A History of Bibliographies of Bibliographies

y of Bibliograp

of a bibliography of bibliographies as a means to this end. Like Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis of 1545-1555 (which was a list of all writers and their works), Philip Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum of 1653 (which was a bibliography of bibliographies) enjoyed a successful career for a little more than a generation and then disappeared from view. After the first revisions and supplements no one chose to continue either Gesner or Labbé. This analogy between the century that began

never printed.[57] The first reference to the book is found, as far as I know, in a Belgian biobibliographical dictionary of 1643 and all our information about the book and its author goes back to this source.[58] The announcement is not particularly suspicious because the publisher Jodocus Kalcoven of Cologne seems to have been an agent or a limited partner of the famous firm of Willem Blaeu (later Jan Blaeu) of Amsterdam.[59] This firm used Kalcoven's name on various scholarly books.[59] Little as we know about Dudinck's book, its title indicates that he clearly understood the nature of a bibliography of bibliographies. He called it "A Bibliography of Bibliographies. A list of all autho

ed the proper contents of a bibliography of bibliographies. He has included very few inappropriate titles in his list of nearly three hundred separately published bibliographies, bibliographies that were still in manuscript, and bibliographies published in non-bibliographical works. There are very few examples of the last category. He is careful about his work. For example, he cites a manuscript biobibliographical dictionary by Alfonsus Ciaconius (Alfonso Chacón, 1540-1599) and gives his authority in Antonio Possevino, Apparatus sacer (Cologne, 1608). Chacón's dictionary was not printed until 1731, and then only as a fragment. Labbé knows Alfonso Barvoet's catalogue of manuscripts in the Escorial; Alfonso García's list of famous Spaniards; Ambrosio Gozzi's biobibliographical dictionary of Dominicans; Andreas Quercetanus's (André Duchesne, 1584-1

f 1653, the sample of 1662, and the book that was finally printed in 1664 is necessarily limited to a portion of the alphabet. In 1653 he cited fourteen names (some of these authors were responsible for several bibliographies), in 1662 he cited thirty-three names, and in 1664 he cited sixty-eight names (including the additions made in a supplementary alphabet). In 1653 he regretted his inability to find a publisher's catalogue issued by Aldus Manutius. In 1662 he reported that he had not found it. In 1664 he cited publi

been dead for five years, an anonymous editor combined the additions with the main alphabet, but did not correct errors in the text or improve the indexes. In 1678, the unsold sheets of the 1672 edition were issued with a new title page and a brief appendix containing John Selden's numismatic

des about fifteen hundred titles. Labbé's arrangement according to first names causes no difficulty to a modern user because he provides an index of family names. Un

liographies of] Nations and Countries" and "Index III. [Bibliographies of] Religions and Religious Orders," which does not include non-Christian religions or heretical sects, give him no trouble. In the fourth index Labbé meets his Waterloo. This "Index IV. Authors Writing on Various Subjects" is awkwardly conceived in terms of the authors but is arranged according to the theological merit of the subjects on which they wrote. It descends from the Virgin Mary to inventions in the following order: (1) writers about the Virgin Mary, (2) [writers about] the Immaculate Conception, (3) writers who were popes, (4) writers who were cardinals, (5) writers who were French cardinals, (6) women writers, (7) writers about heretics, (8) writers on the prohibition of heretical books, (9) compilers of catalogues of manuscripts, (10) compilers of catalogues of ancient and modern libraries and writers on library science, (11) writers on academies, universities, and Jesuit colleges, (12) writers of catalogues and eulogies of individual academies and their faculties, (13) writers on the inventors of things, arts, and sciences. In order to fit his material into this pattern Labbé changes his procedure and writes in an individual entry in No. 10 above: "Manuscriptorum catalogus varias exhibent Antonius Sanderus, Aubertus Miraeus,..." In other words, the subject heading takes the place of a heading in terms of the author. The fifth index lists bibliographers of men who have borne the same name. Anton Sander's book on Antonies is an example

g than those of 1664. We may, however, say fine words about these demands and be forced to eat our words when we look later in this essay at the modern bibliographies of Léon Vallée, Henri Stein and the very recent work of Hanns Bohatta and Franz Hodes. While we are mindful of the

her regular way of citing an Italian title. He also cites the same book with an Italian title. In reading the proof he could have removed the duplication. The article on Augustinus Marloratus seems to have been written before he realized the necessity of bringing the author's name into the first place for the purpose of alphabetizing the entries. He is irregular in regard to critical comment, which the plan of his book did not require

so to be consulted: Philastrius, Augustine, the author of Praedestinat

eived that such comments, although useful, would have greatly exceeded Labbé's purpose. In all the later history of bibliographies of bibliographies only two men-Gabriel Peignot and Julius Petzholdt-have made a systematic effort to add comments. Labbé does, to be sure, often expres

he most virulent heretics, by all holding the Catholic faith or it ought to be put far away in the castle of Hell, whence it is forbidden to depart, along with the Magdeburg Centuriators, Mathias F

. In an index according to Christian names it is not fatal to have the last name of Christophorus Ferg misspelled Freg.[65] Labbé should have eliminated

rom the indexes to the text without much trouble, although a few references lack the name needed as a guide.[66] A reverse comparison

. His plan required him to put subjects into the indexes, but he had no good place to put an article "Bibliothecae." This contains a classified list of catalogues and libraries that I shall discuss in the next chapter. He put it in its alphabetical place, in a list o

Montecalvus, Speculum tragicum Regum, Principum & Magnatum superioris seculi celebriorum ruinas exitusque calamitosos breviter complectens, which is adequately described by its long title, is not a bibliography but one of many accounts of the mishaps that have befallen great men. Jacobus Gretser, De jure et more prohibendi, expurga

.[69] Theatri, which was then immediately understood as a citation of Theodor Zwinger, the Elder (ed.), Theatrum vitae humanae, a standard sixteenth-century encyclopedia, was then no more difficult to understand than The New International might

, the references are as accurate as those to be found in three of the bibliographies of bibliographies published in the last seventy years. His choice of an arrangement according to authors' names has been adopted only by Joseph Sabin (1877) and Léon Vallée (1883-1887). Unpopular as it has been, it nevertheless seems to me a good met

ve a perfunctory flavor. Valentin Heinrich Vogler, who wrote an admirable survey of scholarly books entitled Introductio universalis in notitiam cuiuscunque bonorum scriptorum (Helmstadt, 1670), is representative. He passed a jud

. Still, the work is very useful (Utilis tamen valde labor est), although I have found many authors cited, of whom some have no pertinence and others tell the lives of men who are famous for their reputations and deserts rather than in literary endeavors and writing. From not a few entries it would also appear that h

catalogorum scriptoribus," Morhof begins with general remarks about the kinds of bibliographies that a scholar then had within his reach, but fails to identify clearly the bibliography of bibliographies as a special variety. He does, however, go on to say, "Like Hodegeta and Janus Patulcis, Philip Labbé is vigilant at the very entrance to learning."[76] This means that he recognized Labbé's book to be one of the first books to

t to show how many titles Labbé had overlooked. Spitzel's additions amount to nearly one hundred titles, which are grouped in sixty categories. They show that Spitzel understood the true nature of a bibliography of bibliographies, but they do not show the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum to be seriously incomplete or unsatisfactory. Some additions-for example, the Oriental bibliographies by Paul Colomies-were published after Labbé had given the last touches to his book or indeed after he had died. Others are bibliographies hidden in non-bibliographical works. For example, one can suspect his pleasure in adding "Joh. Nadasi, in libro cui Tit. Annus dierum memorab. S. l. [sine loco] ed. Antw. 1665"[80] to the bibliographies of the Jesuits. Labbé was a Jesuit and seems to have been caught napping, although he had cited Rivadaneira's bibliography of

leitung in die Historiam Litterariam, so wohl insgemein, als auch in die Historiam Litterariam derer Teutschen (Halle, 1708-1713), he writes: "Let this book of Labbé's be commended to you for diligent study above all others, for (disregarding the obscenities, which are scattered about in it like mouse dirt in pepper) it is one of the very best work

)," obscures the fact that the Catalogus is essentially a new edition of Labbé's bibliography. The title page gives credit to Labbé only for an appendix entitled Bibliotheca nummaria. Teissier could, to be sure, claim that his emphasis on eulogies, biographies, and funeral orations representing a category of biographical writings that Labbé had not included amounted to a sufficiently large alteration to justify a claim to authorship. We ca

364-400), listing the men who were the subjects of biographies. These indexes show that Teissier was chiefly interested in biography. He transferred an index of last names that Labbé had given in the preliminary pages to the end of the Catalogus and made it Index XI. He showed bibliographical sense in perceiving and remedying the serious difficulties that the references to "Anonymus" in Labbé's indexes had caused. In order to run

see many books that he cited and the sources from which he took the titles usually gave them in Latin translation. Like Labbé, he cited bibliographical sections of non-bibliographical works.[83] He made some mistakes and corrected some that Labbé had made.[84] His most serious fault is his failure to verify his references. In the seventeen pages devoted to au

rates as the writer of a list of geometricians and Varro as the writer of a list of poets. He has brought up to date the list of English bibliographers by adding Henry Holland, who is the H. H. of the Herwologia,[87] Richard Smith, whose library was the subject of an early catalogue; and William Winstanley, who wrote on English poets. He knows "Ro

alphabetical subject index. He has no longer adhered strictly to listing bibliographies in terms of men who specialized in various subjects but shifted somewhat in the direction of an emphasis on the subject. He could have introduced many practitioners of various arts and sciences into the first index, but his decision to put them into the fourth index s

l bibliographers (Auctuarium, p. 288), fifteen writers (Catalogus, p. 349) on academies and universities (these authors are scarcely bibliographers, but contemporary practice did not separate them sharply from bibliographers), twenty compilers o

e title Bibliothecariographia from Dudinck for books that never got into print. Presumably the Bibliothecariographia was a treatise on library science. In his subtitle Beughem makes clear what he intended to include in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. It was to be An Account and Fuller Listing of all Books and Works that Have Appeared up till now under the Titles Bibliotheca (Bibliography), Catalogus, Index, Athenae, etc.[91]

of bibliographies of bibliographies came to a temporary end shortly after 1700. Scholars do not seem to have esteemed Teissier's books very highly then or later and Teissier himself concealed their nature by including a large number of biog

conomic, historical, literary, and scientific problems in new ways. The great encyclopedias, of which Moréri's Le Grand dictionnaire, first published at Lyons in 1674 and revised, enlarged, and supplemented down to 1759, is typical, gave scholars information that they m