the Web site of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, where the entire run of Studies in Bibliography is now mounted. Here one will find fifty years worth of articles, many of them seminal texts of the discipline. (Not all of the articles have yet been through the process of correction that is required for scanned texts, so there are occasional glitches where optical character recognition has failed to recognize.)

SB = Studies in Bibliography
PBSA = Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America

Basic Texts

Bowers, Fredson. Principles of Bibliographical Description. Princeton, 1949; reprinted 1994, with an introduction by G. Thomas Tanselle, by Oak Knoll Press).

Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; corrected edition 1974; several subsequent British and American reprintings with minor corrections; paperback edition published in 1995 by Oak Knoll Press).

Tanselle, G. Thomas. Bibliographical Analysis: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. The 1997 Sandars Lectures. Read especially the first, “Foundations,” which was also delivered on 12 July 1999 as Rare Book School Lecture 422.

Further Principles

Bowers, Fredson. “Purposes of Descriptive Bibliography, with Some Remarks on Methods.” The Library, 5th series, 8 (1953): 1–22. Reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975; also in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, edited John Bush Jones. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1974: 12–41.

Bowers, Fredson. “Bibliography Revisited.” The Library, 5th series, 24 (1969): 89–128. Reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975.

Vander Meulen, David L. “The History and Future of Bowers’s Principles.” PBSA 79:2 (1985): 197–219.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “A Description of Descriptive Bibliography.” SB 45 (1992): 1–30.

McKenzie, D. F. “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices.” SB 22 (1969): 1–75.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Bibliography and Science.” SB 27 (1974): 55–89. Reprinted in his Selected Studies in Bibliography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979.

Some Issues

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Concept of Ideal Copy.” SB 33: (1980): 18–53.

Meriwether, James B., and Joseph Katz, “A Redefinition of ‘Issue.'” Proof 2 (1972): 61–70. Reprinted in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, edited by John Bush Jones, 196–205. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1974.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Bibliographical Concepts of Issue and State.” PBSA 69:1 (1975): 17–66.

In Practice

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “A Sample Bibliographical Description.” SB 40 (1987): 1–30.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Arrangement of Descriptive Bibliographies.” SB 37 (1984): 1–38.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Title-Page Transcription and Signature Collation Reconsidered.” SB 38 (1985): 45–81.

Vander Meulen, David L. Where Angels Fear to Tread: Descriptive Bibliography and Alexander Pope. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1988.

Nuts and Bolts

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Bibliographical Description of Paper.” SB 24 (1971): 27–67. Reprinted in his Selected Studies in Bibliography; and in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, edited by John Bush Jones. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1974.

Vander Meulen, David L, “The Identification of Paper without Watermarks: The Example of Pope’s Dunciad.” SB 37 (1984): 58–81.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Identification of Type-Faces in Bibliographical Description.” PBSA 60 (1966): 185–202.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Bibliographical Description of Patterns.” SB 23 (1970): 71–102. Reprinted in his Selected Studies in Bibliography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Non-Letterpress Material in Books.” SB 35 (1982): 1–42.

Sayce, R. A. Compositorial Practices and the Localization of Printed Books, 1500–1800: A Reprint with Addenda and Corrigenda. Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1979. Originally published in The Library, 5th series, 21 (1966): 1–45.

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Course Evaluations

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Course History