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Material Texts: Michael Winship (University of Texas at Austin), “‘The Need of a Bibliography’: Early Attempts at a Comprehensive List of American Books”

  • Monday, November 11, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm

Class of 1978 Pavilion, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center


We welcome Michael Winship (University of Texas at Austin), for a talk titled “‘The Need of a Bibliography’: Early Attempts at a Comprehensive List of American Books.” Professor Winship writes: 

On 19 April 1873, Selma, Alabama, bookseller William G. Boyd wrote to the editor of Publishers’ Weekly, the primary periodical of the American book trade, as follows: “In common with many others of the trade, I feel daily the want of a handy catalogue of all the books…now published and for sale in the United States. How are we to get such a catalogue?” He had an idea of how to answer that question, as did Frederick Leypoldt, PW’s editor, and Boyd’s letter set off an effort that culminated with the publication of the American Catalogue…Being a complete Catalogue…of Books in print and for sale (including reprints and importations) to July, 1876… (1880–81). This landmark volume was widely hailed and became the cornerstone of a series of publications that continues today as Books in Print, as a subscription database.

 The knowledge of what books have been published and are available for sale is fundamental to any functioning system of book distribution. However, the distribution of books in the United States and its history remain little understood and largely unstudied by historians of the book, who instead have tended to focus on authorship, production, and reception. As one contribution to filling this lacuna, this paper will discuss my work in progress to produce a list and study of the early attempts, dating back to the final decade of the eighteenth century, to create a comprehensive list of American books.

 

Michael Winship is the Iris Howard Regents Professor of English II (emeritus) at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a bibliographer and historian of the book—with special expertise in publishing and book trade history in the United States before 1940—who has published extensively on American literary publishing. He edited and completed the final three volumes of Bibliography of American Literature (1955–91) and is the author of American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields (1995). He also served as an editor of and contributor to the 5-volume A History of the Book in America (2000–10). His research interests are book production, publishing, and distribution in the industrial era, as well as copyright and the international trade in books.