Collated & Perfect

Kathryn James and Aaron T. Pratt

An exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, January 18–April 21, 2019, and the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, February 16–August 11, 2019

Introduction For Greg’s practitioner, the same symbols in a printed book promise a power that To begin that inquiry, I should like to is admittedly a little more modest but is recall a classic statement by Sir Walter no more interested in the content of the Greg. It is this: “what the bibliographer text, as such: the bibliographer hopes to is concerned with is pieces of paper or access the printing house that produced it. parchment covered with certain written Both are conjurors. or printed signs. With these signs he is A bibliographer of an earlier era than concerned merely as arbitrary marks; Greg has inscribed his copy of Doctor their meaning is no business of his.” Faustus (1631) in the top right margin: —D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the “Collated & Perfect. J.P.K. 1814.” (fig. 1). Sociology of Texts (1999)1 The man, actor and collector John Philip Kemble (1757–1823), has aggressively In the famous woodcut that accompanies trimmed the pages of his copy and several early editions of Christopher laid them into an album. At some point Marlowe’s The Tragicall Historie of the Life earlier in the book’s history, someone and Death of Doctor Faustus, the epony- wrote a capital R on the title page, and mous scholar stands within a conjuror’s someone else has noted that the book circle, book in hand (see fig. 11, p. 17). He was cataloged on May 29, in the year 17 recalls the figure of the modern bibliogra- of a previous century. It is now held in the pher. “Concerned with…pieces of paper or collections of the Beinecke Library at Yale parchment covered with certain written University. or printed signs,” wrote W. W. Greg in 1966, The book may seem anomalous, the ideal bibliographer treats those signs perhaps a one-off accident of circum- “merely as arbitrary marks; their meaning stance, until it is placed alongside a copy is no business of his.” For Faustus, the of Thomas Lodge’s The Wounds of Ciuill occult symbols in the book given to him by War (1594) held more than 1,500 miles the devil Mephistophilis promise godlike away in the collections of the Harry power, whatever it is they actually mean. Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin (see fig. 14, p. 24). It was also Fig. 1. “Collated & Perfect”: note added to title owned by John Kemble; it, too, has been page of Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall cut down and inlaid. And it, too, bears Historie of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus Kemble’s inscription, “Collated & Perfect,” (London: John Wright, 1631) by John Philip Kemble. Beinecke Speck Ta3 M31 631 alongside his initials and the date he collated it (fig. 2). In the essays that follow, Fig. 2. “Collated & Perfect”: note added to title these playbooks by Kemble will help page of Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Ciuill War (London: John Danter, 1594; STC 16678), elucidate the two terms of his formula. sig. A1r, by John Philip Kemble. Harry Ransom What does it mean to “collate”? What does Center Pforz 624 it mean for a book to be “perfect”?

3 Collated & Perfect draws on the collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, and the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin, to explore the relationship between bibliography, book collecting, and meaning from the sixteenth century to the present. Told through a selection of early English imprints—the focus of Greg and other bibliographers in the Anglo-American tradition—Collated & Perfect begins to chart the standards against which rare books have been measured, and against which we still measure them today.

1 D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 9, quoting W. W. Greg, “Bibliography—an Apologia,” in Collected Papers, ed. J.C. Maxwell (1966), 247.

4 Collated

Kathryn James

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Yale University

5 6 I.

Through the mid-nineteenth century, collation was understood as a process of textual comparison, an examination of the different iterations of a text in order to establish the correct or authoritative version. It is in this sense that it finds one of its earliest usages, by William Thynne in his 1532 edition of the works of Chaucer, describing the “contrarietees and alteracions founde by collacion of the one with the other.” As an editor, Thynne describes his struggle to resolve these textual disparities. His response was to “make dilygent sertch, where I might fynde or recouer any trewe copies or exemplaries of the sayd bookes.” Thynne sought the “very trewe copies” (fig. 3).1 Fig. 3. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Workes of Geffray By the twentieth century, collation had Chaucer newly printed, with dyuers workes come to be associated with the examina- whiche were neuer in print before, ed. William Thynne (London: Thomas Godfray, 1532; tion of the text as material object, in order STC 5068), sig. A2v (detail). Beinecke Idz +532 to establish its relationship with an ideal text. William Thynne’s ideal of the “very Fig. 4. John Leland, The laboryouse journey & serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes trewe copies” was replaced by that of a antiquitees, ed. John Bale (London: John Bale, relational text, representing a material 1549), sig. B1r (detail). Beinecke By6 6 connection to an originating or authorial “copy-text.” As the iteration, however flawed, of a copy-text, the text acted as a radically shaped English scholars’ ghost of its own origin, offering a glimpse relationship with their textual heritage. of the mediations that might have John Bale, a witness to the destruction of occurred in the process of production. the monastic libraries, described finding In England, collation was a response to books at the premises of bookbinders, a particular history of textual uncertainty. grocers, soap-sellers, tailors, and else- The English Reformation had brought where: “some to serue theyr jakes, some with it the dissolution of England’s to scoure theyr candelstyckes, & some to monastic institutions and, with this, the rubbe their bootes” (fig. 4).2 Like others, dispersal of the monastic library collec- Bale responded to this fragmentation by tions. This loss, and its consequences, collecting. The history of collation closely

7 follows that of the collections formed by English individuals and institutions over the early modern period, in the wake of the destruction of the monastic libraries. For many early modern scholars, textual collation was an urgent project of the English Reformation, a way of correct- ing and preserving an always vulnerable Protestant textual legacy. For editors like William Thynne, from the sixteenth century through the present, collation was a project of establishing an authentic English literary identity. In their edition in 1623 of the plays of their friend William Shakespeare, John Heminges and Henry Condell introduced their readers to the problems besetting the editor of English texts (fig. 5). “It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liu’d to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings,” they wrote, in a passage that A.W. Pollard describes as “the only contemporary account we possess of the editing of the First Folio.”3 Heminges and Condell describe their edition as a response to Fig. 5. “To the great Variety of Readers,” in absence and incoherence, their “curing” William Shakespeare, Mr. William Shakespeares of textual imperfections: comedies, histories, & tragedies: Published according to the True Originall Copies (London: as where (before) you were abus’d with Isaac Iaggard, Edward Blount, et al., 1623), diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, sig. A3r. Beinecke 1978 +83 maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors, that This essay examines the ways in expos’d them: euen those, are now offer’d which collation was defined and used to your view cur’d, and perfect of their to stabilize an English textual heritage limbes.4 framed by an originating loss. It follows William Thynne’s “very trewe copies” of five examples of collation, from the 1532 vie here with Heminges and Condell’s eighteenth century through the twentieth, more forcible curing and perfecting of the to look more closely at the relationship absent author’s textual remains. between collation and perfection.

8 II.

William D’Avenant, Gondibert (1651): 4to: A–3K^4. N2 & N4 cancels. 3H3 mis-signed 3G3. First & last leaves blank. [4], 88, [4], 344, [8] pp. Printer’s device to t.p. Head- tailpieces. Decorative initial capital letters.

“C&P”—collated and perfect—is the inscription written by the early eighteenth-century collector Thomas Rawlinson (1681–1725) in this copy of William D’Avenant’s epic poem Gondibert (1651; figs. 6 & 7). The mark is one of the identifying characteristics of the books sold in a series of sixteen auctions between 1721 and 1733, as Rawlinson sought to forestall bankruptcy in the years before his death. The sales dispersed only part of his collection: the auction catalogs describe only a fraction of one of the largest private collections of manuscripts and printed books assembled in England. The inscription itself is now a provenance association, listed in catalog records and rare book descriptions. De Ricci calls it Rawlinson’s “collation mark,” describing the “bold black scrawl” in the books of one of the first collections of sixteenth-century English literature.5 Collation, rather than perfection, drove Rawlinson as a collector and scholar. His collection was a working library, Fig. 6. Thomas Rawlinson’s copy of William holding both complete and incomplete D’Avenant, Gondibert (London: Tho. copies. He and his books were situated Newcomb, 1651). Beinecke Osborn pb124 in a nexus of scholarly relationships and Fig. 7. Detail of fig. 6 correspondence. Thomas Hearne, one of Rawlinson’s most enduring friends and colleagues,

9 drew on Rawlinson’s collection for his friend’s career as a collector began at Eton, own project of English Protestant history. when his grandfather left him an annuity Hearne’s diaries are filled with the record of £14 to buy books, of books sent by Rawlinson, which he which he not only fully expended,…but read, always noting whether they were indeed laid out his whole fortune this way, complete or imperfect texts. Hearne so as to acquire a collection of books both writes that he “read over the follow- for number and value, hardly to be equalled ing imperfect book lent me by Thomas by any one study in England, which was Rawlinson, Esq. (who hath written at what really run him aground, and brought the beginning of it thus: imperft, but still him at last into so much trouble.8 very well worth reading. N.B. the mayor of Sandwich tore itt; wt remains was obtain’d After the death of his father in 1708, and out of his Bogghouse. T.R.).”6 This aston- his inheritance of the family fortune, ishing description of a book obtained out Rawlinson gave up any pretense of of the mayor’s privy hints at the extent practicing law and devoted himself to to which texts had been dispersed and collecting. His letters to Hearne show the devalued during the English Reformation. energy with which he accumulated, read, Collation was also, and always, a and shared early English texts, in print and relational activity. The marks of this can manuscript. As William Oldys noted (with be found on the endpapers and title pages characteristic acidity), Rawlinson outgrew of books, where successive generations his four rooms at Gray’s Inn and by 1716 of bibliographical observers can often be had moved himself and his collections to found agreeing and disagreeing with each London House, the palace of the Bishop other on the status of a particular text. of London, on Aldersgate Street. Here he These notes, and bibliographical research, continued in his “covetousness” of books were taken very seriously. The stakes can until bankruptcy drove him to the first of be seen in a note of 1720, in which Hearne the sales of his collection. “And as he lived wrote to Rawlinson to return a box of so he died,” wrote Oldys, “in his bundles, books on “Godfrey’s wagon,” a carrier from piles, and bulwarks of paper, in dust and Oxford to London, informing him that: cobwebs.”9 Collation was a religious exercise You will find Memorandums at ye Beginning before it became bibliographical. When of each, signifying that I borrow’d them Thomas James, keeper of the Bodleian of you, and that I have read them over. Library, proposed a collation project in Posterity will thereby judge, when you and I 1607, it was to compare print and manu- are retir’d to our Graves, that I am indebted script editions of Protestant works to upon this Account to you.7 ensure textual accuracy. James empha- Rawlinson started to collect when sized the corruption of Protestant texts he was a child. Hearne relates how his and the necessity of the comparative

10 project of collation for “reformation of Rawlinson’s collections survive because the ancient Fathers Workes, by Papists of his brother, who bought his books at sundrie wayes depraued.”10 In James’s sale and continued to build the collection plan, six Divinity students were to after he had recovered the family fortune compare copies of the most recent from the near bankruptcy to which printed works with multiple manuscript Thomas’s collections, and indifference, copies, “truely relating and reporting the had brought it. differences of the written Copies of or The Rawlinson family library, like from the printed Bookes.”11 those of other private and institutional Similarly, a politically charged theo- collectors, was a working collection. Its logical program underpinned collation in governing principle was to establish an the early eighteenth century. Rawlinson’s idea of completeness, to gather as much religious and political views lay at the as possible in order to be able to frame heart of his collecting. He was a nonju- an understanding of the bibliographic ror, a supporter of the Stuart cause who entirety. Like the Elizabethan scholars refused to swear the oath of allegiance working to establish the origins of the to the Crown, “being a perfect hater of English Church, Rawlinson and his peers all new-fangled doctrines” (as Hearne, were concerned with questions of textual a fellow nonjuror, described it).12 Like precedent, of historical example, of many nonjurors, Rawlinson left university proof that their analysis of the religious without a degree so that he would not and political situation was correct. The have to swear the official oaths. Many of perfect copy was one whose text matched his friends were also nonjurors. Others perfectly with a perfectly authoritative wished only to sidestep political differ- textual source. Perfection, in the collated ences, something made more difficult by and perfect copy, centered for the most Rawlinson’s habit, as Hearne described it, part on a textual ideal. of “twitting” his friends, turning the same observant eye on his colleagues that he brought to the comparison of editions. Thomas Rawlinson’s brother, Richard, was a bishop in the nonjuring church, the parallel church consisting of the bishops who had refused to swear the oath of allegiance at the succession of William and Mary. Richard was also a collector, and the papers of many of the bibliographers and antiquarians of the nonjuring church survive because he sought them out after their owners’ deaths. Thomas

11 III. the artifactual and textual specimens of British history. Scholars like William By the nineteenth century, as private Stukeley (1687–1765), who gathered collections like those of Richard observations on Stonehenge, were also Rawlinson had been acquired by univer- textual scholars, evaluating the authen- sity and public repositories, a few collec- ticity of early texts and compiling textual tions had begun to serve as the basis precedents and sources (fig. 8).13 for bibliographical efforts: the British For Henry Bradshaw, librarian of the Museum (now British Library), Cambridge University of Cambridge collections, University Library, and Oxford’s Bodleian natural history provided the organizing Library, among others. The librarians in methodology for bibliographical research. these collections were pivotal figures in In spring of 1870, Bradshaw can be found bibliographical scholarship. writing one of many letters to Winter Bibliographers turned to related disci- Jones, librarian of the British Museum, plines for their thoughts on bibliographi- describing his earnest wish for better cal methodology. Through the nineteenth cataloging of the museum’s fifteenth- century in Britain, they worked along- century books: side antiquarian and natural historical I have been at work for years trying to collectors, who were also engaged in the reduce the matter to a more scientific basis; larger project of collecting and cataloging to be able to look at the treatment of these books from a natural-history point of view— and here your own little blue lists of genera in the zoological department have been of material service to me—my object being to avoid the enormous amount of talk which has for years past been associated with descriptions of early-printed books and, by putting facts side by side in their natural order, to let facts speak for themselves.14

Bradshaw’s methodology represents a radical contrast with the work of scholars like Thomas Rawlinson and Thomas Hearne. Bradshaw used collation to establish a textual norm. Rather than a

Fig. 8. William Stukeley, “A peep into the sanctum sanctorum,” 1724, from an album of engravings assembled by Stukeley, based on his drawings (1750). Osborn fc166

12 necessarily perfect text, the perfect copy IV. was a perfect specimen, an exemplar of the characteristic features and structure Thomas Nashe, A Pleasant Comedie, called of the work. Summers last will and Testament (1600; Bradshaw’s insistence on the taxo- fig. 9). A2, B–H4 (less C3, C4), I2 A1 wanting, nomic nature of books—their philosoph- probably blank. (A2) Title, v. blank. ical status as specimens, capable of B ‘SVMMERS last will and Testament.’ reduction to an established form—under- R–T. Summers last will | and Testament. pinned his approach to bibliographical Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) was the focus description. As Paul Needham has shown, of the literary scholar and bibliographer Bradshaw pioneered the analysis of a Ronald McKerrow (1872–1940). According codex’s structure as one of the principal to his friend and fellow bibliographer W. W. bodies of evidence of its construction as Greg, McKerrow’s greatest achievement a textual object. In doing so, Bradshaw lay in “placing the editing of English articulated the idea of the “collational literature upon a scientific basis.”16 formula,” the descriptive statement of McKerrow published a five-volume the order and grouping of sheets within edition of Nashe’s work between 1904 and a codex.15 Bradshaw’s “method” of 1910. In the first volume, in the first line description profoundly influenced several of the first chapter, McKerrow introduced subsequent generations of literary schol- the concept of the “copy-text,” or the text ars, as Thomas Tanselle has observed. that the publisher or editor used as the Collational description became a surro- basis of his or her work. McKerrow gave gate for the analysis of the textual object a succinct definition of copy-text as “the as empirical specimen. text used in each particular case as the While Bradshaw worked on European basis of mine.”17 books of the fifteenth century, and with In 1927 McKerrow published An the wide-ranging collections of the Introduction to Bibliography for Literary university library, it was as a scholar of Students, one of the first statements of Chaucer that he was most influential. the principles of bibliographical descrip- Bradshaw’s The Skeleton of Chaucer’s tion. McKerrow introduced bibliographical Canterbury Tales (1868) represents analysis as the study of the material his effort to reduce the manuscripts structure of the text, focused on a few of Chaucer to a reliable taxonomy, to discrete material units: the codex, in transform these texts into the recogniz- manuscript or print, formed by the able outlines of genus and species, the sheet of paper, folded into a signature or anatomical skeleton on display in the gathering. Collation was the process of scientific lecture hall. examination of this structure, to determine what might be learned about the circumstances of textual production.

13 For McKerrow, the exemplar acts as Fig. 9. “Coll. Perfect”: a note by the literary the fossil remains, marking the circum- scholar Alexander Dyce on the front stances of production. Close examination endpaper of Thomas Nashe, A Pleasant Comedie, called Summers last will and of these material remains might offer the Testament (London: Simon Stafford, 1600). possibility of discerning an originating Beinecke 1977 2706. A later commentator text, the copy-text, which served as the has corrected Dyce, in a penciled note source for the printed fossil. As Margreta below, observing that Dyce was mistaken. de Grazia has observed, this immaterial Below this, a further commentator: “No!!! presence, the originating and possibly Not even for once.” authorial copy-text, is the persistent, otherworldly sighting in the scholarship of the New Bibliography.18

14 V. identifies the work as “the first authoritative edition of the play, the first quarto William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1604). of 1603 being a shortened version of the Second edition, earlier title. Title, I leaf; text, different in many ways, and possibly B–N4; O2; total, 51 leaves. O2 is wrongly a surreptitious publication.” The record marked G2. Type-page, 6 7/16 x 4 13/16 in. names it as an instance of STC 22276, STC being the acronym for A Short-Title The copy-text stands like a ghost behind Catalogue of Books printed in England, the 1604 Hamlet.19 The title page of The Scotland, and Ireland and of English books Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of printed abroad, 1475–1640 (1926), edited by Denmarke introduces it as an already Gilbert Redgrave and his colleague, the historical text: written by William literary scholar and bibliographer A.W. Shakespeare, printed “according to the Pollard. true and perfect Coppie” (fig. 10). In its In 1909 Pollard published Shakespeare 1604 state, it is already altered from Folios and Quartos: A Study in the another, earlier iteration, “enlarged to Bibliography of Shakespeare’s Plays, almost as much againe as it was.” In the twentieth century, the 1604 quarto edition was defined by its Fig. 10. William Shakespeare, Hamlet (London: differences from an earlier text. The I.R., 1604). Elizabethan Club, Yale University. Yale University Library catalog record Eliz 168

15 1594–1685. The work draws on bibli- evidence. Collation, as a measure of ographical examination to address the textual completeness or perfection, also uncertainty inherent in Heminges and situated a work within a moral context. Condell’s description of the “diuerse Pollard’s conclusion was that, of the stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, nineteen quarto play-texts published and deformed by the frauds and stealthes before 1623, five were considered “by of iniurious impostors.” Pollard enlists universal consent thoroughly bad”: the the material description of the quarto first edition of Romeo and Juliet; Henry and folio texts as one form of evidence, V; The Merry Wives of Windsor; the first alongside other documentary evidence quarto edition of Hamlet; and Pericles.21 from the Stationers’ Register and else- The remaining quarto texts, he argued, where, from which a relationship might could be considered reliable. “The family be discerned between the copy-texts for has no single black sheep in it,” he wrote: the quarto and folio editions of the plays. “there seems no reason for denying to “All the evidence available from external this group of fourteen editions some such sources, or which can be extracted from humble but not disreputable origin.”22 the plays themselves, has been brought Pollard’s theory of “good” and “bad” together,” Pollard writes, quarto texts brought the material book into relationship with an originating and we have now to consider whether this moment of creation. As Zachary Lesser evidence points to all the Shakespeare observed, “By dividing the quartos into quartos being tainted more or less ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ depending on whether indiscriminately with piracy and surrep- they were authorized by the players, titiousness, or whether it is possible to Pollard had begun the process of identify- distinguish between some quartos and ing Shakespeare with the agency behind others, and to offer any solid reason for the publication of Q2.”23 Pollard broached treating some as piratical and surrepti- the possibility of a connection with an tious, and others as genuine and honestly author, and the role of the printed text as obtained. The question is of great impor- mediating influence—barrier or portal— tance for Shakespeare’s text,…[as] if we between the author’s intended text and its condemn these quartos…we are commit- instantiation through the mechanical and ting ourselves to the assertion that the human interventions of the press. editors of the First Folio set up their text in part from the very editions which they condemned in their preface.20

Piratical or honestly obtained; derived from texts condemned by the first editors: these are the charged categories that Pollard attached to bibliographical

16 VI. Following Bradshaw’s own metaphor of bibliography as natural history, Greg Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall argued that “you may name and clas- Historie of the Life and Death of Doctor sify the colours of your sweet peas and Faustus (1631; fig. 11). A–H4. produce nothing but a florist’s catalogue; it is only when you begin grouping them Natural history, and the scientific, became according to their genetic origin that you a powerful organizing metaphor for the will arrive at Mendel’s formula.”24 Mere proponents of bibliography in the early description contrasts with overarching twentieth century. Henry Bradshaw was theory, for Greg, as the collector’s or singled out by W. W. Greg in his 1912 paper cataloger’s collation compares with bibli- for the Bibliographical Society as “the ographical taxonomy. one man in whose hands bibliography This method, crucially, hinged on the had become an exact science.” For Greg, idea of the perfect copy. In his influential to be an exact science meant not simply 1934 paper, “A Formulary of Collation,” to describe, but to be able to produce Greg introduces the idea of collating an overarching theoretical explanation. signature structures as the best way to identify the structure of the codex, “and so give the necessary information for detecting imperfect copies.”25 This “ideally perfect” copy acts as a standard against which other, potentially imperfect iterations of a text can be evaluated. The perfect copy did not at all imply the perfect copy-text. In his draft toward a lecture, held in Greg’s papers in the Beinecke, Greg explains the likelihood of an imperfect text to his audience:

Fig. 11. Christopher Marlow, The Tragicall Historie of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, with John Philip Kemble’s collector’s note (see fig. 1, p. 2). The bulk of Kemble’s collection was acquired by William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, and is now at the Huntington Library. A section of the collection was sold at auction on January 26, 1821, by Evans of Pall Mall, London. See “John Philip Kemble,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

17 It follows, that often there may never have VII. existed what we should call a perfect text of a play: the author may not even have Charlton Hinman, The First Folio of aimed at finality, and so far as something of Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman the sort was achieved in the prompt-book, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). xxvii, goodness knows to whose hand we may 928 pages. owe it. “OUR immortal BARD” was summoned In an insert added later, a long blue arrow from the grave in the early nineteenth connecting it from the margin to his text, century by the London printer Luke Greg concludes: “Thus we see that the Hansard. “Shakespeare’s Ghost!,” a text of a play may differ considerably, broadside of textual excerpts from according to the nature of the manuscript Shakespeare’s patriotic speeches, that happened to come into the printer’s mustered England’s poet to the aid of hands.”26 This was the textual problem his countrymen in the campaign against Greg faced in his work on Christopher Napoleon (fig. 12).27 Shakespeare, “who Marlowe’s The Tragicall Historie of Doctor was as good an ENGLISHMAN as a POET,” Faustus, for which he produced both a was given to his wartime readers as an critical analysis and a parallel-text edition assemblage, a collation of texts. of the play, publishing the 1604 and 1616 Collation, and the collation of Shake- editions of the play alongside each other. speare in particular, was informed by the Second World War as it had been by the Napoleonic. A generation of bibliographers was influenced by the work of Fredson Bowers and his colleagues and Shakespearean scholars Charlton Hinman, Giles Dawson, and Ray Hummel, who together worked for the U.S. Navy as cryptographers decoding Japanese cipher in WWII.28 After the war, Hinman drew on his career in cryptanalysis to develop a machine for mechanical collation.29 “My collator is a rather impressive gadget,” Hinman said, in a talk at the University of Kansas in October 1960. “But what, after

Fig. 12. “Shakespeare’s Ghost!” (London: Luke Hansard, ca. 1803). Beinecke BrSides Folio 2000 4

18 19 observed in the production of the First Folio as a text. Hinman was particularly interested in tracking the proofreading of the printed text of the First Folio. Like the work of the compositor, that of the proof- reader worked as an intervention, another mediation of an original text in its transformation from manuscript into print. In 1968 Hinman published a facsimile edition of the First Folio (fig. 13), drawing on the eighty copies held in the collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Using his collator, Hinman had laboriously compared these copies, in the process identifying several corrected proof sheets for the First Folio’s publication.31 Hinman’s edition was an assemblage, rather than an instantiation of a single extant copy. He exerted his editorial judgment to choose—and reproduce in facsimile—the most perfect Fig. 13. Charlton Hinman, The First Folio of example of each leaf. The Hinman edition Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman therefore does not exist in any single copy: (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). Beinecke it is a mechanically examined, mechani- Ig 11 +968 cally reproduced iteration of an ideal. Mechanical collation, and the machine- all, is it for? What can you do with such a read difference, was one answer to machine?” Hinman’s answer to that ques- the problem of textual disparity. The tion was that, machine-readable text presents its own challenge to Greg’s understanding of of course…you can collate with it. You can bibliography’s concern with “pieces of try to discover differences—even very paper or parchment covered with written minute differences—between documents or printed signs.” It offered a response that are theoretically identical; between, for to William Thynne’s question, in 1532, on example, different copies of the First Folio how to address the problem of “contra- of Shakespeare.30 rietees” and “alteracions” between texts, For Hinman, textual variation between the stolen, surreptitious, maimed, and copies acted as a kind of signal, through deformed copies that together made up which moments of difference could be England’s textual heritage.

20 Notes 10 Thomas James, The Humble Supplication of Thomas Iames Student in Diuinitie and 1 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Workes of Geffray Keeper of the Publike Librarie at Oxford, for Chaucer newly printed, with dyuers workes Reformation of the Ancient Fathers Workes, whiche were neuer in print before, ed. William by Papists Sundrie Wayes Depraued (London: Thynne (London: Thomas Godfray, 1532), A2v. John Windet, 1607). 2 John Leland, The laboryouse journey & 11 Ibid. serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes 12 Reliquiae Hearnianae, 229. antiquitees, ed. John Bale (London: John Bale, 1549), sig. C1r. 13 On Stukeley’s antiquarian and historical work, and his authentication of the forged 3 Alfred W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios Richard of Cirencester manuscript, see Stuart and Quartos: A Study in the Bibliography of Piggott, William Stukeley: An Eighteenth- Shakespeare’s Plays, 1594–1685 (London: Century Antiquary, rev. ed. (London: Thames Methuen and Company, 1909), 1. and Hudson, 1985); Piggott, “William Stukeley: 4 “To the great Variety of Readers,” in William New Facts and an Old Forgery,” Antiquity Shakespeare, Mr. William Shakespeares 60 (1986): 115–22; and David Boyd Haycock, comedies, histories, & tragedies: Published William Stukeley: Science, Religion, and according to the True Originall Copies (London: Archaeology in Eighteenth-Century England Isaac Iaggard, Edward Blount, et al., 1623), A3r. (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2002). 5 Seymour De Ricci, English Collectors of 14 Quoted in “Henry Bradshaw,” The Library Books and Manuscripts (1530–1930) and Their Chronicle: A Journal of Librarianship and Marks of Ownership (Cambridge: Cambridge Bibliography 5, ed. Ernest C. Thomas (London: University Press, 1930), 46. J. Davy & Sons, 1888): 182. 6 Nov 15, 1719. Cited in Remarks and 15 “But every codex, whether manuscript, Collections of Thomas Hearne, vol. 7 (Oxford printed, or blockbook, has or originally had Historical Society, 1906), 65. a definable structure of conjugate (and on occasion nonconjugate) leaves. Bradshaw 7 May 12, 1719, Hearne to Thomas Rawlinson, realized, from a very early stage of his cited from Bodleian Library Rawlinson bibliographical investigations, that the MS 34, f. 46. Cited in Remarks and Collections determination of this structure, and of its of Thomas Hearne, vol. 7, p. 7. Godfrey was relation to the text or texts of the codex, is Thomas Godfrey, who ran a carrier to the perhaps the very first thing one needs to Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, London. See know in order to pursue further questions of Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, how the book or edition came into existence.” vol. 10 (1915), 292. Bradshaw’s notes were for the most part 8 Reliquiae Hearnianae: The Remains of unpublished and are held in his papers at Thomas Hearne, vol. 2, ed. Philip Bliss (London: Cambridge University Library. Paul Needham, John Russell Smith, 1869), 228. The Bradshaw Method: Henry Bradshaw’s Contribution to Bibliography (Chapel Hill: 9 A Literary Antiquary. Memoir of William Oldys, Hanes Foundation, Rare Book Collection, ed. James Yeowell (London: Spottiswoode & University Library, University of North Co., 1862), 101. Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1988), 10.

21 16 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 17 Thomas Nashe, The Works of Thomas Nashe, vol. 1, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow (London: A.H. Bullen, 1904), xi. 18 Margreta de Grazia, “The Essential Shakespeare and the Material Book,” Textual Practice 2 (1988): 69–86. 19 See Zachary Lesser, “Hamlet” after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 20 Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, 64. 21 Ibid., 79. 22 Ibid., 80. 23 Lesser, “Hamlet” after Q1, 61. 24 Walter Wilson Greg, “What is Bibliography,” Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 12 (1914): 40. 25 W. W. Greg, “A Formulary of Collation,” The Library, 4th ser., 14, no. 4 (March 1934): 365. 26 Walter Wilson Greg, “The Elements of Textual Criticism in Shakespeare’s Plays,” OSB MSS 162, Box 6, Folder 2, p. 3. 27 “Shakespeare’s Ghost!” (London: Luke Hansard, ca. 1803). BrSides Folio 2000 4. 28 Alan Galey, “Networks of Deep Impression: Shakespeare and the History of Information,” Shakespeare Quarterly 61 (2018): 297. See also G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers,” Studies in Bibliography 46 (1993): 1–154. 29 Steven Escar Smith, “‘The Eternal Verities Verified’: Charlton Hinman and the Roots of Mechanical Collation,” Studies in Bibliography 53 (2000): 136. 30 Charlton Hinman, “Six Variant Readings in the First Folio of Shakespeare,” University of Kansas Library Series, no. 13 (1961), 3. 31 Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof- reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 1:8. 22 Perfect

Aaron T. Pratt

Harry Ransom Center The University of Texas at Austin

23 24 I. newer, whiter one. Kemble’s The Wounds of Ciuill War, which came to the Ransom The Ransom Center’s copy of Thomas Center as part of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Lodge’s play The Wounds of Ciuill War Library, provides an especially striking (1594) is a perfect book. Perfect, at example: while Kemble usually trimmed least, according to John Philip Kemble. all leaves in a given playbook to a uniform He was the English actor who owned and rectangular shape, the title page the playbook in 1798 and inscribed the of this one has been cut down more title page with his initials, the year, and aggressively. The cuts largely follow the what was by then a standard formula contours of the text and printer’s device, used by collectors, the one that gives with very little of the page’s original nega- the title to this pamphlet and the asso- tive space retained. ciated exhibition: “Collated & Perfect” Today, Kemble playbooks outside of (fig. 14; see also fig. 2, p. 2). By 1820, the Huntington Library—especially the when he sold his collection to William Elizabethan and Jacobean ones—are Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, Kemble often encountered as stand-alone had amassed around 3,500–4,000 copies in what have been cheekily called printed playbooks—and, beyond them, a “morocco liveries,” as individually bound collection of manuscript plays and printed books featuring colored goatskin leather playbills. In 1914 Henry E. Huntington covers, gilt titling, marbled endpapers, purchased the Kemble-Devonshire gilt turn-ins, and gilt leaf edges.3 English collection, which had ballooned to more and American bibliophiles of the later than 7,500 playbooks thanks to additions nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at Chatsworth House, the Devonshire tended to prefer this style for books they seat.1 Huntington then went on to sell off valued, and a high percentage of the early hundreds as duplicates of editions he English literature that survives went acquired from other sources.2 But while through their hands, making bindings they are now widely dispersed across along these lines standard dress for the collections both institutional and private, works of Shakespeare and his contempo- Kemble playbooks remain readily identifi- raries. In the particular case of the Lodge able. For one, title pages tend to retain his volume, the current binding was executed “Collated & Perfect” ink inscription. Most by the esteemed Paris firm of Georges immediately distinctive, though, is the Canape and dates from around the time fact that the leaves in his playbooks have the playbook made its way to Pforzheimer been trimmed down to the printed text via private sale.4 While its covers may and inlaid into a larger piece of paper—a appear austere, the quality of the mate- rials and work both indicate a binding at Fig. 14. Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Ciuill the luxurious end of the spectrum (figs. War (London: John Danter, 1594; STC 16678), 15 & 16). It is simultaneously fancy and sig. A1r. Harry Ransom Center Pforz 624 altogether typical.

25 When Kemble owned The Wounds appear in quantity by the early decades of Ciuill War, though, it did not look like of the seventeenth century, and the main this. Instead, it was combined with a reason for making these and others was half dozen or so other playbooks in a simple: binding in sets was a lot cheaper single binding. Bibliographers refer to than binding individually. When the such volumes as sammelbände, or bound constituent publications were slim ones collections.5 All of Kemble’s stand-alone like playbooks, it also had the benefit of playbooks were in sets of this kind, and producing substantial volumes out of most at the Huntington remain that insubstantial ones; sammelbände could way, a fact that helps explain why they stand upright on a shelf without support look the way they do today, even when and were less likely to be misplaced. encountered individually. In trimming and Another probable purpose of trimming inlaying leaves, part of Kemble’s goal— and inlaying in Kemble’s case was to probably the main one—was to make his remove parts of the paper that had been copies the same size for the purpose of damaged. By the time he was collecting binding them together. A continuation at the end of the eighteenth century, print from the medieval tradition of producing specialists and bookbinders had begun manuscript miscellanies, the creation to develop sophisticated (but not always of sammelbände was common from safe) methods for cleaning paper, but the the earliest years of European print techniques available for closing tears until right around (or right after) the and filling losses paled in comparison to time Kemble was collecting. In England, those possible a century later: completely volumes dedicated to playbooks start to removing margins, as Kemble did,

26 Fig. 15. Lodge, The Wounds of Ciuill War (see fig. 14), front cover

Fig. 16. Lodge, The Wounds of Ciuill War (see fig. 14), front pastedown and turn-ins

Fig. 17. Lodge, The Wounds of Ciuill War (see fig. 14), sig. K3v

obviated most of the need for awkward associated with books in the context of repairs.6 That said, as in the case of The comparing texts, not in the context of Wounds of Ciuill War, it is not uncommon comparing bibliographical objects in the to find patches where damage has none- sense Sherburn and Knight write about. theless encroached into the paper that That Kemble quite literally excised almost remains (fig. 17). everything except the printed text from In writing about the Huntington his copies tells us that it was content Library’s various collections for the first that interested him, too, and not material issue of The Huntington Library Bulletin integrity in the fullest sense. His colla- in 1931, George Sherburn described tion—like Thomas Rawlinson’s, William Kemble’s volumes as “dismembered” and Thynne’s, and others’ before him—was not wrote that his “procedure has insured the the Anglo-American bibliographer’s. perfect preservation of the text, but has As it turns out, The Wounds of Ciuill impaired the bibliographical value of the War does not even retain all of its original editions.”7 Jeffrey Todd Knight explains: leaves. In the printed catalog of the “with each page mounted separately, it Pforzheimer Library, the book’s collation is no longer possible to count leaves in reads: “A–K4 (the last, a blank, lacking).”9 gatherings and to produce a collation Perhaps in part out of deference to formula—that is, to trace the printing Pforzheimer, who had the three-volume and binding of the work by anyone other catalog privately printed at his expense, than Kemble himself.”8 As Kathryn the catalogers, Emma Unger and William James reminds us in the preceding essay, Jackson, were not quite willing to call however, the term “collation” became the copy “imperfect,” but it is clear from

27 28 the parenthetical qualification that what II. was perfect to a collector in 1798 had become at least somewhat less than ideal On the 21st of June, 1666, fewer than by 1940. At the very least, they believed three months before the Great Fire swept that having blanks was preferable to not through London, the bookseller Nathaniel having them: when books do retain the Nowell sold a used copy of an herbal, blank leaves that printers regularly left at John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum the beginning and/or end, the catalogers (1640), for £10. With more than 850 flag them as a point of distinction, as in, leaves (1,700 pages) in folio, it is a large, for example, a copy of Thomas Dekker heavy volume, and this particular copy is and John Webster’s The Famous History hand-colored throughout (fig. 18). It, like of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1607). Jackson gives The Wounds of Ciuill War, is a perfect book— its collation as “A–G4 (the last, blank and or at least it was. On that June day in 1666, genuine).”10 Nowell guaranteed it in an inscription on Kemble’s third quarto of Hamlet (1611), a front endleaf (fig. 19), which he probably now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, wrote at his shop in Little Britain in the offers perhaps the greatest contrast to presence of the buyer: “June ye 21th 1666 / this later way of thinking. It lacks both an Sold this Booke to Mr Hanserd / Knollys initial blank and the title page, but Kemble for tenn pound and / warranted perfect / has nonetheless inscribed his trademark by me Nathaniell Nowell.” formula on the white frame surrounding the first page of the play itself: “Collated Fig. 18. John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum & Perfect J.P.K. 1814.”11 Unsurprisingly, (London: Thomas Cotes, 1640; STC 19302), the Folger’s online catalog describes it sig. [A]2r. Harry Ransom Center -q- QK 41 P2 straightforwardly as “Imperfect,” as no copy 1 doubt the Pforzheimer catalog would Fig. 19. Nathaniel Nowell inscription in have. As long as Kemble could read the Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum (see fig. 18), whole play, though, he was happy. The front endleaf (detail) book—as an object—was perfect as far as he was concerned.

29 At the price, the copy of Theatrum example, an affidavit dated the 21st of Botanicum was far from cheap, and it is June 1664—exactly two years before the not hard to imagine that Hanserd Knollys— Nowell-Knollys inscription—is inside an important Particular Baptist minister a copy of The Workes of John Weemes and author of some repute—would want (1637), a publication that spans four to be sure he had a good copy. Given the volumes in quarto. Here, a bookseller book’s considerable length, though, it with the surname Lee writes, “I doe would have been time-consuming for him warrant these bookes...to be perfect...in to determine if anything were wrong with four parts.”14 Additionally, there is a third, it. Presumably, both of these things are undated warrant of perfection in a Folger what either prompted Nowell to offer his sammelband containing the two parts guarantee or prompted Knollys to request of William West’s Symboleography (1622 it. Although rebacked more recently, the and 1627). This book, another quarto, is a book remains in an early binding, and it single volume containing upwards of 680 does in fact retain all of its leaves—except leaves.15 That all three share in common for the initial blank, which is missing now with the Parkinson the fact that they are and almost certainly was already missing thick books supports the sense that these in 1666. guarantees were occasioned by a large When I recently acquired this volume number of leaves and an awareness that for the Ransom Center, it was the secondhand copies might be missing one earliest instance I had seen of “perfect” or more of them. By the second quarter used in the context of either collecting of the seventeenth century, then, we find or the book trade. Thanks to a tip on “perfect” applied in a book trade context in Twitter and the robust cataloging of the a sense that would have been familiar to Folger Shakespeare Library, though, Kemble. I was quickly able to locate others.12 Of course, “perfect” has been part The earliest, curiously, is in another of the English language for a long time: hand-colored herbal, a 1597 first edition it goes back through Middle English to of John Gerard’s aptly titled The Herball, Old French and then to Latin, perfectus— or Generall Historie of Plantes. On the per-facere or “done thoroughly”—and it verso of the volume’s final leaf, a London has long had a wide variety of uses.16 In bookseller named Richard Whittaker early modern writing, it is not hard to has written a long note dated the 3rd find “perfect” applied to books in partic- of December 1632. In it, he records the ular, but most of the time it is meant to purchase price of £4 and “warrent[s] this communicate approval of a work’s content [book] to bee of the last Impression and rather than anything about its material Perfect.” He then writes that the buyer, a manifestations. There are, however, a “Mr Caprle,” may exchange it, along with number of instances that provide a more 20 shillings more, for a copy of the next immediately relevant context for the edition when it comes out.13 The other book trade inscriptions. For example, in

30 Thomas Middleton’s controversial play, A mentions that he is in possession of “a Game at Chess (1625), one of the allegor- perfect copie in wryting [i.e., manuscript]” ical characters—an anthropomorphized of a treatise by Sir Thomas Smith.19 chess piece, the Fat Bishop—asks after In the examples by Middleton, a book he has written: “Are my booke Williamson, and Spenser’s “E.K.,” “perfect” Printed pawne, my last invictiues against means complete, and the application is / Against the blacke-house?” His pawn simultaneously to textual content and replies, “Ready for publication: / For I material object. Or, perhaps more accu- saw perfect bookes this morning (sir.)”17 rately, the writers apply “perfect” directly Here, “perfect” attaches to books in the to the physical “copie” or “book,” but only sense of them having been “completed” insofar as they understand the text to be or “finished”: the Fat Bishop’s books were complete. This is almost certainly how “perfect” when all of the sheets had gone Kemble used the word when marking his through the press and were gathered books, too, and it is in all likelihood—as into individual copies for distribution. the missing blank in the Parkinson hints— And in Johann Gerhard’s A Golden Chaine how the booksellers offering guarantees of Divine Aphorismes (1632), published also understood it, so long as our concept the same year Whittaker sold the 1597 of “the text” is capacious enough to Gerard Herball, a commendatory poem include illustrations and other content. by Dove Williamson proclaims, “Each If you are interested in reading, as most leafe’s a perfect book.” Here, the empha- were prior to the rise of book collecting sis is slightly different and arguably more as an independent activity in the later akin to what we find in the inscriptions: seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, instead of “perfect” serving to signal there is no need for a different set of eval- that the process of producing a book uative criteria. It was not until the advent or books has concluded, resulting in of modern bibliography that anyone was complete copies, the adjective tells us ever tasked with turning old books back more simply that a copy of an existing into (virtual) sheets. Before then, it was book includes everything it is supposed almost exclusively the other way around: to have—that it has been perused and binders turned sheets into books. Neither deemed complete. The boast in the poem reader nor secondhand bookseller had a is that Gerhard’s aphorisms are so good reason to evaluate the completeness of that it would be fair to consider each a book using the criteria we do now, so it leaf, on its own, as a complete copy of a should probably come as no surprise that book. Williamson continues: “Each part’s an understanding of content, and not the enough, yet not the whole too much.”18 If ins and outs of printing, was the way to we go back decades before anything cited do it.20 thus far, we can find one of the glosses to Spenser’s Shepheardes calender (1579) in which the elusive annotator, “E.K.,”

31 III. Beverly Chew (1850–1924), Herschel V. Jones (1861–1928), and John L. Clawson There are copies of the first edition of (1865–1933). Between Chew and Jones, Thomas Heywood’s comedy The Wise- the book was owned by Huntington, who woman of Hogsdon (1638) at the Ransom sold it off in favor of the Bridgewater Center as part of the John Henry Wrenn copy. Remarkably, in getting from Chew (figs. 20–22; see also figs. 28 & 29) and to Pforzheimer, this single copy of The the Pforzheimer (figs. 23–26) Libraries. Wise-woman of Hogsdon changed hands Each could be considered a perfect book. four times in a span of fewer than fifteen By the criterion of textual completeness, years. And all five owners were American. they pass: the title page, which has the Chew sold the book along with others dramatis personae on the verso, the to Huntington in 1912; Huntington sold it play itself, and the commendatory poem via auction to Jones through Anderson on the last page are all there. And there Galleries in 1918; Jones sold it via auction is no problem with their collations as to Clawson in 1919, also through Anderson offered in bibliographical formulas, either. Galleries; and Pforzheimer purchased it Published in 1920, the Wrenn catalog at the auction of Clawson’s library in 1926, gives its as “Small Quarto, A to I, in Fours” which, yet again, was held by Anderson and goes on to specify the contents as I Galleries.22 This period of turnover may have done.21 The collation in Pforzheimer have been especially high-paced, but the for its copy reads, “A–I4; 36 leaves,” and market in the United States for English a pencil inscription on a rear endleaf literature had grown hot as the country’s confirms that the book is “Coll. + Perft.” elite had become wealthy.23 Moreover, But despite collating the same—despite collectors buying at the highest level collating complete according to these were often doing so later in life and catalogs—the two copies of this playbook selling as they either wound down or died are very different. or, as in the example of the Chew sale to The Pforzheimer copy of The Wise Huntington, as their collecting interests Woman of Hogsdon is an essentially shifted. uncomplicated playbook, bibliographically The Wrenn Hogsdon is broadly similar speaking, though it does have a distin- in appearance to the Pforzheimer. It is guished—albeit recent—pedigree. It has in a collectors’ binding of the kind first been in a red morocco collectors’ binding discussed at the beginning of this essay, with marbled endpapers and both gilt and but the endpapers are plain rather than blind-tooled decoration since the early marbled and, crucially, it was fashioned to mid-nineteenth century, when Charles by a later generation of artisan than Murton (fl. 1821–40) bound it (fig. 23). And Murton (fig. 20). A stamp on the front three of its owners before Pforzheimer turn-in (fig. 22) identifies both binder and have applied their leather book labels owner: “BOUND BY RIVIERE & SON FOR to the front marbled pastedown (fig. 25): J.H. WRENN.” Wrenn, having purchased

32 the book in 1903, had it bound by the gentlemen did in pursuit of perfect copies. London firm of Riviere and Son. Arguably, Sophisticating books was, in this way, a the appearance of the printed paper of sophisticated activity. But although the the Pforzheimer copy is a little worse ultimate origin of “sophisticate” is an than what we see in the Wrenn—when Ancient Greek verb meaning to become judged against the standard of a brand- wise or learned, by the time the word new modern book, anyway. More grime reached English, it had taken on a firmly has accumulated around the title page’s negative connotation from its association margins, for example, and there is with the so-named sophists, rivals of damage to the lower margin where an ink Plato. In fact, some of its first appear- inscription or doodle has been effaced ances in English are the ones relevant to (fig. 26). On the other hand, the blank its use in a modern book trade context: margins in the Pforzheimer are slightly if a product had been “sophisticated” in wider, and by the early twentieth century, late medieval or early modern England, it this mattered to collectors. Still, both had been adulterated by mixing in impure are comparatively well-margined copies or foreign elements. This is more or less in good condition: only the hooked top what the participle means in a book trade of a single long-s (ſ) has been cropped context today. A sophisticated book is one from the headline on a single page of the that has been made to pass on the market Wrenn copy. But while the Pforzheimer as a complete book by supplying missing playbook has survived in its present leaves with those from another copy or condition due to a succession of careful copies—usually authentic ones from the owners dating back to around 1638, the same edition. Such books are also called year of its publication, the Wrenn copy in a “made-up” copies.24 In most examples, very real sense did not even exist prior to only a few missing leaves have been 1903 when he bought it. Or, more accu- added from a single source. The case of rately, it did not exist until Riviere and Son the Wrenn Hogsdon and many of Wrenn’s completed their binding. other books, though, is far messier. This is because Wrenn’s copy of The Wrenn, a Chicago financier, worked Wise-woman of Hogsdon is an extreme with the English bibliophile Thomas example of what is often known as a James Wise to acquire books for his sophisticated book. With tongue in cheek, collection. In 1918, George W. Littlefield, it could be said that the playbook is a former Confederate Army officer, sophisticated in the sense we commonly purchased Wrenn’s collection of some use the term now: the Riviere and Son 6,000 volumes of English (and some binding marks it as refined, the kind of American) literature for $225,000 and book that a cultured gentleman would gave it to the University of Texas. It was own, and the act of sophisticating—in the university’s first rare book collec- the sense meant by bibliographers—is tion. About a decade later, it became the sort of thing that such cultured clear that Wise had forged a series of

33 Fig. 20. Thomas Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (London: Henry Shephard, 1638; STC 13370), front cover. Harry Ransom Center Wh H519 638w

Fig. 21. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (see fig. 20), sig. A1r

Fig. 22. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (see fig. 20), front turn-in (detail)

34 Fig. 23. Thomas Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (London: Henry Shephard, 1638; STC 13370), front cover. Harry Ransom Center Pforz 487

Fig. 24. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (see fig. 23), sig. A1r

Fig. 25. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (see fig. 23), front pastedown and turn-ins

Fig. 26. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (see fig. 23), sig. A1r (detail)

35 nineteenth-century pamphlets and was B and D, contribute two leaves each. One passing them off to collectors as hitherto of the latter two, copy B, is the pilfered unattested rarities. The earlier books Garrick volume, which has stubs where he sold to Wrenn and others, though, two nonconsecutive leaves have been escaped scrutiny until after Wise died in excised. Bizarrely, the C playbook that 1937 and his personal collection, known supplied Wrenn’s final quire is the one as the Ashley Library, was purchased that forms the basis of the Ashley copy, by the British Museum (now the British and the Ashley copy has in its place the Library). In 1956, David Foxon announced quire that belongs with the A copy that to the public that there was “Another forms most of Wrenn. In other words, the Skeleton in Thomas J. Wise’s Cupboard,” two copies swapped final quires. as one Times Literary Supplement head- In his preface to the 1920 catalog of line read: he had discovered another set the Wrenn Library, Wise writes that, per of misdeeds when comparing Wise’s his agreement with Wrenn, he had “‘first playbooks with copies of the same call’ on Shelley, Dryden, Prior, and the editions already at the British Museum. early quarto plays, [and] Wrenn had ‘first After painstaking forensic examina- call’ on Pope, Wither, and other authors.”26 tion, Foxon was able to determine that Presumably, then, Wise felt permitted to a number of leaves missing from older assemble the best copy for himself and a British Museum copies—mostly ones that slightly less ideal—but still good—copy actor David Garrick had donated—had for Wrenn. So, if he generally preferred been fully integrated into Wise’s. Wise, the C copy but liked A’s final quire, as it he rightly concluded, had stolen from appears he did, he could mix and match at the British Museum. Foxon could not will. This does not necessarily mean that find all of the missing leaves in London, he gave short shrift to Wrenn’s Hogsdon, but he knew that Wise had also built a though: leaf C4 in copy A was present collection for Wrenn. Before publishing but had a partially shaved headline, so on the Foxon thefts in 1959 and again in Wise used playbook D to supply a better 1961, he was able to find quite a few of the one. We can know the condition of the stolen leaves among the playbooks at the discarded A leaf because it survives as a University of Texas.25 singleton at the Ransom Center (fig. 27), In the specific case of The Wise-woman along with leaves from several of the of Hogsdon, Foxon’s investigation revealed other playbooks Wise used for sophis- that the Wrenn copy is a composite made ticating copies. The University of Texas of leaves sourced from four distinct acquired them in 1921 as part of the copies of the 1638 edition. A primary library of another of Wise’s customers, copy—Foxon’s A copy—provides the George A. Aitken.27 title page along with 28 of the 36 leaves. The Wrenn and Ashley playbooks Another, the C copy, provides all four are very much artifacts of the book leaves of the final quire; and two others, trade of the late nineteenth and early

36 twentieth centuries. For one, Wise’s Fig. 27. Thomas Heywood, The Wise-woman method depended on the fact that most of Hogsdon (London: Henry Shephard, 1638; collectors’ bindings from the period hold STC 13370), sig. C4r. Harry Ransom Center 61-4779d the textblock together using a technique known as oversewing. Unlike older, more traditional binding methods, oversewing does not require gutter folds, making it easy to bind large numbers of individual leaves together. Wise was free to remove and insert as many as he wanted. Additionally, paper restorers could wash and then press leaves that had come from

37 different sources to remove stains and and the other collectors he worked with achieve a largely uniform appearance. indicate “that they...accepted the practice And, most importantly, techniques for without question.”29 In a letter to Wrenn repairing paper had improved substan- dated December 14, 1904, Wise reports, tially since Kemble chose to have his I have made your “Marriage A-la-Mode,” playbooks cropped and inlaid. When 1673, perfect. I found a very imperfect copy Wise and Wrenn were collecting, experts in a bundle of imperfect plays which I were able to fill losses and replace leaf have, and fortunately it had the two leaves margins with almost no visible seams, which in your copy had been supplied from sometimes at least partially matching a copy of the Third Edition. So now the chain lines—even watermarks—by using book is all right! period (or period-sympathetic) paper for Once again the wisdom is proved of the repairs.28 Neither Wrenn nor Wise preserving any play, no matter how imper- appears to have been inclined to pursue fect it may be! One never knows what may the most advanced possibilities, but the not come in useful some time or other! 30 ability to extend leaves in an elegant way enabled them to include leaves of Not only is sophisticating a copy above- different sizes in the same book, includ- board in this passage, it is almost ing those with margins that had been virtuous. Previously defective, Wrenn’s damaged from pamphlet stitching that playbook by Dryden has been “made... had torn and, more nefariously, those perfect” and is now “all right.” And there that had been cut or torn out of a bound is no reason to think that Wise was dialing book, as in the case of the British Museum up the rhetoric to pull the wool over leaves. Kemble had achieved consistency Wrenn’s eyes, because so many of his from playbook to playbook in the same own books, like the Ashley Hogsdon, were sammelband by inlaying cropped leaves also made up—to an extent even beyond into different pieces of paper, and the what was necessary for completeness, restorers working for Riviere and Son as the leaf swaps show. In fact, because achieved consistency between leaves of the all-round approval we find in this in the same edition by rebuilding their instance, it is probably better to use margins, almost invisibly (figs. 28 & 29). “made-up” rather than “sophisticated” In thinking about the activities of Wise, when describing the practice—as ABC it is important to keep the thefts sepa- for Book Collectors prefers—as it avoids rate from the practice of sophistication any risk of misrepresenting historical itself. While it is easy to dismiss both attitudes toward it. as morally suspect, supplying missing Ultimately, Wrenn’s copy of The Wise- leaves with ones legally acquired has not woman of Hogsdon helps to highlight always been tainted in the way that the the moment when the development of negative connotation of “sophisticated” Anglo-American bibliography began to may suggest. Letters from Wise to Wrenn effect a shift in how the book trade and its

38 customers evaluated rare books. By the Fig. 28. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon time the University of Texas published the (see fig. 20), sig. B2r. This leaf was originally Wrenn catalog, collation formulas were in the Garrick copy, now at the British Library 644.e.41 well on the way to becoming the primary way of determining whether or not a book Fig. 29. Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon was complete. As W. W. Greg would go on (see fig. 20), sig. B2r (detail). Contrast has been digitally applied to reveal the seam where the to specify in 1934, collation was useful margin has been replaced. for providing “the necessary information for detecting imperfect copies.”31 By promising an objective basis for describing and then judging books, collation as a bibliographical exercise nudged the focus away from the content of a book to the printed sheets that transmit that content, from text to object. A desire for copies with large, wide-margined leaves did the same. And yet Wise’s preference for mixed-leaf books reminds us that a commitment to completeness in bibliographical terms need not also come with a commitment to historical integrity.

39 IV. that a collector like Pforzheimer would want to commemorate it. More than one hundred black-and-white Several images also feature books’ images of books and manuscripts are early structures. In fact, the first volume included in the three-volume Pforzheimer begins with one showing the exterior of catalog. Of these, the bulk reproduce Pforzheimer’s Gutenberg Bible, which the printed or manuscript leaves. In the case catalog itself did not even include. The of the unique copy of Ben Jonson’s Time two bindings date from around the turn of Vindicated, the entire masque is presented the seventeenth century. (The University in facsimile. A number of photos, though, of Texas purchased Pforzheimer’s show bindings. One shows his four copies Gutenberg in 1978, eight years before of Tottel’s Miscellany partially spread out it acquired his early English literature.) on a table, and another shows the upright From the English collection proper, the spines of his nine copies of A Mirror for early bindings highlighted in photographs Magistrates. The emphasis in these is on range from one that few would consider the impressive number of editions that a true binding—Shakespeare’s Richard II Pforzheimer has been able to accumu- (1634) remains untrimmed and stab- late of a single work. A different type of stitched as issued—to limp parchment binding photo shows an individual struc- around copies of Tottel’s Miscellany and ture that highlights notable provenance, Joseph Hall’s Virgidemarium (1598), to as in the case of his copy of Milton’s A the decorated calf that protects a gift Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, which manuscript made by the famous callig- remains bound with the Bridgewater rapher Esther Inglis. All are evidently arms on its covers and the bookplate books for which Pforzheimer had a on its front pastedown. It was originally particular affection. In his introduction to performed before John Egerton, the Earl the catalog, he even singled out the Hall: of Bridgewater, and Pforzheimer’s copy “the Virgidemarium is a perfect example boasts corrections to the text that may be of a book in the original vellum with the in Milton’s hand. Showing the binding and ties in place just as the book was issued plate is a way to both show off and shore in 1598.”32 Quite unlike Wise, Pforzheimer up that provenance claim. In the single was interested in preserving books as instance where there is a photo of a historical artifacts. He was after books in firmly modern binding that does not bear their “original” condition. arms or a crest, it is a sumptuous one Unfortunately for Pforzheimer, much by the famous Regency binder Charles of what he purchased for his collection Lewis. His work is in several ways the had gone through the hands of Victorian most immediate English forebear of what and Edwardian collectors and was we find in bindings by Riviere and Son rebound accordingly. A perusal of the and their contemporaries at the turn of catalog descriptions themselves demon- the twentieth century, and it makes sense strates, though, that he sought out copies

40 in early structures when possible and alum-tawed supports. More seriously, the that he—or at least his catalogers—was textblock itself has broken into a number proud when he could get them. The of different pieces. Toward the end of The bindings of around 110 of the more than Posies and throughout both The Steele 1,100 printed volumes in the Pforzheimer Glas and The Glasse of Gouernement, it library are described as “original” or has fractured so fully that some of the possibly so. With such high-profile separated sections are individual eight- editions, a rate of around 10% is impres- leaf quires. While it was not likely in sive indeed, and when a binding has been exactly the same state of disrepair when judged “original,” the binding description the Britwell and Pforzheimer catalogs begins by saying so, making it hard to were written, there is every reason to miss. Not infrequently, the catalogers go think it was close to it. Pforzheimer took on to identify copies in early bindings as care of his books, and the Gascoigne “the finest known.” Even the comments has only infrequently seen light in the that accompany each description reveal reading room. At best, the textblock had something of an obsession with early all but pulled away from the covers when bindings; they regularly identify early bindings on copies held elsewhere. Fig. 30. The parchment binding of a sammelband We can see the priority that containing three editions by George Gascoigne Pforzheimer placed on contemporary (1575–76). Harry Ransom Center Pforz 404 structures by looking at his sammelband of three editions by George Gascoigne (figs. 30 & 31): The Posies (1575), The Steele Glas (1576), and The Glasse of Gouernement (1575). The binding description reads, “Original vellum, loose. 7 3/4 x 5 7/8 inches.”33 The entry then goes on to describe the copy of The Posies, in particular, as “without doubt one of the finest known.” Similarly, the auction catalog for the Britwell sale, where Pforzheimer acquired it in 1924, described the three editions as in “original vellum, loose in binding” and indicated that they are “VERY FINE COPIES.”34 In both descriptions, though, “loose” is somewhat of an under- statement: the textblock has completely separated from the parchment covers at the rear, and it is currently held at the front very tenuously by only one of its four

41 Fig. 31. George Gascoigne, The Posies (London: Richard Smith, [1575]; STC 11636), sig. U2v and George Gascoigne, The Steele Glas ([London]: Richard Smith, [1576]; STC 11645), sig. A1r. Harry Ransom Center Pforz 404

Fig. 32. Custom slipcase commissioned by Pforzheimer to protect his Gascoigne sammelband (see figs. 30 & 31)

42 the volume was cataloged. Apparently, V. though, the damage did not affect the catalogers’—or Pforzheimer’s—judgment Of course, Pforzheimer’s preference of the volume. for complete copies with (little to) no It is not entirely obvious how best to sophistication meant that only some reconcile the apparent friction between books in early bindings interested him. the high praise given for the condition of His printed book collection, after all, has the sammelband and its actual condition. earned praise based on the desirability Because they had long been established of the editions represented along with as desiderata, perhaps the answer is to the condition of its copies. This combi- stress the importance of completeness nation allowed him to vie for distinction and paper size above all else. Both of within what was then—and, in many ways, these factors are surely a major part of remains—a decidedly masculine culture why the copy is “fine”—even the “finest”— of book collecting. With exceptions but it is difficult to see how the binding allowed for editions by England’s first could not have played a role, particularly printer, William Caxton, and a handful of given Pforzheimer’s evident interest in other especially scarce books, imperfect early structures. What seems to be going copies would not have passed muster, on is that the relative age of the binding however they were bound. Indeed, the is what mattered to him, not so much its cynical critic might attribute the turn structural integrity. It is probable that he toward original condition to collec- would have preferred a binding that was tors’ general mania for “points,” which contemporary to the editions contained arguably arose as much or more from a within and functional, but the former need to draw increasingly fine distinc- seems to have trumped the latter. He also tions between copies in the competitive could have had the binding repaired, but world of collecting and bookselling as he did not. Instead, he commissioned a from reasoned interest in the conditions quarter-morocco slipcase to protect it of production and early circulation as as is, one with his gilt arms on the side such. Whatever the reasons behind them, (fig. 32). With Pforzheimer’s Gascoigne changing criteria in these worlds have sammelband, then, we have a sign that increasingly led to the preservation of the historicity of a volume of English early bindings, provenance inscriptions, literature as an artifact has trumped in and reader annotations. At the same time, importance its functionality as a book to though, it is worth realizing that Wise’s be read. earlier and almost singular prioritization of completeness has preserved much that would otherwise not have survived, especially not in institutional collections, which in general remain averse

43 to incomplete copies when making new some speeches—despite the fact that acquisitions (fig. 33). the leaves have been washed. These As Wise wrote in his letter to Wrenn, may contribute to a new story about the there is “wisdom” in “preserving any reception of Heywood’s comedy. And the play, no matter how imperfect it may be! Wrenn’s two leaves from the D copy have One never knows what may not come in a distinctive pattern of stab-stitching useful some time or other!” At the turn holes that may help identify other D of the century, the utility of fragmentary leaves in a yet unidentified copy of the playbooks was in helping to produce Hogsdon edition. Or, very possibly, those textually complete copies of the kind two leaves may be all that remain from a that would have also satisfied Kemble fragment that is now otherwise destroyed. and seventeenth-century collectors. They are valuable either way: it takes only Now, with the forensic methods used by one leaf to find a new textual variant, a Foxon in his investigation of the British different paper stock, an irregular binding Museum thefts, we can find those frag- history, or owner engagement in the form ments in made-up copies and examine of manuscript inscriptions (fig. 34)—or them anew, as parts of originally distinct something we do not even know to copies. For example, leaves from the A look for yet. There are many reasons to copy of The Wise-woman of Hogsdon still condemn Wise, but, in retrospect, we have faint crosses in red crayon next to might feel obliged to thank him, too.

44 Fig. 33. Playbook fragments supplied by Thomas J. Wise to George A. Aitken. Harry Ransom Center 61-4779h, 61-4779a, 61-4779n, 61-4779b, 61-4779e, 61-4779f, 61-4779g

Fig. 34. Manuscript annotations in Thomas Heywood, The Iron Age [Part 1] (London: Nicholas Okes, 1632; STC 13340 or 13340.5), sig. B1r. Harry Ransom Center 61-4716

45 Notes 13 Folger Shakespeare Library STC 11750 copy 6. The second edition of Gerard’s Herball 1 George Sherburn, “Huntington Library was published that next year, in 1633. Collections,” The Huntington Library Bulletin, 14 Folger Shakespeare Library STC 25209 no. 1 (1931): 42–43. Vol. 1. 2 Most notable is the Bridgewater Family 15 Folger Shakespeare Library STC 25275 Library, which Huntington purchased in 1917. copy 2. 3 For the tongue-in-cheek term “morocco 16 “Perfect, adj., n., and adv.,” OED Online liveries,” see, for example, William A. Jackson, (June 2018). “Edward Gwynn,” The Library, 4th ser., 15, no. 1 (1934): 92. 17 Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chaess ([London]: n.p., [1625?]; STC 17883), sig. D3v. 4 Emma V. Unger and William A. Jackson, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature 18 Johann Gerhard, A Golden Chaine of Divine 1475–1700 (New York: Privately Printed, 1940; Aphorismes ([Cambridge?]: [Thomas Buck and reprint, New Castle, Dela., and Los Angeles: Roger Daniel], 1632; STC 11769), sig. ¶¶1r. Oak Knoll Press and Heritage Book Shop Inc., 19 Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes 1997), 2:646. Calender (London: Hugh Singleton, 1579; STC 5 Knight writes that surviving Kemble 23089), sig. A2v. volumes contain “roughly” six to eight 20 This is not to imply that early collectors playbooks. Jeffrey Todd Knight, “Shakespeare and booksellers were necessarily unaware and the Collection: Reading Beyond Readers’ of how early printed books were put Marks,” in Shakespeare and Textual Studies, together, only that content was the standard ed. Margaret Jane Kidnie and Sonia Massai against which books were measured (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, before bibliography became interested in 2015), 190. reconstructing sheets as they went through 6 On the history of paper-cleaning practices, the press. see David McKitterick, Old Books, New 21 Harold B. Wrenn and Thomas J. Wise, A Technologies: The Representation, Conservation Catalogue of the Library of the Late John Henry and Transformation of Books since 1700 Wrenn (Austin: The University of Texas, 1920), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2:265. 2013), 28–37. 22 Unger and Jackson, 2:488; and The 7 Sherburn, 42–43. Library of the Late Beverly Chew, Part I: 8 Knight, 190. English Literature before 1800 (New York: The Anderson Galleries, 1924), [i]. 9 Unger and Jackson, 2:646. 23 Pforzheimer explains that “enlarged 10 Unger and Jackson, 1:266. industrial operations” around the turn of the 11 Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22277 twentieth century brought about “greater copy 3, sig. B1r. prosperity,” which, in turn, brought more collecting at a time when there was more 12 Andrew Keener (keenera), Twitter, January selling in England. He writes that “taxation 31, 2018, 3:48 p.m., http://twitter.com/ and other causes” after World War I pushed a keenera/status/958804304839704576. number of important English collections onto the market. “American collectors were quick

46 to seize these opportunities,” he continues, “and brought to this country many rare books and manuscripts, most in excellent condition and many of historic provenance” (Unger and Jackson, 1:ix–x).

24 John Carter and Nicolas Barker, ABC for Book Collectors, 8th ed. (New Castle, Dela., and London: Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 2004), 147. 25 David F. Foxon, Thomas J. Wise and the Pre-Restoration Drama: A Study in Theft and Sophistication (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1959); and David F. Foxon and William B. Todd, “Thomas J. Wise and the Pre-Restoration Drama: A Supplement,” The Library, 5th ser., 4, no. 1 (1961): 287–93. 26 Wrenn and Wise, x. 27 A number of Aitken’s more substantial playbooks are also sophisticated, some with stolen British Museum leaves. 28 Bookbinders and paper restorers tended to be secretive when it came to their methods. For one tell-all, originally published in German in 1938, see Max Schweidler, The Restoration of Engravings, Drawings, Books, and Other Works on Paper, trans. and ed. Roy Perkinson (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Project, 2006), esp. 109–26. 29 Foxon, 5. 30 Fannie E. Ratchford, ed., Letters of Thomas J. Wise to John Henry Wrenn; A Further Inquiry into the Guilt of Certain Nineteenth-Century Forgers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), 396; quoted in Foxon, 5. 31 W. W. Greg, “A Formulary of Collation,” The Library, 4th ser., 14, no. 4 (March 1934): 365. 32 Unger and Jackson, 1:x. 33 Unger and Jackson, 2:391. 34 Catalogue...of the Renowned Library Formerly at Britwell Court (London: Sotheby and Co., 1916–27), 13:73.

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