A Student's Manual of Bibliography
A Student's Manual of Bibliography. By Arundell Esdaile. (Allen and Unwin, and the Library Association. 12s. 6d.)
Mn. ESDAILE'S work, and Dr. McKerrow's Introduction to Bibliography, have put us on a level in this subject, so far as text-books are concerned, with any other country : even Germany, where Dr. Milkau's great work, received too late to be included in Mr. Esdaile's list of books, is a recent event of great importance. This is as it should be : scientific bibliography, on the " natural history method," was inaug- urated in England, by the Cambridge Librarian Henry Bradshaw, though I am not quite sure whether Mr. Esdaile is right in ascribing his great results to a conscious adaptation of Darwinism. It is rather that the same spirit was fermenting and inducing new methods in many different branches of knowledge.
Mr. Esdaile treats his delightful subject in a duly systematic manner. After a general introduction to the subject he deals first with the material of books (papyrus, vellum, paper) ; printing and " book-building " (this is a particularly good chapter, taking in order the component elements of a book) ; landmarks in the history of printing and publishing, including type-faces ; illustration ; binding. Then he tells us how to collate and describe books, dealing tenderly with the many pitfalls in both operations ; and ends with a most attractive list of bibliographies, analytically arranged, but with each entry accompanied by a running comment, which makes easy and pleasant reading of what would otherwise be a dry-bones enumeration.
Mr. Esdaile's advice to tyros is almost entirely sound, and on no major question have I any quarrel with him. When signifying aids to " difficulties in dating, owing to variations of calendars, etc." (p. 227), he might have added, to the works of Cappelli and Sir H. Nicolas Bond's Hand-Book edited by Selby in 1887, and the more accessible Augustus de Morgan's Book of Almanacks (third edition by Worman, 1907); and a foot-note to p. 90 should either have explained " tipping- in " or referred forward to its explanation on p. 183 ; on p. 281 Book Auction Records might have been mentioned alongside of Book Prices Current. I do not think that (p. 117) he would have said that the first really good printing in the Low Countries was done by Plantin (in the middle of the sixteenth century) if he had thought of the early Bruges printers Colard Mansion and the less known Johannes Brito of Pipriac : and the translation of Patavium (p. 246) by Passau, as well as Padua, is a mistake : Passau is Patavia, as he could have seen by the colophon of the British Museum copy of Eusebius de morte Hieronymi, printed there by Benedict Mayr on July 26th, 1482.
These are very small affairs. Mr. Esdaile has produced a readable, workmanlike handbook, which does credit both to himself, to the British Museum where he has learned his art, and to this country which, as I said at the beginning of this notice, has been the pioneer in these studies. I don't see how any library, book-seller or individual collector can afford to be without it, well printed and handsomely illustrated as it is, and sold at a very moderate price. S. GASELEE.
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