Check List of Texas Imprints, 1861-1876 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS105 It is possible that certain persons who have held minor posts are indeed "representative" of their periods, but Holland's narrative approach obfuscates rather than validates his contention. The author admirably continues the nineteenth century melodramatic school of biography. His conclusions faithfully reflect his feelings toward his subject: Young was "a Southern gentleman, a gallant soldier of the Confederacy, a worthy public servant—and a proud and loyal American." Apart from the strong attachment to Young, the author is remiss in stylistic content. Footnotes are lacking in imporant passages and, when used, are frequendy inadequate; and sophomoric statements detract from the seriousness of the study. However, Professor Holland has arranged the family materials of a figure who wrote colorfully of the decades which affected the South. Throughout the text are long quotations from Young's letters and diaries which contain interesting information relating to life at West Point in the antebellum days, to the conflicts between the Bourbons and the Populists in Georgia, and to the political and diplomatic affairs in Russia, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. In fact, the skillful editing of these primary materials might have made for a more substantial contribution to historical scholarship . Joseph Bosktn University of Southern California Check List of Texas Imprints, 1861-1876. Edited by Ernest W. Winkler and Llerena Friend. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1963. Pp xii, 734. $20.00. ) This book completes the coverage intended when the late E. W. Winkler began his bibliographical record of Texas printing, 1846 and onward. With Thomas W. Streeter's fine Bibliography of Texas it completes as thoroughly as can be done at present the list of Texan publications through the centennial year of American independence. Rich in new listings printed in the years 1861-1865 it also makes a giant stride toward full coverage of the printed materials of the Confederate States. Bibliography is a solitary, tedious, demanding occupation. But its rewards are not solely in a job well done. They are also in making the work of historians and other scholars easier. And its greatest reward is in the familiarity it breeds with a place and people through familiarity with what they thought, wrote, and published; for the printed record of a people is our most indelible record of what they published, of what they wrote, and, finally and most importantly, of what they thought. Winkler the bibliographer was the friend of all researchers in Texas history. Their thanks and the wealth of Texas imprints he collected for the University of Texas Library are his rewards. Also his rewards are the collaboration during his lifetime of his colleague Llerena Friend and her service to his memory and to the world of scholarship in completing his intended work. Miss Friend is self-effacing in her preface, but it is a good 106CIVIL WAR HISTORY guess that it is she who is the principal compiler of this massive and useful bibliography. A bibliography is never without its faults, and this book has many. Neither item 12Ix or item 140 is a Texas imprint, and with repect to 12Ix the compiler commits an unforgivable bibliographical sin in not explaining anywhere in the book what the appended letter signifies. It is right, of course, to follow the sequence of entries developed by Mr. Winkler, but the bibliography would be increased in usefulness were Crandall or Harwell numbers cited for appropriate items. "Ghosts" (books possibly never published) creep into bibliographies by the citation of items not seen but recorded from an advertisement or from some later reference. They (see items 505 and 506 for examples) are dangerous to include in a bibliography, although desirable as an appended, separate list. Other ghosts are here created by the compilers, inferring that general orders were printed which have not been seen in a contemporary printed text and may have been issued only in manuscript. (Miss Friend quotes an exceedingly interesting letter from E. W. Cave about his peripatetic press, but the reference within it is to the printing of blank forms, not of general orders, though some general orders were printed.) Many items are recorded without even a presumed or questioned imprint. Items 514, 515, 913, 914, and 915 are...