Bibliographical Society

Print Publications

  1. Studies in Bibliography
  2. Books in My Life, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  3. Descriptive Bibliography, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  4. A Sample Bibliographical Description with Commentary, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  5. Paper and Type: Bibliographical Essays, by John Bidwell
  6. Books as a Way of Life, by Gordon N. Ray
  7. Portraits & Reviews, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  8. Where Angels Fear to Tread, by David Vander Meulen
  9. Essays in Bibliographical History, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  10. Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  11. The Art Deco Book in FranceThe 1985 Lyell Lectures, by Gordon N. Ray
  12. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle): A Bibliography, by Michael Boughn
  13. Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing, by Fredson Bowers
  14. Supplement to Charles Evans’ American Bibliographywith Index to Supplement to Evans’ American Bibliography, by Roger P. Bristol
  15. A Preliminary Handlist of Books to which Dr. Samuel Johnson Subscribed, by Donald Eddy and J. D. Fleeman
  16. Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the 17th Century (Macbeth), ed. by G. Blakemore Evans
  17. Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburh: A Bibliography, by Donald K. Fry
  18. Victor Hammer: Calligrapher, Punch-Cutter & Printer, by Joseph Graves
  19. Fielding’s Library: An Annotated Catalogue, by Frederick G. Ribble and Anne G. Ribble
  20. The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  21. Literature and Artifacts, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  22. Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  23. Textual Criticism since Greg: A Chronicle 1950-2000, by G. Thomas Tanselle
  24. The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia: The First Fifty Years, ed. by David L. Vander Meulen
  25. Pope’s Dunciad of 1728: A History and Facsimile, by David L. Vander Meulen
  26. Samuel Johnson’s Translation of Sallust: A Facsimile and Transcription of the Hyde Manuscript, ed. by David L. Vander Meulen and G. Thomas Tanselle
  27. Peter Taylor: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1934-87, by Stuart Wright


Print Publications

Studies in Bibliography^

Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia

Published since 1948, Studies in Bibliography is the pre-eminent journal of analytical bibliography, textual criticism, manuscript study, and the history of printing and publishing. Volumes 1 through 45 were edited by Fredson Bowers; volume 46 to the present are edited by David L. Vander Meulen. The forthcoming volume (61) can be secured by joining the Society. The current volume (60) is available from the University of Virginia Press at $70.00. For access to Studies in Bibliography, click here.


Books in My Life, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

Price: $60.00
Size: 6.125 x 9.25 inches
Binding: Cloth
Pages: xiii, 367 pages
ISBN: 9781883631215

The noted scholar, bibliographer, and book collector G. Thomas Tanselle reflects upon his background, education, connections, and the role of books and other physical objects in his life. Illustrated, with index.

This book is both an autobiography and a study of the rationale and practice of book collecting. The theme throughout is the important role that physical objects play in the life of each of us – both through their ability to link us with the past (often our own past) and through their power, as part of our surroundings, to influence our thoughts.

The book begins with two previously published autobiographical essays: “Books in My Life” (1999) and “The Pleasures of Being a Scholar-Collector” (2005). They are followed by a substantial memoir called “The Living Room,” most of which has not been published before, showing how extensively one’s life can be called up by the associations adhering to the objects that have formed one’s private environment. The author considers it a case study illustrating W. G. Sebald’s point that our possessions constitute “the book of our history.” The first section ends with another unpublished essay, “An Ode to Artifacts,” which serves as a coda.

The next part of the book is a gathering of previously published essays on collecting: “A Rationale of Collecting” (1998) , followed by examinations of three categories of books that Tanselle has been particularly concerned with in his own collecting – non-firsts (1979), publishers’ imprints (1970), and association copies (2011). As a coda to this section, Tanselle’s 2014 lecture “A Bibliographer’s Creed”‘ summarizes what he has come to believe, over a period of sixty years, about the crucial significance of the physical book in cultural history and thus the moral obligation to preserve as many examples as possible through the activity of collecting.

The volume ends with a chronology of Tanselle’s professional life and an annotated listing of his published writings.

G. Thomas Tanselle, former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and adjunct professor of English at Columbia University, is currently the textual advisor to the Library of America (on whose board he has served since he helped found the organization in 1979. He is a past president of the Bibliographical Society of America, the Bibliographical Society of University of Virginia, the Grolier Club, the Society for Textual Scholarship, and the Melville Society. His books include Royall Tyler (1967), Guide to the Study of United States Imprints (1971), A Rationale of Textual Criticism (1989), Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (1990), The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers (1993), Literature and Artifacts (1998), Textual Criticism since Greg (2005), Bibliographical Analysis (2009), Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use (2011), Essays in Bibliographical History (2013), Portraits and Reviews (2015), Descriptive Bibliography (2020), and American Publishing History: The Tanselle Collection (2020). He was also co-editor of the fifteen-volume Northwestern-Newberry Edition (1968-2017) of the writings of Herman Melville. In 2015 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Bibliographical Society (London). He lives in the Beekman Place area of midtown Manhattan. Order this book ___________________________________________________________

Descriptive Bibliography, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

Price: $60.00
Size: 6″ x 9.25″
Pages: 630 pages plus 8 pages of illustrations
ISBN: 9781883631192

This book offers a comprehensive guide to descriptive bibliography–the activity of describing books as physical objects. The function of descriptive bibliography is to provide detailed historical accounts of the varied material forms in which texts have been transmitted and to show the relationships among those examples that claim to carry texts of the same work. Because books constitute one of the largest and most important classes of artifacts, an understanding of how they were made and circulated and what they looked like is a major component in our sense of the human past. Through bibliographical investigation, we are able to observe the materials and analyze the skills employed by printers in their daily activities; we can learn something of the publishing contexts from the many design elements in books; and every physical detail plays a role in our understanding of how the texts of books came to be what they are. Descriptive bibliography is not just a guide to the identification of first editions (though it serves that purpose) but is rather a history of the production and publication of the books taken up and thus a contribution to the broader annals of printing, publishing, and human culture.

The first part of this book contains five essays on general topics: an introduction to the field and its history; its relation to library cataloguing; the concept of ideal copy; the meanings of edition, impression, issue, and state; and tolerances in reporting details. The second part covers more specific subjects: transcription and collation; format; paper; typography and layout; typesetting and presswork; non-letterpress material; publishers’ bindings, endpapers, and jackets; and overall arrangement. At the end is an appendix containing a sample description with detailed commentary (also issued separately as a reference pamphlet), followed by a record of the literature of descriptive bibliography.

G. Thomas Tanselle, former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and adjunct professor of English at Columbia University, has served as president of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Grolier Club, and the Society for Textual Scholarship.

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A Sample Bibliographical Description with Commentary, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

Price: $10.00
Size: 6.125 x 9.35
Pages: 40 pp.
ISBN: 9781883631208

This pamphlet reprints an appendix from G. Thomas Tanselle’s Descriptive Bibliography, published in 2020 by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia–an appendix that serves in two ways as a summary of the book. First, it brings together the basic definitions set forth in the volume, along with the examples of descriptive paragraphs (treating specific features of books) that were presented at various places in the text. Second, it provides an extended sample description, accompanied by a detailed commentary that offers practical advice and the underlying rationale regarding each element in the description. This booklet therefore stands on its own; but frequent cross-references identify pages in the book where fuller discussion of each point occurs, and readers can turn to those passages when they wish to have more information. The material republished in this form will be a convenient guide for students of descriptive bibliography as well as for those who write and read descriptive bibliographies.

G. Thomas Tanselle, former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and adjunct professor of English at Columbia University, has served as president of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Grolier Club, and the Society for Textual Scholarship.

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Paper and Type: Bibliographical Essays, by John Bidwell^

Price: $55.00
Size: 6″ x 9.25″
Pages: xiv, 383, includes 26 b&w illustrations and index
ISBN: 9781883631185

John Bidwell, Curatorial Chair and Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Morgan Library & Museum, has written essays, articles, and monographs on the history of printing and paper in England, France, and America. The essays collected here are mainly about book production in England and America during the Industrial Revolution. Some touch on topics earlier and later than this pivotal period, but they too tend toward the manufacturing sector and deal with the same tools of the trade—paper and type.

The first section on research methods surveys recent scholarship in paper history and contains recommendations for further study. Two essays advocate a greater emphasis on the business side of printing and publishing, a vantage point for viewing their inner workings and their peripheral connections with allied ventures in finance and technology. The interdependence of merchants and manufacturers and their aspirations, incentives, and constraints are recurring themes in this volume.

The essays in the second and third sections describe developments in the paper trade with special reference to the requirements of letterpress printing. In America paper mills first gained a foothold in the marketplace after printers and publishers rose up in their defense against the strictures of the Stamp Act and other British regulations. In England the Fourdrinier papermaking machine has been given credit for the formation of a mass-reading public, although its economic effects are not so easy to explain, and the Fourdriniers’ contributions to this invention are not as praiseworthy as previously supposed. Mechanization drove most of the vat mills out of business, yet several survived, and some even prospered while supplying handmades to fine printing establishments like the Oxford University Press. Several essays touch on the type designs of John Baskerville, whose neoclassical masterpiece, the Virgil of 1757, is a prime example of stylistic influences of printing on paper.

This volume concludes with two case studies, each tracing the history of a single publication. Both build on arguments made previously about the interdependence of the book trades. Both are based on an examination of multiple copies, one of the principal techniques in the repertoire of analytical bibliography. The empirical evidence of paper, type, bindings, and illustrations­ should take precedence in any attempt to learn about design decisions, marketing methods, and publication strategies.

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Books as a Way of Life, by Gordon N. Ray^

Price: $50
Size 6″ x 9.25″
Pages: 432 pp.
ISBN: 9781883631178
 

BAWL_djcoverGordon N. Ray (1915-1986), professor of English at the University of Illinois from 1946 to 1960 and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 1963 to 1985, was one of the major book and manuscript collectors of his time.  His two great Morgan Library catalogues, on English and French book illustration, are monuments both to his collecting and to his scholarship.  Over the years he wrote a number of essays and addresses on book collecting, the book trade, libraries, and the role of books in life.  Some of them have become famous, while others are not well known; all are perceptive and eloquent statements, full of literary allusions and touches of humor.  Books as a Way of Life brings together virtually everything of this kind that he wrote; the result is an appealing and important book that has come to be regarded as a classic contribution to the literature of the book world.

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Portraits & Reviews, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

P&R cover

Price: $55
Size: 6″ x 9.25″
Pages: 500  pp.
ISBN: 9781883631161
 

This volume brings together a selection of the biographical sketches and reviews that G. Thomas Tanselle has written since 1959.  These two genres of writing focus on individuals; taken together they show how a biographical approach can serve to characterize a whole field–in this case, the world of books and bibliographical and textual scholarship.  Because the pieces gathered here deal with major figures and landmark works, along with representative (if less famous) ones, covering the wide spectrum of bibliography, the collection provides a picture of what was going on in the scholarly book world of the past half-century.

The twenty-eight portraits comprise accounts of, or tributes to, collectors, booksellers, librarians, scholarly editors, publishers, bibliographical scholars, literary and historical scholars, and authors.  Figures represented by substantial essays are Fredson Bowers, John Carter, Floyd Dell, Nancy Hale, Harrison Horblit, Vera Lawrence, Ruth Mortimer, and Gordon Ray; among the other people commented on are Harrison Hayford, Mary Hyde, Alfred Kazin, William Matheson, William Scheide, and Carl Woodring.

The “Reviews” section consists of forty-two pieces, mostly book reviews but also including some responses to essays, introductions to anthologies, and retrospective assessments.  There are discussions of bibliographical classics by Fredson Bowers, Philip Gaskell, D. F. McKenzie, Paul Needham, Allan Stevenson, and David Vander Meulen, as well as of titles by other major scholars, such as Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, Anthony Grafton, and David McKitterick.  Also treated are books by William A. Jackson, Larry McMurtry, and Nicholson Baker, plus several bibliographies, bibliographical reference works, books on book collecting, and scholarly editions.  Other items involve bookcloth, Blake’s printmaking, textual theory, book preservation, and the antiquarian book trade.

The pieces in both sections of the book sometimes have an autobiographical element, for the author has known many of the people whose lives and works are taken up here.

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Where Angels Fear to Tread, by David Vander Meulen^

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Price: $10
Size: 6″ x 9″
Pages: 27 pp.
ISBN: 9781883631154

David L. Vander Meulen’s Where Angels Fear to Tread: Descriptive Bibliography and Alexander Pope has come to be regarded as a classic statement of the purposes and methods of descriptive bibliography. Initially presented as the 1987 Engelhard Lecture and subsequently published by the Library of Congress, Where Angels Fear to Tread is now published in a new edition with an introduction by G. Thomas Tanselle, president of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.

Vander Meulen recounts the series of decisions that are involved in creating a descriptive bibliography. There is no clearer account of that process, or one more likely to promote sympathetic understanding of the field. In doing so, Vander Meulen’s Engelhard Lecture displays the human side of scholarship and clarifies the essential place of bibliography in the humanities.

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Essays in Bibliographical History, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

EBH-djcover

Price: $40.0
Size: 9.25″ x 6″
Pages: 546 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-883631-14-7

The history of every field of scholarly inquiry is a part of intellectual and cultural history, and the essays gathered here attempt to illustrate that point, from a variety of angles, in relation to bibliographical scholarship. In the first section, there are six broad retrospective pieces, surveying bibliographical history from the vantage point of several institutional anniversaries: the seventy-fifth and hundredth birthdays of the Bibliographical Society of America, the hundredth of the Grolier Club and the Bibliographical Society (London), and the fiftieth of the Osler Library and The Book Collector. The wide purview of these pieces provides the context for the sixteen essays in the second section, each of which is more narrowly focused.

Two of them deal with individual periodicals (Studies in Bibliography and the Bibliographical Society’s News Sheet) and two with the development of descriptive bibliographies (of American authors and eighteenth-century books). Other essays cover the writing of publishing history, the theorizing about the scientific nature of bibliography, the recording of copyrighted books, the indexing of bibliographical periodicals, and the preserving of booksellers’ catalogues. One takes up the production of a major reference work (the ESTC), and another the role of a single locality (Indianapolis) in book history. The Grolier Club is the subject of two contrasting styles of history: a journalistic account of current events (the Club’s centenary festivities) and a retrospective investigation of a bibliographical activity (the mounting of exhibitions as practiced at the Club). The fiftieth anniversary of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia also receives journalistic treatment. Textual criticism and scholarly editing have a place here because they are so intimately tied to the study of the physical objects that transmit texts. The two essays on textual matters explore, first, the traditions of scholarly editing and, second, how those traditions have been applied or misapplied to visual and aural works. A final essay, serving as an epilogue to the volume, discusses bibliographical history as a field, defining it, surveying previous work to build on, and suggesting the value of producing more such work.

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Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

(First printing sold out. Second printing now available.)

Price: $60.00
Size: 9.25″ x 6″
Pages: 324 pp. (includes 16 color and 8 black and white illustrations and indexes)
ISBN: 978-1-883631-13-0

This illustrated book is intended as a compact introduction to the historical study of book-jackets (or dust-jackets), which—though removable from the books they cover—are essential parts of those books as published. It is a history both of publishers’ detachable book coverings (primarily British and American) and of the attention they have received from scholars, dealers, collectors, and librarians. It also surveys their use by publishers (as protective devices and advertising media) and their usefulness to scholars of literature, art, and book history (as sources for biography, bibliography, cultural analysis, and the development of graphic design). In effect, the book constitutes a plea for the preservation and cataloguing of this significant class of material, so that it will be available for future examination.

Following the text is a list of some of the surviving pre-1901 examples of British and American publishers’ printed book-jackets and other detachable coverings. This list, with 1,888 entries, is the outgrowth of a process the author began in 1969: he has kept a record of every pre-1901 jacket that he came across or learned about. Because surviving jackets from the nineteenth century are scarce, and because the large majority of those that do survive are known in only a single copy, it is important to have a listing that indicates their whereabouts, or at least the basis for knowing that they exist or once existed. The list thus provides a guide to the body of evidence on which generalizations about the history of nineteenth-century jackets must be based, until more examples are reported.

G. Thomas Tanselle, former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and adjunct professor of English at Columbia University, is president of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia and co-editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of the writings of Herman Melville. He has previously served as president of the Bibliographical Society of America, the Grolier Club, and the Society for Textual Scholarship. His collection of American imprints is in the Beinecke Library at Yale, where his assemblage of nineteenth-century book-jackets will soon be placed as well.

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The Art Deco Book in France
The 1985 Lyell Lectures, by Gordon N. Ray
^

Edited by G. Thomas Tanselle

Price: $50.00
Size: 9.5″ x 6″
Pages: 159 pp. (includes 8 color illustrations and indexes)
ISBN: 978-1-883631-12-3

Five lectures that survey in magisterial detail the Art Deco livres d’art of the 1920s. The opening lecture describes the relation of French Art Deco books to livres d’art in general and the anticipations of Art Deco illustration during the 1910s in design, fashion, and theatre publications and the work of Robert Bonfils. The next three lectures are devoted to the major artist-illustrators George Barbier, François-Louis Schmied, and Jean-Émile Laboureur. The final lecture examines the design, materials, and techniques of Art Deco bookbinding, focusing on the bindings of Rose Adler and Pierre Legrain.

With a thorough knowledge of French literature and a style that is authoritative, perceptive, witty, and elegant, Ray has written a compact and reliable survey that will have a secure place in the future study of the Art Deco book in France.

The book includes eight color illustrations and side-notes to an additional 165 illustrations available on the website of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.

From Gordon Ray’s Introduction to Lecture 1: “The Livre D’art of the 1920s”:

I propose to limit my account of the Art Deco book in France to the 1920s, or at least to the years 1919 to 1930. This decade was its heyday, the years which saw the appearance of most of the best work of its representative masters. Moreover, the period saw the reemergence of the livre d’art, as the fine illustrated book for collectors was then called, on a quite unprecedented scale. This crescendo of production led to notable achievements as well as deplorable follies and concluded with a catastrophic debacle. I shall thus be dealing with a self-contained episode in the history of book collecting, an episode which embodies some of the elements of high drama.

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H. D. (Hilda Doolittle): A Bibliography, by Michael Boughn^

First edition. The only full edition bibliography of the modernist poet Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961). Includes H.D.’s books, pamphlets, contributions to books and pamphlets, periodical appearances, translations, musical settings, recordings, and ephemera. A second section contains reviews of H.D.’s works and references to her life and work in books, periodicals, dissertations, theses, newspapers, published letters, and miscellaneous materials.

1993, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 238 pages
ISBN 0-8139-1412-4 / Order No. 53833-UVA / Price $39.50
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Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing, by Fredson Bowers^

First edition, second printing. With a foreward by Irby B. Cauthen, Jr. and a “Note to the Second Printing.” Major sections in this important book are The Bibliographical Way, Descriptive Bibliography, Analytical Bibliography, Textual Criticism and Editing, and a checklist of Bowers’s writings to 1976.

2003, hardcover, 6×9 inches, 550 pages
ISBN 1-883631-08-4 / Order No. 74161 / Price $70.00
To order this book, email BSUVA Secretary at bibsoc@virginia.edu

Supplement to Charles Evans’ American Bibliography
with Index to Supplement to Evans’ American Bibliography, by Roger P. Bristol
^

First editions of both titles. Bristol has added 11,200 entries to the original edition of Evans. He covers the period 1639 through 1800. Necessary complement to the original work.

1970, 1971, hardcover, 6 x 11 inches, two volumes, 846 pages
ISBN 0-8139-0287-8 / Order No. 53836-UVA / Price $70.00
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A Preliminary Handlist of Books to which Dr. Samuel Johnson Subscribed, by Donald Eddy and J. D. Fleeman^

Reprinted, with corrections and additions, from Studies in Bibliography. Sixty-nine books identified to which Johnson subscribed.

1993, paperback, 6 x 9 inches, 34 pages
ISBN 1-883631-01-7 / Order No.53831-UVA /Price $10.00
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Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the 17th Century (Macbeth), ed. by G. Blakemore Evans^

Vol V. Part i–Introduction to the Smock Alley Macbeth, and Part ii–Text of the Smock Alley Macbeth. Two volumes enclosed in a slipcase. From the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. Contains partial text illustrations, an introduction, 21-page facsimile, and collations.

1970, paperback in slipcase, 9 x 12 inches, illust., 65 pages
ISBN 0-8139-0301-7 / Order No: 53839-UVA / Price $50.00
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Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the 17th Century (Othello), ed. by G. Blakemore Evans

Vol VI. Part i–Introduction to the Smock Alley Othello, and Part ii–Text of the Smock Alley Othello. Two volumes bound in one. From the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. Contains partial text illustrations, an introduction, 23-page facsimile, and collations.

1980, hardcover, 9 x 12 inches, illustrated, 64 pages
ISBN 0-8139-0831-0 / Order No: 53840-UVA / Price $50.00
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Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburh: A Bibliography, by Donald K. Fry^

First edition. This remarkable bibliography includes references to all known texts, works of criticism, articles, and reviews of Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburh through 1967. Over 2,250 entries.

1969, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 242 pages
ISBN 0-8139-0268-1 / Order No.53820-UVA / Price $25.00
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Victor Hammer: Calligrapher, Punch-Cutter & Printer, by Joseph Graves^

A warm biographical sketch of a noted calligrapher and private pressman by a close friend.

1954, self paper wrappers, 5 x 7 inches, 12 pages
Order No. 53911-V4/Price $7.50
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Fielding’s Library: An Annotated Catalogue, by Frederick G. Ribble and Anne G. Ribble^

First edition. A catalogue and analysis of Henry Fielding’s library as a means to understanding the development of his thought and art. Includes detailed annotations on the abbreviated entries in the 1755 auction catalogue, a full listing of Fielding’s references to authors, editors, and commentators, a copious general index, and an index to printers, publishers, and booksellers listed. With a facsimile of the 1755 library catalogue.

“Not only bibliographers or biographers but all serious readers of Fielding’s novels have reason to be grateful to the Ribbles for this catalogue.”
Bertrand Goldgar, Eighteenth-Century Fiction

1996, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 520 pages
ISBN 1-883631-04-1 / Order No. 53824-UVA / Price $30.00

To order this book, email BSUVA Secretary at bibsoc@virginia.edu

The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

Foreword by David L. Vander Meulen
Checklist and Chronology by Martin C. Battestin

First edition. Widely acclaimed account of the remarkable career of Fredson Bowers, whose life (1905-1991) spanned the 20th century and who came to symbolize the fields of analytical and descriptive bibliography, textual criticism, and scholarly editing.

“G. Thomas Tanselle’s highly readable biography of Fredson Bowers traces not only a life but a discipline, textual criticism.”
Thomas L. Berger, Yearbook of English Studies

“. . . a model ‘academic’ biography.”
Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

2003 second printing, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 210 pages
ISBN 1-883631-10-6 / Order No: 53830-UVA / Price $50.00
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Literature and Artifacts, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

This scholarly work contains fifteen essays exploring the interconnections between verbal works and the physical objects (primarily manuscripts and printed books) that transmit them. Divided into five groups with such chapters as “Libraries, Museums, and Reading,” “The Latest Forms of Book Burning,” “A Description of Descriptive Bibliography,” “Books, Canons, and the Nature of Dispute,” and “Printing History and Other History.”

“. . . Tanselle puts forward a powerful case, one that too often goes unexpressed and one that will affect every reader in the future.”
David McKitterick, Times Literary Supplement

“. . . should be read by anyone contemplating the use of books as historical evidence.”
Robin Alston,SHARP News

1998, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 372 pages
ISBN 1 883631 06 8 / Order No. 53838 UVA / Price $60.00
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Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

First edition, third printing. Eight excellent essays on the discipline and art of textual criticism and scholarly editing by the preeminent scholar G. Thomas Tanselle. Many of these essays have played a role in ongoing debates, and some of them—such as “The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention” and “The Editing of Historical Documents”—have become points of reference in the field.

2003 third printing,hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 353 pages
ISBN 1-883631-09-2 / Order No.53816-UVA / Price $60.00
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Textual Criticism since Greg: A Chronicle 1950-2000, by G. Thomas Tanselle^

The past half century has been one of the most active and provocative periods in the long history of textual criticism. In this series of six critical essays that survey theoretical writings in the field since 1950, the eminent textual scholar G. Thomas Tanselle chronicles a significant moment in intellectual history and offers a guide for thinking through the basic issues of textual criticism and scholarly editing.

Comments on the early essays in this volume:

“The pieces collected here provide readers with the only comprehensive history of modern textual editing available. . . . These essays have not only described the field, they have helped to define it by giving editors a standard of lucidity and cogency against which to measure their own work; they are indispensable for those who teach and study scholarly editing, and will enlighten anyone interested in knowing how and why editorial work is done.”

Elizabeth Hall Witherell
Editor-in-Chief, The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau

“These are the most reliable and readily available surveys of developments in this scholarly field. . . . Each essay provides the reader with a full and secure survey of the important theory and practice of textual editing during the period covered. It also makes clear the logical and practical strengths and weaknesses of what has been published and proposed. . . . Almost uniquely among textual scholars, Tanselle persuades by dealing fairly, open-mindedly, and yet rigorously with the variety of competing doctrines and practices that characterize the frequently partisan debate of the past decades. This collection provides both a shrewd evaluation and a brilliant example of serious thinking about textual scholarship.”

Don L. Cook
Indiana University

2005, hardcover, 9.5″x 6″, 373 pages
ISBN: 1-883631-11-4 / Price $60.
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The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia: The First Fifty Years, ed. by David L. Vander Meulen^

First edition. With a history of the Society by David Vander Meulen and a complete checklist of the Society’s publications, also by Vander Meulen; a history of Studies in Bibliography by G. Thomas Tanselle; and an author index to the first fifty volumes of Studies by David L. Gants and Elizabeth K. Lynch. Also contains William Todd’s entertaining and informative anniversary address.

“No bibliographer now active should neglect this book where the history is larger than the biography of any one individual that contributed to it.”
T. H. Howard-Hill, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America

1998, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 282 pages
ISBN 1 883631 07 6 / Order No.53815 UVA / Price $60.00
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Pope’s Dunciad of 1728: A History and Facsimile, by David L. Vander Meulen^

First edition. A comprehensive account of the composition and production of the first edition of Pope’s Dunciad, accompanied by a photofacsimile of a copy recording Pope’s original manuscript readings. The appendices identify hundreds of textual changes Pope introduced in the later 1728 printings and record the names with which pirate printers filled Pope’s blanks. Award-winning design by Warren Chappell.

“The value of this volume extends beyond Pope and informs larger concerns–the creative process, the relationships of author, text, reader. . . . This handsomely printed, scrupulously reasoned book is a valuable contribution of our understanding of Pope. . . .”
John Middendorf, TEXT

“The book abounds with good things. . . . This is a book which is going to remain in use for a very long time.”
Michael Treadwell, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada

1991, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 191 pages
ISBN 0-8139-1268-7 / Order No.53823-UVA / Price $40.00
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Samuel Johnson’s Translation of Sallust: A Facsimile and Transcription of the Hyde Manuscript, ed. by David L. Vander Meulen and G. Thomas Tanselle^

Limited to 750 copies, printed by the Stinehour Press. A facsimile and transcription of the surviving portion of Johnson’s 1783 translation of Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline. This is the first publication of Johnson’s manuscript.

“. . . another fine example of the work of the Stinehour Press, of the resources of the Hyde Collection, and of the diligence of scholarly inquiry.”
J.D. Fleeman, The Library

1993, paperback, 9 x 11 inches, 48 pages
ISBN 1-883631-02-5 / Order No. 53832-UVA / Price $25.00
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Peter Taylor: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1934-87, by Stuart Wright^

First edition. This work describes all the works of this Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and short story writer including appearances in periodicals, interviews, and published quotes and comments.

1988, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, 240 pages
ISBN 0-8139-1168-0 / Order No.53827-UVA / Price $40.00
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Ordering Information

Oak Knoll Press of New Castle, Delaware is the distributor of our print publications. Orders may be placed electronically at the Oak Knoll Press website (www.oakknoll.com) or by mail or phone to:

Oak Knoll Books
310 Delaware Street
New Castle, DE 19720
Phone 1-800-996-2556 / Fax (302) 328-7274
Email: oakknoll@oakknoll.com

BSUVa members who identify themselves at the time of ordering will receive a 10% discount on the price of Society publications.