A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts (eBook)

Mark Bland is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at De Montfort University, UK. He has published extensively on early printed books and manuscripts, paper, censorship, stemmatics, and editorial practice, as well as on Ben Jonson and his contemporaries. He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford edition of The Poems of Ben Jonson

Illustrative Materials viii

Acknowledgments ix

1 A Guide for the Perplexed 1

2 Paper and Related Materials 22

3 The Structure of Documents 49

4 Producing Texts 83

5 Analysis and Evidence 122

6 Making Variants 149

7 Setting Conditions 183

8 Last Words 211

Selected Further Reading 219

Index 230

"This is an absolutely essential book. We have excellent
handbooks for English printed books and manuscripts, but no one
book that takes us through every aspect of the making and
circulation of texts, from paper to binding to reading. Mark Bland
meets an urgent need."--Peter Stallybrass,
University of Pennsylvania

"Bland's emphasis on the human element of textual
production makes this introduction to bibliography attractively
readable, where often the subject can seem arid to beginners, but
it also is rooted in his conviction that the study of texts must
always be grounded in an awareness of the people who contributed to
every aspect of their creation." (Chartered Institute of
Library and Information Professionals, 2012)

"Showing an extensive knowledge of the scholarship in his
field [Bland] provides an objective assessment, often correcting
false reasoning and offering a sound explanation of the facts
... I believe that Mark Bland's Guide would be of help to
anyone interested in the discipline." (European
Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, 18 July
2012)

"Bland offers a clear and comprehensive guide to bibliography,
and it is appropriate that it is most likely to come into its own
as part of the work of making meaning, wedged open beneath a
researcher's elbow." (The Review of English Studies, 23 December
2011)

"This book is indeed a very practical, clear and valuable guide
to books and manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
. . . The book is well illustrated and Bland makes good use of the
images, especially in his exemplary discussion in Chapter Two about
how to use watermark evidence." (Script and Print, 1 August
2011)

"Wide-ranging and commendably concise, this handbook
provides an up-to-date and practical guide to bibliographical
concepts, methods and terminology ... This book will equip
students, perhaps encountering sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
texts for the first time, in their early printed or manuscript form
(as distinct from modern editions), to approach bibliographical
description and analysis without fear or confusion and, for those
wishing to pursue the subject more widely, it will serve admirably
as an introduction." (Routledge ABES, 2011)

"a gateway to some of the major works of
bibliography" (Library and Information History, December
2010)

"Bland's 'Guide' is distinguished by
intelligent and comprehensive coverage, by his extensive knowledge
of current scholarship in the field, and by his personal research
and rethinking." (The Library, September 2011)