Notes: The Epic of Bibliography
This calls irresistibly for a note. See Cosgrove,
Peter W. "Undermining the Text: Edward Gibbon, Alexander Pope, and
the Anti-authenticating Footnote." Annotation and its Texts. Ed.
Stephen A. Barney. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
130-151. See also the recent (August-September 1994) discussion of footnotes
and endnotes in SHARP-L, the Internet bulletin board for the Society for
the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.
Back
This has been said of the Variorum Dunciad
in an interesting article by James McLaverty: "The Mode of Existence
of Literary Works of Art: The Case of the Dunciad Variorum." Studies
in Bibliography 38 (1984): 82-105. It is equally true of Variorum's
precursor.
Back
Maynard Mack, in Alexander Pope: A Life.
New York: Norton; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, cited in this
edition, p.ix.
Back
Much honour is due, in my opinion, to Warren
Chappell, the designer of this book.
Back
Blackwells tells me that according to their
computer this book has never been on general distribution in the UK, and
is already out of print in America. It looks, they said, like a short print
run designed almost entirely for library distribution.
Back
I note that one of the Pope items listed with
pride by Ms Szladits is "one of only two known copies of Pope's edition
of the posthumous works of William Wycherley, volume 2 (1729)"-uncut,
and therefore completely unreadable.
Back
Studies in Bibliography 42 (1989): p.41.
Back
What's Past is Prologue. The Bibliographical
Society Centenary Lecture 14 July 1992. Hearthstone Publications, 1993
p. 22.
Back
The Guardian, 15/9/94, OnLine
supplement, p.2.
Back
McKenzie, D.F. "Printers of the Mind."
Studies in Bibliography 12 (1969): 1-75.
Back