E

- Edition, Impression, Issue and State [see Tanselle, ‘Treatment’ cit., pp. 31-41: “Typographical variations”]. For this hierarchy of concepts the best exposition is chapter 2 in Bowers, Principles cit., pp. 37-113, integrated by G. Thomas Tanselle, ‘The Bibliographical Concepts of “Issue” and “State”’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 69 (1975), pp. 17-66, and, for readers familiar with Italian, Conor Fahy, ‘Edizione, impressione, emissione, stato’, in Idem, Saggi di bibliografia testuale (Padova, Antenore, 1988, pp. 65-88). It should be noted however that, though the definitions provided here are largely satisfactory, the nomenclature addresses the way the book is published and not the way it is printed. For instance, a situation in which a forme containing a title-page is altered during the press-run to change the name of a publisher or the place of publication is defined a variant issue, though in physical terms the change is a trifling one; on the other hand a substantial act of resetting, even of a large part of an edition, for instance when a run is increased after the first sheets have been printed, is a mere variant of state, since no distinction is made in the distribution of the copies. In my experience, it is not unusual to find watershed situations in which it is difficult to decide what the ‘intention’ of the publisher was and therefore whether a variant constitutes ‘issue’ or ‘state’. In these circumstances it should always be made clear whether resetting has occurred or whether the original composition has simply been modified, perhaps after being kept for a while as standing type.