A checklist of the Horblit collection of books, tracts, leaflets, and broadsides printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps at his press at Middle Hill, or elsewhere to his order, now in the collection of the Grolier Club. Published to accompany The Collector Collected: The Horblit Archive of Sir Thomas Phillipps at the Grolier Club, held at the Club May 20 - July 31, 1997. Designed by Jerry Kelly, and printed at the Stinehour Press in an edition of 550 copies.

"No one writes more knowledgeably or brilliantly about textual criticism than Tanselle." --"Washington Post" Textual criticism--the traditional term for the task of evaluating the authority of the words and punctuation of a text--is often considered an undertaking preliminary to literary criticism: many people believe that the job of textual critics is to provide reliable texts for literary critics to analyze. G. Thomas Tanselle argues, on the contrary, that the two activities cannot be separated. "These short, lucid, well-written, "humane" lectures are essential reading for graduate and undergraduate students concerned with texts of any kind requiring critical attention--and for their teachers." --"Review of English Studies" G. Thomas Tanselle is Vice President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Adjunct Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

This book provides a basic guide to the study of the printed matter which has been produced in the United States. The great bulk of research in this field has occurred during the last half century, yet no comprehensive attempt has been made to record it. Recognizing the need for an up-to-date guide to such investigations, G. Thomas Tanselle has compiled a listing of the principal material dealing with printing and publishing in this country.

In his introduction Mr. Tanselle surveys the research which has attempted to trace the history of printing and publishing in America from its inception to the present and explains how this material can be utilized effectively.

In nine carefully arranged categories he covers bibliographies of imprints of particular localities; bibliographies of works in particular genres; listings of all editions and printings of works by individual writers; copyright records; catalogues of auction houses, book dealers, exhibitions, institutional libraries, and private collections; retrospective book-trade directories; studies of individual printers and publishers; general studies of printing and publishing; and checklists of secondary material.

From the mass of material, an appendix selects 250 titles. Although the work is arranged so that the reader may easily locate relevant sections, a comprehensive index provides further aid in finding individual items.

"A successful checklist," writes the author, "is not merely a work to be consulted for information but also a nucleus around which additional information can be gathered in a meaningful way; it provides a framework into which the community of workers in a field can place further references inan organized fashion."

"Guide to the Study of United States Imprints" is a reference tool designed to serve both as a guide to research and as a practical manual for use in identifying, cataloguing, and recording printed matter. It will be of enormous value to scholars in American literature, history, and bibliography, to librarians, typographers, and bibliophiles, and to antiquarian book dealers and book collectors.

Studying printed books as physical objects can reveal not only how books were produced, but also how their design and layout features emerged and came to convey meanings. This concise and accessible introduction to analytical bibliography in its historical context explains in clear, non-specialist language how to find and analyze clues about a book's manufacture and how to examine the significance of a book's design. Written by one of the most eminent bibliographical and textual scholars working today, the book is both a practical guide to bibliographical research and a history of bibliography as a developing field of study. For all who use books, this is an ideal starting point for learning how to read the object along with the words.

Although he surprised the world in 1866 with his first published book of poetry, "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, "Herman Melville had long been steeped in poetry. This new offering in the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry series, "The Writings of Herman Melville," with a historical note by Hershel Parker, is testament to Melville the poet. Penultimate in the publication of the series, "Published Poems "follows the release of Melville's verse epic, "Clarel "(1876), and with it, contains the entirety of the poems published during Melville's lifetime: "Battle-Pieces, " as well as "John Marr and Other Sailors, with Some Sea-Pieces (1888), "and "Timoleon Etc. (1891)."

"Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" has long been recognized as a great contribution to the poetry of the Civil War, comparable only to Whitman's "Drum-Taps." Its idiosyncrasies, many of them grounded in British poetry, kept it from immediate popularity, but it was not the production of a novice. Melville had made himself over into a poet in the late 1850s and had tried to publish a previous collection of poetry--now lost--in 1860."

John Marr and Other Sailors "is a retrospective nautical book. Its portraits of sailors were influenced by Melville's own experience of aging as well as by his long acquaintance with wasted mariners at the Sailors' Snug Harbor on Staten Island, where his brother was governor.

The book modulates into "Sea-Pieces," including the grisly "Maldive Shark" and "To Ned," a powerful reflection on how Melville's personal adventures with the Typee islanders in 1842 had accrued rich historical significance over the decades.

Thematically less unified, "Timoleon Etc." contains poems with many European and exotic settings from ancient to modern times. The most famous are "After the Pleasure Party" and "The Age of the Antonines." Published in the last year of Melville's life, some of the poems were first written many years earlier; for example, Melville copied "The Age of the Antonines" out for his brother-in-law in 1877, describing it as something found in a bundle of old papers. One whole section seems to have been almost entirely salvaged from the unpublished 1860 volume of poetry. As with the other volumes in the Northwestern-Newberry series, the aim of this edition of "Published Poems "is to present a text as close to the author's intention as surviving evidence permits. To that end, the editorial appendix includes a historical note by Hershel Parker, the dean of Melville scholars, which gives a compelling, in-depth account of how one of America's greatest writers grew into the vocation of a poet; an essay by G. Thomas Tanselle on the printing and publishing history of the works in "Published Poems; "a textual record that identifies the copy-texts for the present edition and explains the editorial policy; and substantial scholarly notes on individual poems.