An Early Use of Running Title and Signature Evidence in Analytical Bibliography

Abstract

Analytical bibliography, long one of the scholarly roots of librarianship, is exemplified in its modern form by A. W. Pollard's landmark study, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, published in 1909 [1]. Before Pollard, others had studied paper and printed type in the course of investigations of printing itself, but he pioneered by using the facts derived from a study of printed books as a basis for inferences concerning the intellectual content of those volumes. Pollard's place as a pioneer is firmly established by the comprehensive and purposeful character of his work, which not only reached new conclusions about Shakespeare's text but also became a methodological model. In single instances, however, a few investigators had used the same methods before Pollard. It is peculiarly appropriate that one of those predecessors was a librarian. This paper describes the use, in a study published in 1867 [2], of signature marks and of a peculiarity of type in a running title as the basis for historical inference. Although there is no intention here to settle the important historical controversies involved, an adequate understanding of the bibliographical issue requires some knowledge of the background. The subject of the 1867 study is Edward Johnson's Wonder-working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England, originally published under a different title in London in 16531 [3]. Johnson's description of pioneer days in Massachusetts makes the work an essential document for all students of early New England history. By the middle of the nineteenth century copies were so scarce that the Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum, W. F. Poole, decided to prepare a near-facsimile edition accompanied by a new introduction. In the course of his investigation, he used the bibliographical evidence in ways that earn his work a modest place in the history of analytical bibliography. William Frederick Poole (1821-94) is best known today as the compiler of the first general index to periodicals. He was also a distinguished librarian, heading successively the Brothers in Unity Library of Yale College, the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, the Boston Athenaeum, the Cincinnati Public Library, the Chicago Public Library, and the Newberry Library. A leader of the group that founded the American Library Association at Philadelphia in 1876, Poole served as the Association's president from 1885 to 1887. He was also a scholar of considerable ability whose standing among historians earned him election to the presidency of the American Historical Association in 1887. His experience prepared him well for bibliographical study. In the course of publishing his index to periodicals, he learned the essentials of printing practices. Books were his stock-in-trade as a librarian. Particularly in his work at the scholarly Boston Athenaeum, he became