MARK BLAND, A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts.

Abstract

A number of well-known introductions to bibliography by eminent scholars were published in the past century, besides, in recent years, notable studies of early modern manuscript culture. Neither have these publications been free from some measure of disputation about particular aspects of the subject, such as editing practices and the choice of copy texts. While a definitive, infallible study of the subject is as much a chimera as any other contribution to literary and historical studies, it is only to be welcomed when a new, thoughtful, well-informed, and fairly succinct ‘guide’ to bibliography appears — especially when it covers both the fields of printing and manuscripts. Skating knowingly over the insights, theories, and contributions of Greg (whose dictum that all books become unique and that there are many stages through which they do so Bland heartily endorses), as well as McKerrow, Gaskell, Bowers, and various other bibliographers, especially Don McKenzie, Mark Bland's new book guides us through the familiar bibliographical terrain with considerable clarity. Among much else, and with individual chapters on ‘paper’, on the ‘structure of documents’ (which ‘shapes reading practices’, both printed and manuscript), and on other subjects, he draws our attention to the significance of differing typography, binding, and the various other physical characteristics of printed books (arguing that form affects both meaning and transmission), as well as commenting on the early modern book trade. He often cites useful examples and gives us a fair sprinkling of relevant illustrations, as well as an extensive and useful bibliography of ‘Selected Further Reading’ at the end. He makes the interesting point, for instance, that ‘Manuscripts depend on replication for survival; the printed book-trade depends on old books being worn out, on new fashions, and on older texts being packaged in new ways’. He stresses that ‘the production of manuscripts can be as varied, and the network of their connections as complex, as any printed text’. He stresses equally, of course, the importance of handling the original physical artefacts, in view of the obscuration of information that persists in microfilm and digital surrogates.