F. M. Paisey Summary: McKenzie, Donald. “The Future of the Book”

McKenzie: An Annotation on “The Future of the Book”

D. F. McKenzie closes his essay on the “History of the Book,” stating that, “The book

and its history will become something more than the history of the book” (301). Getting

to that point involves digging through a thicket of bibliographical history.

At the start, McKenzie details a dense description of the history of bibliography and

the Bibliographical Society in England. He charts the development of bibliography

through the mid-twentieth century when the seeds for the “new bibliography” took root.

At this point, during the latter part of the twentieth century, McKenzie points out that

bibliography opened to a change or sensitivity in perception. This resulted in archival

studies that documented the conditions and all processes and transactions involved in a

text’s production, dispersal, and reception.

These archival studies proliferated with the aim of reconstructing the events that

brought a text or book into being. This was the “new bibliography” that took into account

a book’s sociological context and narrative. From McKenzie’s perspective the book is

“an unstable physical form in “its descent through successive versions.” Tracing the

archival evidence relating to these versions and documents offers embedded “ubiquitous

evidence” (297). He views this evidence as invaluable in understanding the “conditions

under which texts are generated” and therefore understanding meanings and reading.

I found this paper intense and chock full of bibliographical history. McKenzie

addresses topics that embrace writing, replication, distribution and reception of texts

along with the description, collection, and classification of them. In addition to this range

of topics, McKenzie includes studies of the materials, technologies, and processes

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involved with making, trading, and storing texts. Each of these topics is emphasized to a

greater or lesser degree in different periods or bibliographic eras.

McKenzie enumerates early pivotal events in the study of bibliography and book

history, noting that the U.K.’s “Bibliographical Society” has privileged the “history of the

book” since its inception in 1912. The “Society,” launched by McKerrow, is the U.K.’s

foremost bibliographic association. Its publication, “The Library,” includes studies on all

aspects of bibliography and the history of the book. Its members include academics,

collectors, librarians, and working members of the book trades with a mission to

“demonstrate the unity of all bibliographic enterprise and the means by which it entered

into the fabric of all historical enquiry” (292).

Three basic bibliographic periods dominate this paper—early, transitional, and

“new.” The early period identifies those scholars who were instrumental in establishing

the discipline of bibliography and the “Society.” Some of the earliest bibliographic

studies that opened the field to contextual evidence include:

• Arber’s “A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of

London, 1554-1640”

• Duff’s “Century of the English Book Trade”

• Dictionaries of printers and booksellers with peripheral constituents of the

book trade by Plomber et al.

• Greg’s, Boswell’s and Jackson’s studies of the records of the Stationers’

Company

• McKerrow’s text, “Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students” linked

bibliography to literary studies

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• McKerrow’s launch of the journal, “The Library” – U.K.’s pre-eminent

journal for the study of bibliography and role of the book in history and

the history of ideas

During the Society’s initial fifty years, its activities reflected two dominate concerns –

establishing a record of printed books to 1649 and how the most prominent texts in the

U.K. were transmitted from manuscript to print. These concerns entailed a history of the

documents and their chronological connections. This did not involve the historical role of

the book during the early years of bibliography. R. B. McKerrow, W. W. Greg, and A.

W. Pollard focused on applying skills that could reveal and trace the evidence and

relations between prominent or “classic” U. K. texts.

For the historical role of books, McKenzie refers to a group of bibliographers

including John Johnson, printer to the University of Oxford; Stanley Morison,

typographer; Strickland Gibson and Pollard, book binding; and Theodore Besterman, a

bibliographer and eminent biographer of Voltaire. These bibliographers produced a series

of monographs recording histories of subjects in their respective interests. Seven texts

were issued and provided documents that mapped the history of the book trade to 1830.

While there was not an immediate upsurge of interest in the history of the book, these

texts led to later, key publications – Pollard’s “Sandars Lectures” and Morison’s classic

work on John Fell and the Fell “types.”

Other works that contributed to the history of the book from 1930-1960 include:

• Morison’s “History of the Times”

• Plant’s “The English Book Trade: An Economic History of the Making and the

Sale of Books”

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• Howe’s “The London Compositor: Documents Relating to Wages, Workng

Conditions and Customs of the London Printing Trade, 1785-1900

• Bennett’s English Books and Reader

• Blagden’s history of the Stationers Company

• Stevenson’s “The Problem of the Missale Speciale

• Alticks’ “The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading

Public, 1800-1900

• Other works covered topics such as:

• Publishers and relations with authors

• House histories of printing firms

• Accounts of peripheral products of the press such as ballads, chapbooks,

children’s books, maps, prints, and music

As the “Bibliographic Society” developed, the interests of its members expanded and

sustained diverse scholarship centered on the historical study of the book trade in Britain

from Caxton to the mid-twentieth century newspaper. The era up to 1700 covered books

as objects, books as products of trade—by printer and publisher and the circumstances of

their production. Foxon’s authoritative catalogue of English verse planted the seeds for a

history of text production and, ultimately, Pollard and Redgrave’s “Short Title Catalogue

(STC). The STC served historical inquiry in several ways. It was (is—as the ESTC) a

chronological index that enabled study on the work of a specific author, printer, and

bookseller as well as the inter-relationship of texts that may be printed in any one year.

Despite this rich start to the bibliographic enterprise, there was no scholarly text on the

history of the book. The conceptual structure for book history was not in place—the

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nearest sort of work was Pollard’s “Cambridge History of English Literature.” In this

work and others, Pollard addressed fundamental issues of text production and evidence

that had hitherto been examined. However, the emphasis lay on bibliographical issues,

rather than on the development and dispersal of books and the technologies associated

with their production and transmission. By the mid-twentieth century, bibliography in

Britain and the United States was not characterized by general and comprehensive

historical studies. There was more of a resistance to “generality and abstraction” (294).

In contrast, the French bibliographers and historians, Febvre and Martin, published L’

Apparition du livre in 1958, a comprehensive and general history of the book. McKenzie

regards the French direction in documenting a general, abstract history as involving a

linguistic proclivity in French—the book in French is an abstract noun; in English it

refers to the object. So, while Febvre and Martin’s momentous book introduced the

conceptual ground in general book history, McKenzie views British and American

interest in book history from the perspective of acquiring a new perception—the

“relevance of book-trade archives” (294). This perception raised questions about the use

of books beyond analytical bibliography. Marginalia, printers, and “unimportant” texts

became a focus of study.

Minor texts (and all processes related to production) came into focus and spawned an

array of topics related to texts that had been “kept from the centers of power by reason of

their sex, race, religion, provincial or colonial status” (295). These issues related to

cultural history and, in particular, “any culture served by print and the complexity of its

reconstruction” (295). Stanley Morison took up this cause and argued that the history and

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use of the intellect are bibliographical because their findings may deepen historical as

well as bibliographical understanding.

McKenzie’s paper is a rich, concise documentation of the major achievements and

trajectory of English and American bibliography in the twentieth century. It is an

essential, foundational paper in understanding the growth, changes, and aims of

bibliography and book history as a discipline or disciplines.