Lydia Bailey: A Checklist of Her Imprints

Methodology

Methodology Certain elements have been purposely omitted from the checklist. After much deliberation I decided not to include a detailed transcription of the transactions listed in Bailey’s journal for items found therein. This is intended as a checklist of the output of her shop, not as an opportunity for a study of the ways in which these items were manufactured. I, perhaps more than anyone else, desire that such an examination be undertaken, but I decided that the checklist was not the place. I hope instead that it is perceived and used as a first step toward such historical inquiry. I have tried to include format (or at least the height) whenever possible. However, because some of my descriptions are based on the Readex microform copy (now available online through their Early American Imprints series), providing this information was not always possible. Other imprints that I identi- fied remotely via online catalogs or correspondence lack that information because of similar physical constraints. A majority of Bailey’s output belongs to a period when providing information about the format and gathering of an item can be beside the point (most of the material is not bibliographically complex, and much of it was worked off a single sheet) or, worse, has the potential to be misleading (most of her imprints are on wove paper; during the period under consideration, stereotyping became a norm). In order to give a sense of the quantity of material she was printing annually, I have included pagination statements for multivolume works (or for the volumes for which she was responsible) when possible. In the case of shared printing this is often impossible to establish ; in these cases I chose to give a pagination statement that coincides with the citation, making additional notes to describe what Bailey printed if known. This is not a comprehensive checklist. Given the ephemeral nature of a great deal of the material, such a bibliography is not possible. Much of what Bailey printed certainly no longer exists. Many items appeared without her imprint and are consequently unidentifiable. In addition, only comparatively recently have historians begun to take a close look at the imprints of the mid- to late nineteenth century, and library catalogs that index the figures involved in the Checklist of Lydia Bailey Imprints 46 D lydia bailey creation of this material are rare, so it is extremely difficult to track down the works of single printers. There are gaps in runs of reports and almanacs printed by Bailey because historically these have been cataloged as serials; this has sometimes made it challenging to locate individual years, though surely she printed entire runs. Conversely, numerous titles appear in her journal that I could not pin down as identifiable imprints (see the appendixes). I expect that a vast majority of her identifiable imprints appear here, but I am quite aware that there will be additions to the checklist in the future. I have cited Hudak when there is an entry in her bibliography; I have not included the statement “not in Hudak” for all the others. The same applies for Checklist Amer. Imprints, as well as particular subject bibliographies for later material . However, I do mention when an imprint is not in those lists with more comprehensive coverage, such as Shaw and Shoemaker, Shoemaker, and subject bibliographies that cover earlier imprints. This is a checklist of copies examined, not of all copies known; one copy was sufficient for identification purposes in most cases; multiple copies were looked at when needed to distinguish variants. Format Entries are listed chronologically by year of imprint and alphabetically by main entry (normalized) within each year. When an attribution to an anonymous work is certain or almost certain, the main entry appears in brackets; less certain attributions are mentioned in notes. The entries consist of a main entry, title, and imprint; a brief pagination statement, including an indication whether an item was illustrated or contained plates and either format or height when known; citations for a limited number of bibliographies; miscellaneous notes; and the location of copies seen. Journal folios are cited when available. Journal entries are occasionally annotated with a note when the person billed is not the same as the person listed in the published imprint or when the printing details are particularly complicated. Title-page transcriptions are shortened where possible; sentence-style capitalization is used following The Chicago Manual of Style, sixteenth edition (8.156), but spelling (and...