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BookTalk
for Editors, Scholars, and Researchers
Early-modern English Printed Books:
A Check-List, with Sources
________
Compiled by Maureen E. Mulvihill, Princeton Research Forum, New Jersey,
<mulvihill@bway.net>
and
Contributing Editor, The Early Modern Englishwoman Series (Scolar/Ashgate)
Introductory Note
BookTalk is a check-list of bibliophilic matters which I initiated for my editorial colleagues of The Early Modern Englishwoman series (Scolar/Ashgate), Robert C. Evans, Coordinating Editor, and Betty Travitsky & Patrick Colborn Cullen, Series Editors. I was delighted when Bob Evans generously selected BookTalk for inclusion in his popular 'LitPage' website. BookTalk brings attention to matters which I consider essential to responsible scholarly editing and book research. I was introduced to many of these issues in the 1980s, in intensive seminars at Columbia University's Rare Book School and at The Yale Center for British Art.
- Collational Formula Most editions include a description of the physical organization of the subject book. The collational formula (so called) identifies format, signatures, and leaves; e.g., "8vo A-L8M4." See Ronald B. McKerrow, Introduction to Bibliography (1928) and Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949). You also may wish to mention other physical properties of your book, such as binding, paper stock, chainlines, watermark, and irregularities or errors in catchwords and pagination.
- Frontispiece Author Portrait and Other Portraits of your Author If your book includes a frontis, it would be helpful if you could identify the painter and/or engraver, as well as the (approximate) date of the portrait. Information on other portraits of your author also would be desirable. You may wish to remark on the frontis's style of portraiture. For example, William Marshall's Bathsua Makin, with its rich iconography, is a classic image of the woman writer as learned lady. Mary Beale's Aphra Behn transmits far different aspects of Behn's character than Sir Peter Lely's comparably prim formal portrait of Behn. Vander Gucht's Greco-Roman portrait-bust of Katherine Philips as "The English Sappho," engraved by Faithorne for Philips's Poems (1667), offers a classical image of the woman writer as cherished cultural icon. Lely's Philips, preserved at Knole, on the other hand, is a more naturalistic treatment of the poet. Portraits are valuable windows on cultural perception and, sometimes, the sitter's own self-perception. Consulting selected art history databases for relevant exhibitions of portraits of women writers may yield useful information.
- Decorative Properties of your Book (if applicable) You may wish to mention tailpieces, headpieces, a title-page printer's mark, or a decorative title-page device. Many book ornaments in l7thC English printed books were inspired by the designs of Christophe Van Dyck, one of several master designers of types and devices employed by the great House of Elzevier, a dynastic Dutch family of printers and publishers. See my bibliography, below.
- Provenance Bibliophiles are mad for provenance. A distinguished provenance (such as Alexander Pope's signed and annotated copy of Lord Rochester's poems, preserved in the NYPL Berg Collection) significantly appreciates the value of a book. Provenance identifies the ownership history (and, so, pedigree) of your copy or of other extant copies you may have examined on site or on microfilm. A book's provenance is established variously: ownership signature, ownership bookplate, ownership stamp, ownership coat-of-arms, etc. The usual statement of provenance identifies the surnames of those into whose hands your copy has passed over the centuries; e.g., "The Bridgewater-Verney-Stainforth-Chew-Huntington copy."
- Physical Marks When handled and examined with care, physical marks in books (or on shorter pieces, such as broadsides, essays, pamphlets, or tracts) provide valuable information. This area of bibliophilic investigation includes such things as ownership signatures, the name of a bookseller, dates, prices, annotations by various owners, manual cancels, a note about the author, etc. You may see, e.g., a prudish owner reacting to (or even sanitizing) a piece of printed text: entire words may be struck from the page or inked out, as in the poem "Maidenhead" in the Brotherton Collection copy of Female Poems...by Ephelia (1679), preserved at Leeds. This is not uncommon in Restoration poetry-books, where verse is sometimes risque, even obscene. Price notations are always valuable. A manual cancel or correction anywhere in a printed text is highly probative, as such physical marks require us to reconsider long-held assumptions and recorded facts about the book, its publication history, and its author. See Stoddard in my bibliography, below.
- Typography Types are relevant to textual dating & authentication. Depending on your project, you may wish to identify the type(s) used by your poet's printer. For printing practices and specimens, see my bibliography, below, and my discussion of typography as an empowering rhetoric in selected Restoration poetry (ECS [Winter, 1992-93]).
- Book Price The original price of your book may be written on a free or pasted-down endpaper or on the title-page. If your project includes a broadside poem, the price is likely to appear near the title. Narcissus Luttrell and also Elias Ashmole recorded both price and publication date on the books and broadsides they added to their respective collections. Entries in Edward Arber's Term Catalogues (1903-6) sometimes includes prices; e.g., "[book title and imprint], Easter-term, 1679. 1s." Arber's volumes are quarterly lists of new books and reprints issued by London booksellers.
- Market Value of your Book If yours is a "collected" author, you may wish to mention appreciating market value of your book over the centuries. (When was your author's work last on the antiquarian book market and what did it fetch as compared to its original price in the l7thC?) For auction records, see Bookman's Price Index. I have found auction houses to be hospitable to inquiries. Some houses preserve their own auction records on proprietary CD-ROMs, though going through printed vols of BPI yourself may net results.
- Subsequent Printings or New Editions of your Text When a book sees a second impression, it is likely to reflect changes in text, format, & physical properties. If it sees a new edition, there are likely to be many conspicuous changes. These are valuable opportunities to trace the evolution of your material from one printed state to a later one. You will need to identify substantive textual variants and any new matter (preface, frontis., commendatory poems, additional text) and excised matter. This close exercise in textual comparison can lead to valuable information about your author's literary development, fluctuating reading/market tastes, etc.
- Bookseller-Publisher & Printer of your Text These are important fields of bibliographical study and also essential subjects in responsible scholarly editing. The classic sources are Plomer's Dictionary (1907) and Morison's Index (1955). You may wish to consider your author's choice in bookseller-publisher; perhaps you can establish some link (perhaps a family connection or a political or feminist association). It is always instructive to identify the other writers and other kinds of writing with which your book's publisher and printer were associated.
- Your Book in the History of the English Printed Book Book history is an exciting emerging field. The newsletter of the Society for the History of Authorship, Readership, and Publishing (S.H.A.R.P.) is a mine of information on this subject, and it includes a biblio of recent publications per issue. Though every book is a unique cultural artifact, yours may bear some unusually remarkable properties. It is always useful to tell readers what your book actually looked like in its original state (first edition, first printing): format, boards, binding, spine copy, etc.
- Varia (musical settings) You may wish to identify settings of your author's work, if poetry. The classic source is Cyrus Day & Elaine Murrie, English Song-Books, 1651-1702 (1940), which surely needs an update if not a thorough overhaul by now. Going through the secular song-books published by John and Henry Playford, the premier music-publishing firm of l7th & l8thC England, is likely to be fruitful. An interesting new work, though a bit thin for 17thC books, is Women Making Music...1150-1950, a collection of fifteen essays edited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Illinois, 1987).
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A Bibliography of Selected Critical Sources for Scholarly Editors
& Book Researchers
(briefly cited)
Marks in Books, Illustrated and Explained by Roger Stoddard. Exhibition Catalogue, Houghton Library, Harvard U., 1985. 44pp., folio format, profusely illustrated from early printed books in Houghton's collection. Wonderfully informative, beautifully produced.
Provenance Research in Book History by David Pearson (1994). Review, TLS (5 Jan 96), David McKitterick.
Printers' & Publishers' Devices by Ronald B. McKerrow (1913, 1949). A classic source.
ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter (1952, 1987). The principal glossary of book terminology; includes some bibliographical sources.
Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-page in England by Margaret Corbett & R.W. Lightbown (1979). A classic source for the study of title-page iconography in early-modern English printed books.
Principles of Bibliographical Description by Fredson Bowers (1949). A standard source.
Encyclopedia of Paper-making by Labarre (1952). A standard source.
The Book Encompassed: Studies in 20thC Bibliography by Peter Davison (1992). Essays by McKitterick et al.
"Changes in the Style of Bookbinding, 1550-1830" by Graham Pollard, The Library (June 1956). Important essay.
Watermarks: See studies by Briquet, Churchill, Heawood, and Marmol; begin w/ Heawood's Watermarks (1950). These are the standard works on the subject.
Elzevier Book Ornaments: See illustrated catalogues of the firm's imprints and popular book ornaments compiled by Edouard Rahir (1896) and by Gustaf Schlegel Berghman (1911); see a also selected titles of Leona Rostenberg and of Madeleine B. Stern, and my essay in ANQ (Summer, 1999, 5 ills.).
Scholarly Editing -- Theory & Practice: See selected titles of W.W. Greg, Fredson Bowers, James Thorpe, D.F. McKenzie, G. Thomas Tanselle, David Greetham, David Vander Meulen, inter alia.
Typography: In addition to the work of James Mosley (St Bride's Printing Library, London), see Printing Types by Dan Berkeley (Harvard U.P., '62); Encyclopedia of Typefaces, ed.W. Pincus Jaspert (London, '53); and, for a stunning folio-format facsimile of the famous Elzevier types, Rahir's Elzevier (1896).
Antiquarian Book Trade: "Feminism & Rare-Book Markets" by M. Mulvihill, Scriblerian (Autumn, 1989), an illustrated essay on appreciating market values in Englishwomen writers, circa 1660-1725.
Multimedia Research: "Casting a Wider Net: The Multimedia Research Initiative" by M. Mulvihill, SECC 22 (1992). Includes an appendix of specialized sources, per medium, for Humanities research, circa 1660-1800 (databases, CD-ROMs, film/fiche collections, print materials).
Assembled by Maureen E. Mulvihill
mulvihill@bway.net
Posted on this Website with Permission
MEM:hd
9/98, 12/98, 10/99
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