A History of Bibliographies of Bibliographies

y of Bibliograp

v.; 1734-1746) and his masterpiece, the Bibliotheca graeca (14 v.; 1705-1728). In 1693 Ellies Du Pin published the first volume of the long theological bibliography that only his death was to interrupt. Many of these works were revised and enlarged during the next century and a half. The Bibliothèque orientale was republished for the last time in 1781-1783. An edition of the even more successful Bibliotheca latina was begun in 1773 and remained incomplete. The new edition of the Bibliotheca graeca begun in 1790 was brought to an end, although the work was still incomplete, with an index published in 1838. Excellent bibliographies which are still worth consulting were written for every subject of particular interest to eighteenth-century scholars. J. C. Wolf published

dated 1707 that was sold at Amsterdam in 1743. From the brief auctioneer's description we can infer that it resembled Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothec

Indice Auctorum, Parisiis 1707. NB. Opus hoc propri

rocedure is characteristic of seventeenth-century scholarship. The eighteenth century neglected the bibliography of bibliographies and let the writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in this field sink into obscurity. In the nineteenth century, as we shall see, men undertook to compile bibliographies of bibliographies with an astonishing disregard of the difficulties of the task and a su

hit upon an entirely new idea. Although he knew and cited such predecessors as Labbé and Teissier, he did not clearly see that he was undertaking t

nowledge and bibliography in a particular field. Although bibliographers before him had often added comments, Peignot is more systematic and generous than his predecessors. For example, his account of bibliographies of ana-a subject to which he had himself made an important contribution a few years before the publication of the Répertoire-even includes useful references to book reviews. Particularly interesting as a technical improvement in bib

ing to Theodore Besterman, it names two thousand bibliographies. Since Peignot is primarily interested in survey

ce of headings.[129] A reader can never know whether a particular subject will appear as a separate entry or as a subdivision of a larger field. Will heresy stand alone or under theology? What will the term philosophy include? Peignot gives no cross-references to aid his reader. Nor is there an alphabetical subject index tha

history of literature or at least of literature in the sense of belles lettres. In Peignot's use "métaphysique" includes demonology or, as a modern bookseller would say, "occult" books. A specialist in the history of theological studies will know that Peignot's "théologie positive" refers to theology based on God's revelations to man, but two professors in

he bibliography of an individual classical author appears in its alphabetical place in the article "Classiques" (pp. 155-244) and of a religious order in "Ordres monastiques" (pp. 432-437). Without a cross-reference from "Bible" (pp. 26-32) one will perhaps fail to find a list of polyglot Bibles under the he

ues" (pp. 32-135). He includes here such works as Richard de Bury, Philobiblon (a book about collecting books); Claudius Clement, Musaei (a general treatise on library science that contains little bibliographical information); an

stands on the border of what is admissible and should certainly not be placed with "Des livres rares," a list of catalogues of rare books (p. 396). Georg Draud, Bibliotheca classica, a classified compilation of titles listed in the semi-annual catalogues of th

the language was no doubt strange to him and the books were probably not available. A more serious fault is, it seems to me, his neglect of obviously important books that he either could have seen or should have known. I cannot understand how he overlooked such authorities on church histo

r finds it hard to duplicate some information that Peignot has assembled. Where else can he easily find bibliographies of the collections of Latin poets,[131] dictionaries,[132] encyclopedias,[133] translators of the classics,[134] and accounts of royal and noble writers?[135] His review of bibliographies of i

ibraries (pp. 75-135) arranged according to the owners' names. He tells the number of lots offered for sale, remarks on the presence or absence of indexes, and warns us when the catalogue was printed in a small edition. He praises the superb Catalogus Bibliothecae Bunavianae (p. 86), calls attention to varying editions of the Cambis catalogue (pp. 87-88), and commends the Imperiali catalogue (pp. 104-105). He p

bibliographies for its relative accuracy and its abundant comments. It is what he intended it to be: a

wo contemporary compilations by T. H. Horne and A. F. Delandine as his only predecessors. Although these compilations are brief

in the preceding section and two histories of philosophy for which his plan had no place. "Writers on British Literary History" (pp. 419-431) and "Writers on Foreign Literary History" (pp. 431-447) are accounts of national biobibliographies, histories, and bibliographies of literature, and of specialized biobibliographical writings. One finds in them occasional titles of infrequent occurrence like Christopher Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Biography, or Lives of eminent men connected with the history of religion in England, from the commencement of the Reformation to the Revolution (6 v.; London, 1810) or Giovanni Agostini, Notizie istorico-scritiche intorno la vita e le opere degli scrittori Vineziani (2 v.; Venice, 1752). His rather full account of British works has some value but his incomplete foreign list is noteworthy chiefly for such curiosities as Matthias Bellus, Exercitatio de vetere litteratura Hunno-Scythica (pp. 433-434) or Giambattista Toderini, Della letteratura turchesa (p. 447). Horne devotes the following sections to writers on the materials used in writing and printing (pp. 448-450), writers on the origin of languages,

ppendice de l'Essai sur la bibliologie" (1824). This, is an annotated chronological list of nearly three hundred and fifty books on the history of printing, catalogues of public and private libraries, and bibliographies of miscellaneous scope. This somewhat casual performance is useful at best for a few curious or informative notes. The bibliographies do not amount to many more than a hundred and do not offer

eserves some recognition. Namur emphatically disclaimed (I, p. xiv) any dependence on Peignot's Répertoire, which he called a "chaos" that yielded only a few titles. In writing his Manuel he had perceived that there were no adequate bibliographies of paleography, diplomatics, and "bibliologie" and he therefore set about compiling them. In the section of "bibliologie" he recognized only Peignot's Répertoire, Horne's Introduction, and Delandine's or Psaume'

critical journals, Giovanni Cinelli (later Giovanni Cinelli Calvoli), Della biblioteca volante (a bibliography of ephemeral publications), G. F. DeBure's Musaeum typographicum (a list of rare books),[141] and general bibliographies lie side by side. Even if he had had to leave a few titles unidentified, he had sufficient bibliographical resources within easy reach to bring order into this confusion. But, he should not be judged on the basis of a list that he confessed himself unable to classify. The following section 3, which should have been numbered 2, is entitled "Bibliographie des livres rares, etc." (II, 12-14). This heading gives the reader no good idea of what to expect. Namur includes here lists of rare books, lists of ana, John Hartley's Catalogus universalis (which is described by its title), and J. B. B. van Praet's catalogues of books printed on vellum. The anomalous items are in all perhaps a dozen of the fifty-two titles in this section. If we disre

ing "Irlandiae" that a predecessor had misread for "Islandiae" in the title of a second book by the same author and puts it among British biobibliographies. Nor is this enough. He cites the author's name, Hálfdan Einarsson, as both "Hálfdanus Einar" and "Einari, H." and enters the first under "H" and the second under "E" in the index of authors.[142] One can grant that the proper form of entry

logue of 1790. Such titles rarely come to the knowledge of European bibliographers. The following section (II, 167-226, Nos. 721-2573) is an equally full review of catalogues of private libraries. As he says in a footnote at the beginning, he has made a special effort to attain completeness. I can cite no list of trade catalogues and publishers' catalogues comparable to Namur's (I, 171-193, Nos. 1283-1857). I cannot judge competently his list of printer's type facsimiles (I, 144-146, Nos. 673-768), but its extent and the variety of printers named is impressive. His list o

bliothekswissenschaft (1840-1846), which was continued until 1886 by the Neuer Anzeiger für Bibliographie und Bibliothekswissenschaft. The editor, Julius Petzholdt, used these lists of current bibliographical publications, bibliographies of particular subjects, and critical comments on antiquarian catalogues in the making of his Bibliotheca bibliographica, but those published after 1866, when the Bibliotheca appeared, are not very well-known. Various other journals devoted to bibliography, bibliophily, library science, criticism, and the interests of publishers and dealers printed similar collectanea. For example, a very ful

1866, but Petzholdt's critical comments and careful collations are still indispensable. The Bibliotheca bibliographica deserves its reputation for its great merits. It also owes this reputation to some extent to Petzholdt's position as head of the famous library at Dresden with a long and honorable bibliographical tradition,[148] his editorship of a successful

ad in 1838 cited 10,236 titles. Many of these did not, to be sure, fall within the limits set by Petzholdt for his work. A generation later Petzholdt cited only an estimated 5500 titles (I take the figure from Besterman). He achieved this figure by excluding many old bibliographies (chiefly

makes the Bibliotheca bibliographica hard to use. His exclusion of articles in journals denies the purpose and spirit of bibliography. If bibliographical collections are to guide seekers after knowledge to information, then a bibliographer cannot justify the deliberate neglect of materials which do not happen to be in a particular physical condition. The best bibliography of the Tuamotus may be, let us say, in a journal article. The bibliographer who is aware of it and omits it merely because it is a journal article is guilty of a serious fault. We can pardon him for not finding it, but we

selle contain this information. Biographies, wherever published, ordinarily contain bibliographies of the books written by the author in question. There are excellent indexes of these biographies. Antoine Teissier had added, in his Catalogus and Auctuarium, some two thousand biographies to Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. E. M. Oettinger had just published two editions of the Bibliographie bibliographique universelle,[150] which is still a very convenient and full list of biographies. Any good edition of a classical text is almost certain to contain bibliographical

o indication of this category in the table of contents and the names of the religious orders and the academies do not appear in the index. I do not see how one can readily find a biobibliographical dictionary of the Dominicans or the Jesuits in this arrangement. Not all of us can bring to mind immediately the names Quétif and De Backer that are needed to find the references. In his list of individual bibliographies Petzholdt goes so far as to include books (not bi

neral works, often a modern annual bibliography, proceeds through a chronological list, and concludes with specialized antiquarian catalogues. This is an altogether logical order. Subdivisions of a large category follow the general section. After the general bibliography of medicine, for example, Petzholdt continues with bibliographies of pa

eference eloquently and with good arguments.[153] There is, however, something to be said against it. Convenient as a classified bibliography is as first issued, it cannot be easily revised or enlarge

. Men of the seventeenth century seem to have made little use of Gesner's Pandectae, men of the eighteenth century found as little use for the difficult classification emp

ent than he to select the right headings. But a modern scholar who consults the Bibliotheca bibliographica must put himself in the place of a man who lived almost a century ago. For example, he must remember that Hungary was associated politically with Austria and Austrian cataloguers and dealers listed and sold Hungarian books.

erman and Swiss publications but few will find it. A few pages later (pp. 298-299) Petzholdt lists bibliographies of German and Swiss journals. Since these two categories are not named in the table of contents or the index, the information is almost completely buried. "Prognostica" or prophecies of future events-a genre of writings that was very popular in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance-gave Petzholdt trouble. Some of these are listed as pseudo-philosophy (see p

graphica is probably as carefully made as any such book can be made, but its table of contents is a scanty recapitulation of the very largest headings, its index of aut

of them explains many omissions of early bibliographies in his own work. His admirable survey of books that a scholar would find useful in 1866 gives no adequate account of the historical development of bibliography or of th

which are still useful sources of information about obscure seventeenth century writers. To be sure, Witte's Repertorium biblicum is cited (p. 286), but this is the least useful of Witte's books. Petzholdt's account of German regional biobibliographies (pp. 299-322) can only be called superficial. In Robert F. Arnold, Allgemeine Bücherkunde zur neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte,[156] which I have compared only for the first page (the entries extending from Aargau through Bayern), I find twelve books published before 1866 that Petzholdt does not name. If we turn to works of la

be found with little difficulty. Kuczynski and Knaake are such well-known guides to the poorly-recorded books of the Reformation that they are ordinarily cited simply by the authors' names.[157] The sale catalogues of the libraries of K. W. L. Heyse, K. H. G. Meusebach, and Viktor Manheimer are indispensable aids in the almost uncharted sea of German seventeenth-century literature.[158] Bibliographers and bibliophiles use antiquarian and sale catalogues in tracing the history of particular copies of famous rarities.[159] A student of the Dance of Death consults the Susan Minns catalogue,[160] and Mario Praz compiled a bibliography of emblem books almost exclusively from antiquarian catalog

th-century catalogues of private libraries, and a few dealers' catalogues. The Duboisiana, Michael Denis's Einleitung in die Bücherkunde, and Part II of the Libri catalogue (1861) are not hard to justify, but the remaining titles appear to be a random selection. Inasmuch as he devotes almost one quarter of the space to a full-length citation of a part of the Libri catalogue

pher's desk. He expresses an extensive analysis and usually accurate opinion about almost every book that he cites. It did not occur

r listing authors by their first names can be properly called naive. In describing Agostino Oldoini's similar book for Perugia (p. 363), he says that this was the usual procedure in the seventeenth century and involved only the inconvenience of consulting an index of last names. These Renaissance bibliographers had inherited this procedure from medieval scholars who knew men by their Christian names and used other d

a century, the Carmelites believed it deserved to be printed. Three more editions (1596, 1624, and 1643), all of which Petzholdt cites, came out during the next seventy years. Men obviously found it useful, and it is the basis of the modern Carmelite bibliography. The remark "Of altogether inferior bibliographical value (Bibliographisch von ganz untergeordnetem Werthe)" is even more unjust to Theodore Petreius's Carthusian bibliography (p. 161). However bad it may be, Petzholdt kne

792-1805) is, like the original work, still valuable for German publications between 1500 and 1525. Weller's notes on books that he had seen contain no great number of serious mistakes. Nevertheless, Petzholdt says (p. 708): "A book that deserves very much to be noticed, although it by no means lacks bibliographical defects an

remely rare pamphlet that contains all the Italian comedies arranged in alphabetical order according to the authors' names. The rarity of the pamphlet seems to be greater than its b

on for him and his book. The Bibliotheca bibliographica deserves a close and critical rea

an a few relative to France and Germany (1877). It names perhaps twelve hundred titles and includes a few bibliographies printed as parts of non-bibliographical works and a few journal articles. The word "literature" in the title means publications in any field of learning and not merely belles lettres. Since Sabin provides neither a table of contents (his strictly alphabetical arrangement did not call for one) nor a subject index, one must read his book from cover to cover to find what it contains or to discover a particular subject bibliography. His occasional brief critical comments are often drawn from Petzholdt. As his subtitle indicates

scription before him, he reports John Bale's sixteenth century biobibliographies inaccurately. He passes over John Pits's Renaissance account of British authors without mention. Thomas Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, which was still a very valuable reference work when Sabin was writing, either was so rare that it escaped his notice or seemed, although wrongly, to have been replaced. Sabin is obviously not much interested in British biobibliographies. His account of bibliographies in special fields is fairly satisfactory. He gives many useful references to British and American catalogues of private libraries, and his comments on them are often helpful. His a

th-century subject bibliographies, which were for the most part still valuable reference works in the 1870's. History is sufficiently represented by Lenglet du Fresnoy and Meusel's edition of Struve. Cave, Du Pin, and Walch are the right books to recommend to a theologian. As far as he goes, Sabin is generally successful in naming histories, which are virtually bibliographies, of national literatures, but J. A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca mediae et infimae latinitatis and J. C. Wolf, Bibliotheca hebraea are lacking. He mentions only a few regional biobibliographies and seems to have had no plan in selecting them. I have examined only his references to Italian examples of this genre, but these are well-known and easily found. In other fields than hist

Dissertazione intorno agli uomini dotati ad [read ed] a quelli divenuti smemorati, colle biblioteche degli scrittori sopra gli eruditi precoci, la memoria artificiale ed il giuoco degli scacchi (pp. xxviii-xxix) without a subject index? We can commend Sabin for enlarging Power's dilett

ée, Bibliographie des bibliographies (1883-1887), but in damning it few have effectively supported their opinions. It is not a good book, but

t cases no hint as to the whereabouts of bibliographical materials in the books referred to. The alphabetical arrangement by auth

hy in which this criticism appears, Vilhelm Grundtvig expressed an equally condemnatory opinion about Vallée's book.[165] He declares that only Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica and Henri Stein's Manuel (which is yet to be mentioned) deserve mention among bibliographies of bibliographies. This me

too many irrelevancies, mistakes, omissions, and second-hand descriptions. To indicate the general standard of accuracy maintained by Vallée, it is perhaps enoug

or to give hundreds of similar references. I cannot however agree with Josephson's remark that Vallée fails to indicate where this bibliographical information appears in the books cited. It seems altogether unnecessary to cite a bibliography found in a biography, an edition of a classical Latin or Greek author, or a general treatise on some subject, but when Vallée cites it, as he does in imitation of Petzholdt with distressing frequency, he ordinarily gives reference to pages. I cannot see that an alphabetical arrangement according to authors with a subject index is very much more difficult to use than an alphabetical or classified arrangement according t

aphical dictionary and a bibliographical handbook. The biobibliographical information is a disorderly collection of notes, referring chiefly, but by no means exclusively, to men whose names begin with the first letters of the alphabet. The bibliographical information is a miscellany of facts about libraries. Tonnelli, who has occasionally buried bibliographies in this rubbish heap, had no intention of writing a bibliography of bibliographies. I cannot guess what use Vallée ma

in a section entitled "Bibliographies générales." In other words, he does not consider them to be bibliographies of bibliographies. I cannot see that he cites Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum at all. Namur's Bibliographie is in a section entitled "Bibliologie" (p.

accurate.[169] He cites bibliographies that can be easily found and scarcely need mention.[170] He fails to analyze the long subject entries in his index.[171] He makes serious errors in names, dates, titles, and places of publications and is careless about editions and the continuations of wor

d other references of slight value are numerous, he has accumulated a very large number of bibliographies. Almost everyone will find something useful in Vallée's book. The first volume contains 6894 titles, and the supplement raises the total to 10,246. In a savage criticism[172] Henri Stein declared that perhaps 2500 titles should have been omitted and 3000 should be adde

othing less than a summary of all bibliographies published before 1897,[173] but seems at times to be content to supplement Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica. He falls far short of comple

he names of the printers. This information is very useful to a historian of printing, but has no proper place in Stein's book. His list of indexes to journals is useful but is also not altogether pertinent.[174] His long list of printed catalogues of public libraries,

is "at times nothing less than amazing, for example, hippology is under 'sciences pédagogiques' [and] dentistry under 'medicine interne.'"[177] Al

e inadequate and so, too, are the sections dealing with philosophy, chemistry, education, sport, and linguistics.[178] He shows very little interest in bibliographies print

lmevsonat (Boulak, 1904)," which he describes (p. 264) as a bibliography of Arabic encyclopedias, mentioned elsewhere. We owe to him the interesting and important fact that the unpublished manuscript of Mazzuchelli's enormous work, Gli scrittori d'Italia, is in the Vatican Library.[181] He adds many titles to those cited by Petzholdt and Vallée. I lay aside the Manuel with the regret that Stein's zeal has given us a les