Florence Margaret Paisey McKenzie, D. F. The History of the Book. The Book Encompassed. Ed. Peter Davison.

New Castle: Oak Knoll, 1992. 290-301.

Annotation D. F. McKenzie closes his essay on the History of the Book, stating that, The book and its history will become something more than the history of the book (301). Getting to that point involves digging through a thicket of bibliographical history. At the start, McKenzie details a dense description of the history of bibliography and the Bibliographical Society in England; then, he charts the development of bibliography through the mid-twentieth century when the seeds for the new bibliography took root. At this point, during the latter part of the twentieth century, McKenzie points out that bibliography opened to a change or sensitivity in perception. This resulted in archival studies that documented the conditions and all processes and transactions involved in a texts production, dispersal, and reception. These studies proliferated with the aim of reconstructing the events that brought a text or book into being. This was the new bibliography that took into account a books sociological context and narrative. From McKenzies perspective the book is an unstable physical form in its descent through successive versions. Tracing the archival evidence relating to these versions and documents offers embedded ubiquitous evidence (297). He views this evidence as invaluable in understanding the conditions under which texts are generated and therefore understanding meanings and reading. I found this paper intense and chock full of bibliographical history. McKenzie addresses topics that embrace writing, replication, distribution and reception of texts

along with the description, collection, and classification of them. In addition to this range of topics, McKenzie includes studies of the materials, technologies, and processes involved with making, trading, and storing texts. Each of these topics is emphasized to a greater or lesser degree in different periods or bibliographic eras. McKenzie charts bibliographic history by enumerating early pivotal events in the study of bibliography and book history, noting that the U.K.s Bibliographical Society has privileged the history of the book since its inception in 1912. The Society, launched by McKerrow, is the U.K.s foremost bibliographic association. Its publication, The Library, includes studies on all aspects of bibliography and the history of the book. Its members include academics, collectors, librarians, and working members of the book trades with a mission to demonstrate the unity of all bibliographic enterprise and the means by which it entered into the fabric of all historical enquiry (292). Three basic bibliographic periods dominate this paperearly, transitional, and new. The early period identifies those scholars who were instrumental in establishing the discipline of bibliography and the Society. Some of the earliest bibliographic studies that opened the field to contextual evidence include: Arbers A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640 Duffs Century of the English Book Trade Dictionaries of printers and booksellers with peripheral constituents of the book trade by Plomber et al. Gregs, Boswells and Jacksons studies of the records of the Stationers Company

3 McKerrows text, Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students linked bibliography to literary studies McKerrows launch of the journal, The Library U.K.s pre-eminent journal for the study of bibliography and role of the book in history and the history of ideas During the Societys initial fifty years, its activities reflected two dominate concerns

establishing a record of printed books to 1649 and how the most prominent texts in the U.K. were transmitted from manuscript to print. These concerns entailed a history of the documents and their chronological connections. This did not involve the historical role of the book during the early years of bibliography. R. B. McKerrow, W. W. Greg, and A. W. Pollard focused on applying skills that could reveal and trace the evidence and relations between prominent or classic U. K. texts. For the historical role of books, McKenzie refers to a group of bibliographers including John Johnson, printer to the University of Oxford; Stanley Morison, typographer; Strickland Gibson and Pollard, book binding; and Theodore Besterman, a bibliographer and eminent biographer of Voltaire. These bibliographers produced a series of monographs recording histories of subjects in their respective interests. Seven texts were issued and provided documents that mapped the history of the book trade to 1830. While there was not an immediate upsurge of interest in the history of the book, these texts led to later, key publications Pollards Sandars Lectures and Morisons classic work on John Fell and the Fell types. Other works that contributed to the history of the book from 1930-1960 include: Morisons History of the Times

 Plants The English Book Trade: An Economic History of the Making and the Sale of Books Howes The London Compositor: Documents Relating to Wages, Workng Conditions and Customs of the London Printing Trade, 1785-1900 Bennetts English Books and Reader Blagdens history of the Stationers Company Stevensons The Problem of the Missale Speciale Alticks The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 Other works covered topics such as: Publishers and relations with authors House histories of printing firms Accounts of peripheral products of the press such as ballads, chapbooks, childrens books, maps, prints, and music As the Bibliographic Society developed, the interests of its members expanded and

sustained diverse scholarship centered on the historical study of the book trade in Britain from Caxton to the mid-twentieth century newspaper. The era up to 1700 covered books as objects, books as products of tradeby printer and publisher and the circumstances of their production. Foxons authoritative catalogue of English verse planted the seeds for a history of text production and, ultimately, Pollard and Redgraves Short Title Catalogue (STC). The STC served historical inquiry in several ways. It was (isas the ESTC) a chronological index that enabled study on the work of a specific author, printer, and bookseller as well as the inter-relationship of texts that may be printed in any one year.

5 Despite this rich start to the bibliographic enterprise, there was no scholarly text on the

history of the book. The conceptual structure for book history was not in placethe nearest sort of work was Pollards Cambridge History of English Literature. In this work and others, Pollard addressed fundamental issues of text production and evidence that had hitherto been examined. However, the emphasis lay on bibliographical issues, rather than on the development and dispersal of books and the technologies associated with their production and transmission. By the mid-twentieth century, bibliography in Britain and the United States was not characterized by general and comprehensive historical studies. There was more of a resistance to generality and abstraction (294). In contrast, the French bibliographers and historians, Febvre and Martin, published L Apparition du livre in 1958, a comprehensive and general history of the book. McKenzie regards the French direction in documenting a general, abstract history as involving a linguistic proclivity in Frenchthe book in French is an abstract noun; in English it refers to the object. So, while Febvre and Martins momentous book introduced the conceptual ground in general book history, McKenzie views British and American interest in book history from the perspective of acquiring a new perceptionthe relevance of book-trade archives (294). This perception raised questions about the use of books beyond analytical bibliography. Marginalia, printers, and unimportant texts became a focus of study. Minor texts (and all processes related to production) came into focus and spawned an array of topics related to texts that had been kept from the centers of power by reason of their sex, race, religion, provincial or colonial status (295). These issues related to cultural history and, in particular, any culture served by print and the complexity of its

reconstruction (295). Stanley Morison took up this cause and argued that the history and use of the intellect are bibliographical because their findings may deepen historical as well as bibliographical understanding. McKenzies paper is a rich, concise documentation of the major achievements and trajectory of English and American bibliography in the twentieth century. It is an essential, foundational paper in understanding the growth, changes, and aims of bibliography and book history as a discipline or disciplines.