Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2010
Summary
The chapters that follow were delivered, in slightly shorter form, as the Sandars Lectures at Cambridge University on May 12, 14, and 16, 1997. My aim in writing the lectures was to provide an introduction to the activity of bibliographical analysis – the examination of the physical characteristics of printed books, pamphlets, and broadsides – through a historical sketch of some of the principal events in the development of the field. Such a sketch raises the issues that analytical bibliographers have faced and describes the accomplishments they have achieved. It thus offers a rationale for pursuing this kind of work and a sense of the basic techniques to be employed in carrying the work out; and it supplies a point of view with which to approach the large body of writing in this area. The result – both the particular synthesis I am attempting here and the classified list of further reading that follows it – will, I hope, be useful to beginners and specialists alike.
The opening chapter, on the evolution of thinking about the theoretical foundations of the field, is followed by two chapters treating the two orientations that bibliographical analysis can take: an interest in reconstructing book-manufacturing processes from the clues present in books themselves, and a concern with recovering the historical meanings embedded in the design features of books.
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- Bibliographical AnalysisA Historical Introduction, pp. 1 - 5Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009