I

- Ideal or Standard Copy. Easily the most misunderstood concept in analytical bibliography. The controversial words that invariably surface in any discussion are “final intention” and to cite them is the bibliographical equivalent of opening Pandora’s box: a painful experience only alleviated by the kisses of Hope at the end of the day. The term is first used, in a purely pragmatic fashion, by Greg in the article “A Formulary of Collation” (1934) and in the introduction to the first volume of his Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (1939), when he writes that “the formula always expresses the make-up of a standard or ideal copy: it never describes the peculiarities of an individual example” (p. xvi). The idea seems to have acted like the equivalent of a red rag to a theoretical bull as far as Bowers was concerned, because it led to some of the most brilliant and most complex passages of the Principles (pp. 113-123). In particular he states: “The collational formula and the basic description of an edition should be that of an ideally perfect copy of the original issue. A description is constructed for an ideally perfect copy, not for any individual copy, because an important purpose of the description is to set up a standard of reference whereby imperfections may be checked against the bibliographical description ... ‘Ideally perfect’ has no relation to freedom from textual errors, misprints, variant uncorrected formes, or to the quality of the text in any way as a criticism of the printer’s final result. Instead it applies only to the physical details of the book as reflected with the states of an issue, and specifically to the number and state of the leaves, including the order and completeness of the contents printed on these leaves. Thus an ideal copy is a book which is complete in all its leaves as it ultimately left the printer’s shop in perfect condition and in the complete state that he considered to represent the final and most perfect state of the book. An ideal copy contains not only all the blank leaves intended to be issued as integral parts of its gatherings but also all excisions and all cancellans leaves or insertions which represent the most perfect state of the book as the printer or publisher finally intended to issue it in the issue described” (p. 113).

Bowers’ definition seems eminently satisfactory from the point of a textual scholar, since the step from interpreting the final intention of the printer to the critical edition of the same is a short one. Where it has seemed defective is in the implication that the earlier or imperfect states of the book are somehow less important and thus less deserving in attention from the bibliographer. The problem is taken up again by G. Thomas Tanselle, ‘The Concept of Ideal Copy’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 33 (1980), pp. 18-53, who arrives at the following definition: “The standard or ‘ideal’ copy, which is the subject of a bibliographical description, is a historical reconstruction of the form or forms of the copies of an impression or issue as they were released to the public by their producer. Such a reconstruction thus encompasses all states of an impression or issue, whether they result from design or from accident; and it excludes alterations that have occurred in individual copies after the time when those copies ceased to be under the control of the printer or publisher”. Readers knowledgable in Italian can also usefully consult Conor Fahy, ‘Il concetto di “esemplare ideale”’, in Trasmissione dei testi a stampa nel periodo moderno. I Seminario internazionale, Roma, 23-26 marzo 1983, a cura di Giovanni Crapulli (Roma, Edizioni dell’ateneo, 1985, pp. 49-60), repr. in Idem, Saggi di bibliografia testuale (Padova, Antenore, 1988, pp. 89-103).

Though this is not perhaps the time or the place to open a thorny critical discussion, I believe that the actual definitions are defective in two respects, one practical and the other theoretical. In practical terms any examination of recent bibliographical practice, albeit without particular precept, shows an increasing amount of attention being given to copy-specific detail, which traditional bibliography, even after Tanselle’s redefinition, either excludes or considers very secondary. While we obviously have to maintain a sharp distinction between what the original printer does and the successive series of actions beginning with the binder, the history of the individual copies is nevertheless part of the history of the edition and requires accurate reporting. To paraphrase Churchill, the moment in which an exemplar leaves the printer’s shop is not in bibliographical terms the beginning of the end; at the most it is the end of the beginning. The other respect in which the actual definition of copy text appears insufficient is in the way it pays attention only to the actions of the printer in the past, but ignores those of the bibliographer in the present. A bibliographical description is defined both by the amount of material included by an scholar living in his/her own time and by the quantity of work done, both in terms of the type of analysis conducted and in the number of copies examined.  To take a negative example, most users of bibliographies are familiar with lengthy descriptions, which reel off page after page of contents in wearisome quasi-facsimile and which are done from the first and only copy of the book to happen to hand. Such entries in terms of the quantification of the material not only are no different from catalogue descriptions, but, when compared with an exemplar of the same book, in my experience are often riddled with errors. On the other hand we are also familiar with concise STC entries, backed up with considerable research and comparison of exemplars, which express a world of information in a few short lines. In words opposite to those of the Jewish tailor, don’t look at the length, feel the quality. How therefore do we express quality in the concept of ‘ideal copy’? Quite simply, by a rigorous account of what the bibliographer has set out to do and what he/she has actually done. Again this idea is familiar to bibliographical circles, but not necessarily in association with the concept of ideal copy, where I believe it properly belongs. If however we are reporting a critical experience based on the examination of a large number of copies of the ‘same’ manufact dispersed in a large number of libraries, which have either been visited in person or from which information has been obtained, some form of comment on the journeys undertaken is necessary. In the words of Tennyson’s Ulysses “I am part of all that I have met” and similarly any bibliographer ( pace Bowers) expresses a personal vision of the books they have met and the desire to meet others, “strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.  From experience comes paradox, since, from the moment we correlate the extent of a description to the quality of the same and begin to report the minute details of what has been examined, not just in terms of printing variants or paper evidence, but also in terms of the legitimate inclusion of the copy-specific details, a concept originally employed to establish the sameness of manufacture of a book ends up by describing difference.

- Identifiable Types [see Tanselle, ‘Treatment’ cit., pp. 8-14]. The Renaissance printer usually had only a small quantity of type available and therefore was not able and, more important, not willing to keep more than a couple of formes standing at a time. In fact it was possible, and often happened, that a book was printed on a single press with the equivalent of only two formes of type (or four pages of folio format), with one forme on the press and the other being distributed and reset. How do bibliographers acquire this sort of information? Basically by recognising single types that have been damaged in an individual manner, whose movement through the book can be charted through careful observation. The best description of the bibliographical process, with some well-chosen illustrative material showing distinctive types, is in Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading cit., I, pp. 52-69; while useful further observations, relating also to plate-batter in stereotype printing, are available in G.T. Tanselle, ‘The Use of Type-Damage as Evidence in Bibliographical Description’, The Library, s. V, vol. 23 (1968), pp. 328-351 [not reprinted in the various collections of his essays]. Some wry remarks about research on damaged types are made by Antony Hammond, who observes that “Perhaps one of the most valuable conclusions to be drawn from the exercise is that whereas the study of damaged types and their distribution and reappearance is a bibliographical tool of value, it will not in itself suffice to determine the compositors, or without some ambiguity, the precise order of setting. It is, in other words, a valuable tool, but not a panacea. It is also perhaps the most time-consuming and potentially frustrating bibliographical labor yet conceived, and should not be undertaken lightly in the hope of easy and certain results”; see ‘The White Devil in Nicholas Oke’s Shop’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 39 (1986), pp. 135-178 (quote from p. 170). In my experience this sort of project is best conducted in a library in possession of at least two copies of the book concerned, while the recording method should be able to take account of the situation in further copies examined, if only because research of this kind requires many returns to the same copies, so it is indispensable to know what has been looked at and what has not been looked at.

- Integrandum and integrans [see also Cancellandum]. The words cancellandum and cancellans applied to sheets, folds or leaves that are substituted have become a standard part of the technical vocabulary of bibliography. What is lacking, however, is a parallel set of terms to describe a situation, quite common in early printing, when one or more sheets are reset and reprinted ex novo in order to integrate rather than correct. The reason can be an error in calculation in the number of copies of a sheet or the accidental spoiling of part of a run, or alternatively a decision to increase the print-run after the first sheets have been printed off; see, for example, the case of the Divina Commedia printed at Foligno in 1472, in which the first ten sheets exist in two different settings; see Emanuele Casamassima, La prima edizione della Divina Commedia: Foligno 1472 (Milano, Il Polifilo, 1972). Other well known examples can be found in the 1616 edition of Ben Jonson’s Works and in the Fourth Folio of Shakespeare; see Giles E. Dawson, ‘Some Bibliographical Irregularities in the Shakespeare Fourth Folio’, Studies in Bibliography, 4 (1951), pp. 93-103; Greg, Bibliography of the English Printed Drama cit., IV, pp. xxxii-xxxiii; while a fascinating instance, involving the Encyclopédie and a certain quantity of double-dealing by publishers, is described by Robert Darnton, ‘A Bibliographical Imbroglio: Hidden Editions of the Encyclopédie’, in Cinq siècles d’imprimerie genevoise. Actes du colloque international sur l’histoire de l’imprimerie et du livre à Genève 27-30 avril 1978, publiés par Jean-Daniel Candaux et Bernard Lescaze (Genève, Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie, 1981, II, pp. 71-101). Strictly speaking, these are not cancellans sheets, since the ‘error’ in the number of copies printed or, alternatively, the decision to make more copies is external to the printing itself non can the original setting be said to be wrong.

Cases are not unknown moreover in which only a forme has been reset, although there is no ostensible reason for the correction and therefore the most likely explanation is that, for some reason, it was taken off the press and accidentally dropped: for instance, the inner forme of sheet A in the Dialogo contra i poeti by Francesco Berni in 1526; see Anne Reynolds, ‘The Earliest Editions of Dialogo contra i poeti by Francesco Berni (1497-1535)’, Bulletin du Bibliophile (1996), pp. 341-360, and the critical edition of the same text (New York, Garland, 1997). I have also pointed out an example in the 1546-47 edition of the Orlando Innamorato, where in the sixth book of the continuation by Nicolò degli Agostini the whole outer forme of gathering y has been reset; cfr. Harris, Bibliografia dell’“Orlando Innamorato” cit., I, p. 173.

While bibliographers have given some thought to the matter and, for instance, excluded any registration of such reset leaves or formes in the collational formula, no attention has been given to a denomination of the phenomenon. The terms I suggest employing, by analogy with the precedent terminology, are [folium] integrandum, [ folium] integratum and [folium] integrans, but the discussion is open.