{"id":2760,"date":"2023-06-26T13:45:12","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=2760"},"modified":"2025-09-21T17:37:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T21:37:14","slug":"g-thomas-tanselle-descriptive-bibliography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2023\/06\/26\/g-thomas-tanselle-descriptive-bibliography\/","title":{"rendered":"G. Thomas Tanselle, Descriptive Bibliography<\/em>."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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G. Thomas Tanselle, Descriptive Bibliography<\/em>.<\/h1>\n\n
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Jocelyn Hargrave<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a>, <\/span>Reviews<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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G. Thomas Tanselle, <\/strong>Descriptive Bibliography<\/em>.<\/strong> Charlottesville: The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 2020. 609 pp + reprint of <\/strong>A Sample of Bibliographical Description with Commentary<\/em><\/strong>, ISBN: 978-1883631192, US$60.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Descriptive Bibliography <\/em>embodies G. Thomas Tanselle\u2019s lifelong dedication and significant, enviable contributions to the discipline; and its content amounts to a cornucopia of bibliographical delights for those seeking to learn, reinforce or revisit what descriptive bibliography is and its \u201crole as history and biography\u201d (page 28), such as from aspiring higher-degree students, early- to mid-career scholars, to researchers from adjacent disciplines, such as library cataloguing, whose work exists tangentially to, or intermixes with, that of bibliographers. The book\u2019s objective to \u201coffer a comprehensive guide to descriptive bibliography\u201d (page ix), though limited to printed books, is without doubt (and, given the author, predictably) achieved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Tanselle implicitly celebrates his forty-year bibliographical scholarship with this publication, he acknowledges in his preface Fredson Bowers\u2019s Principles of Bibliographical Description <\/em>(1949) as the \u201cfullest previous treatment\u201d of descriptive bibliography and that his collection of essays is not just a replacement but also a companion to Bowers\u2019s Principles<\/em> (page ix). Where Tanselle departs from Bowers is his \u201crethinking and redefinition\u201d of basic concepts such as ideal copy<\/em>, and provision of a \u201csimpler and more logical system for noting inserted leaves in collation formulas\u201d and \u201cmore detailed suggestions for describing paper, type, non-letterpress material, and publishers\u2019 bindings\u201d; furthermore, Tanselle organises his discussion according to principles and practices relevant to all periods of book production, rather than Bowers\u2019s temporal segregation according to the fifteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth\u2013twentieth centuries (page x). Besides the preliminaries (preface) and end matter (appendix and index), Tanselle\u2019s Descriptive Bibliography<\/em> is divided into two sections comprising essays previously published in bibliographical journals from 1966 to 2006; these sections are thematically, not chronologically, arranged and all essays conclude with postscripts. The first section includes five essays \u201con general topics\u201d: \u201cA Description of Descriptive Bibliography\u201d (1992); \u201cDescriptive Bibliography and Library Cataloguing\u201d (1977); \u201cIdeal Copy\u201d (1980); \u201cEdition, Impression, Issue, and State\u201d (1975); \u201cTolerances\u201d (1968). The second section features eight essays and is more bibliographically specific, addressing components of physical books and their production: \u201cTranscription and Collation\u201d (1985); \u201cFormat\u201d (2000); \u201cPaper\u201d (1971); \u201cTypography and Layout\u201d (1966); \u201cTypesetting and Presswork\u201d (1999); \u201cNon-Letterpress Material\u201d (1982); \u201cPublishers\u2019 Bindings, Endpapers, and Jackets\u201d (1967\u20132006); and \u201cArrangement\u201d (1984). Included in the appendix are a sample bibliography description with commentary (also supplied as hard-copy reprint) and a comprehensive bibliography of literature of descriptive bibliography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tanselle declares in his preface that his republished essays \u201cdo not call for revision, in the sense that [he still believes] in the approach and suggestions expressed in each one\u201d and therefore that his essays are presented \u201cin unrevised form, except for some corrections and stylistic alterations\u201d (page x). However, he acknowledges that much scholarship has been published since his essays\u2019 publication and that \u201cknowledge of that work would usefully supplement [his] essays\u201d (page x\u2013xi). This is where Tanselle\u2019s postscripts come into play as each enumerates and critiques the subsequent scholarship; they also afford a means to extend his previous work and\/or engage further with both the topic concerned and contemporary debate. He writes: \u201c[sometimes] I have to disagree with points that have been made since my essays were written, and at other times I am glad to welcome ideas that are valuable additions to what I wrote\u201d (page xi). I admit I was initially disconcerted by Tanselle\u2019s avowal that his essays did not require revision as many were published forty years ago and, as his postscripts reveal, significant scholarship has been conducted since. Nevertheless, I appreciate how each of Tanselle\u2019s essays also function as a textual artefact that forms a vital part of an ongoing history of, and dialogue about, descriptive bibliography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers are informed in the preface that Tanselle\u2019s postscripts were originally published as \u201cNotes on Recent Work in Descriptive Bibliography\u201d in Studies in Bibliography<\/em> in 2018. These notes have been \u201conly slightly altered\u201d for this collection to allow for supplementary commentary. Tanselle uses the postscript forum effectively. As aforementioned, subsequent notable scholarship is listed and variously assessed, reinforcing readers\u2019 understanding of Tanselle\u2019s intimacy with the subject matter. However, this critique could often be perceived to result in, or indeed embody, a verbal stoush that invites response, albeit perhaps a rhetorical one. In \u201cDescription of Bibliography: Postscript\u201d, for example, his assessment of The Oxford Companion to the Book <\/em>(2010) <\/em>edited by Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen and The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book <\/em>(2015) edited by Leslie Howsam appears deliberately divisive: \u201cOne might expect that the Oxford and Cambridge \u2018companions\u2019 to book history would offer dependable brief introductions to descriptive bibliography, but this is unfortunately not the case\u201d (page 30). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tanselle appears consistently more favourable of certain scholars, such as Brian J. McMullin, whose \u201cSome Notes on Paper and Format\u201d, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin<\/em>, 28.4 (2004) received the following compliment: \u201cHe summarizes my arguments and gives several illustrative examples, and I appreciate his careful consideration of the points I made \u2026 His discussion does not require any modification in my essay, but readers will benefit from following his line of thinking about specific books\u201d (\u201cFormat: Postscript\u201d, page 256). Tanselle also, as previously mentioned, extends his previous work and further engages with the topic concerned and contemporary debate. This extension and engagement are demonstrated excellently in \u201cPaper: Postscript\u201d (page 291\u2013301) and \u201cBindings: Patterns, Postscript\u201d (page 462\u2013473). For the latter, for example, Tanselle elaborates on cloth grains and marbled papers, images of which featured in his original essay, and identifies critical resources, such as databases, that would benefit contemporary researchers, namely \u201cPublishers\u2019 Bindings Online 1815\u20131930: The Art of Books\u201d through the University of Alabama Library and the University of Wisconsin\u2014Madison Library, and the British Library\u2019s \u201cDatabase of Bookbindings\u201d (page 466).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a devotee of Tanselle, who benefited from, relied on and cited his contributions in my doctorate, I felt privileged to review Descriptive Bibliography<\/em>. This \u201ccomprehensive guide\u201d is undeniably a cornucopia of bibliographical delights for all readers, no matter where in their academic journeys they reside and their knowledge and practice of descriptive bibliography. However, given the forty-year publication history, I believe that this compendium, namely the postscripts, could have been strengthened by Tanselle including present-day critical reflections about his essays as textual artefacts: where and how they, and indeed himself, reside in historical and contemporary critical debate since their first iteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jocelyn Hargrave, University of Derby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Descriptive Bibliography embodies G. Thomas Tanselle\u2019s lifelong dedication and significant, enviable contributions to the discipline; and its content amounts to a cornucopia of bibliographical delights for those seeking to learn, reinforce or revisit what descriptive bibliography is and its \u201crole as history and biography\u201d (page 28), such as from aspiring higher-degree students, early- to mid-career scholars, to researchers from adjacent disciplines, such as library cataloguing, whose work exists tangentially to, or intermixes with, that of bibliographers. The book\u2019s objective to \u201coffer a comprehensive guide to descriptive bibliography\u201d (page ix), though limited to printed books, is without doubt (and, given the author, predictably) achieved.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888,1887],"tags":[1905,1950,1953],"class_list":["post-2760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-reviews","tag-bibliography","tag-print-culture","tag-publishing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2760"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5642,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions\/5642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}