Bibliographical description is a means of describing books according standardized rules.
Why bibliographical description? In the classic formulation of Fredson Bowers,
“the methods of descriptive bibliography seem to have evolved from a triple purpose: (1) to furnish a detailed, analytical record of the physical characteristics of a book which would simultaneously serve as a trustworthy source of identification and as a medium to bring an absent book before a reader’s eyes; (2) to provide an analytical investigation and an ordered arrangement of these physical facts which would serve as the prerequisite for textual criticism of the books described; (3) to approach both literary and printing or publishing history through the investigation and recording of appropriate details in a related series of books.”
Bowers, Fredson. Principles of Bibliographical Description. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994. xv.
Contained herein are the aims of this project: to furnish detailed records of books published by Vintage Contemporaries; to provide an ordered arrangement of these records to allow for further study; (especially) to approach both literary and publishing history through the investigation of a related series of books.
Over the course of this project, my guides have been the standard works of bibliographical description. I have consulted, frequently and with pleasure, Philip Gaskell’s A New Introduction to Bibliography, Fredson Bowers’s Principles of Bibliographical Description, and John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors, among others. Gaskell and Bowers contain the basics of bibliographical description and more, but both books are more concerned with the description of books of earlier hand- and machine-press eras—Gaskell, the later treatise, covers up to 1950. Since neither book has much to say about paperbacks, much less paperbacks of the 1980s and 1990s, and since I have found little on the subject elsewhere, I have followed Gaskell and Bowers where I can and improvised when necessary. For inspiration and hints on style, I have often turned to Donald Gallup’s T.S. Eliot and Audre Hanneman’s Hemingway. Each bibliographic description should provide a fairly complete picture of a Vintage Contemporaries paperback.
Here are the basic elements included in the descriptions of this bibliography:
- Pseudo-facsimile – a transcription of the title-page using standard rules to indicate aspects of title-page layout and typography such as line-breaks and capitalization.
- Collation – a statement of foliation and pagination, describing how many leaves the book contains and how they are numbered (or unnumbered, as is often the case).
- Contents – a statement describing the contents of the book, in particular noting the order of contents and on what pages they appear.
See Gaskell for good summaries of these elements. In addition to these standard elements, I have included some other basic information:
- High-definition photos of the book’s front and back covers.
- A verbatim transcription of the book’s edition statement (e.g. “First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, July 1989”)
- Brief statements about any individuals other than the author credited in the book (usually designers, cover artists, typographers, and photographers)
- Copyright dates
- ISBNs
- Original cover prices
- Original publication information for the work (i.e. publication prior to Vintage Contemporaries)
The final piece of information is a short statement about copies consulted — the copies I used to compile the bibliographic description. In almost all cases, the copies come from my own personal collection, signified by my initials, JDP. The numbers following after indicate edition and printing, so 1.1 would indicate first edition, first printing. Early on, the Vintage Contemporaries did not indicate a book’s printing, and I therefore presume an early printing in the absence of contrary data; which is to say, I look for evidence of a later printing, and if I find none, I deem it early.