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In addition to historicizing, recording, and defining the nature of the twentieth century’s most significant textual and bibliographical achievements, this volume offers a useful introductory guide to bibliography and textual criticism and their scholarly evolution. Supplemented with expansive author, subject, and title indexes, the book provides annotated entries for more than 750 monographs and articles published during the twentieth century. These are grouped in topical chapters devoted to general bibliography and textual studies, analytical bibliography, descriptive bibliography, textual criticism, historical bibliography, and enumerative bibliography.
In tracing the history of twentieth-century bibliographical and textual criticism, this book surveys numerous issues and topics. These include the New Bibliography, computer and information technologies, the history and art of book collecting, the history of the book, the controversial publication of such texts as the Oxford Shakespeare and the Hans Walter Gabler edition of Ulysses, and the influence of literary theory and criticism on the contemporary direction of bibliographical and textual studies.
“Baker and Womack describe 769 of the ‘most significant textual and bibliographical’ studies (largely in English) published since 1900. Their book is arranged in sections for general bibliography and textual studies (principles, biographies, and essay collections); analytical bibliography (technical and physical considerations of production); descriptive bibliography (34 entries on the act of description); textual criticism (225 entries on editorial theory and explanations of transmission and variation); historical bibliography (printing and book trade history and book collecting); and enumerative bibliography (including examples of reference bibliographies and introductions to compiling bibliographies). At the core of the selection are studies that reflect the rise, development, and redefinition of ‘New Bibliography’—i.e., W.W. Greg, R.B. McKerrow, Fredson Bowers, Charlton Hinman, G. Thomas Tanselle, Jerome McGann, and their disciples and critics.”—James K. Bracken, Ohio State University