A Bibliographical Survey of the Published Works of the Eighteenth-Century Wesleys (Samuel the Elder, Samuel the Younger, Mehetabel, John, and Charles) (review)

This annotated bibliography by Mr. Rogal, author of dozens of books relating to eighteenth-century Methodism, reads like a work in progress, missing publications and lacking systematic rigor. Many of its omissions could have been supplied by standard resources like the ESTC, the Wing catalogue, and David Foxon's English Verse 1701-1750, and by specific resources like Frank Baker's bibliographical work on John Wesley and T. W. Herbert's John Wesley as Editor and Author (1940). And it is poorly edited (calling Ralph Straus "Samuel Straus" and dating Mr. Rogal's own Biographical Dictionary "1977" instead of 1997).

Mr. Rogal's short biographical Introduction to the five Wesleys, whose works are surveyed, concludes with several paragraphs on the book itself, but without referring to any preceding tools or studies; thereafter are chronologies and bibliographies for the five (and a sixth part with combined efforts by John and Charles); and then come a secondary bibliography and name and title indices. Entries are numbered in a sequence to No. 950, with the number of a work's first entry emboldened. Titles are listed chronologically, with subsequent editions noted before moving to the next title. The typical entry offers: title transcription (sometimes truncated) and the place and publisher but not the date, only listed above the entry despite some undating or misdating. Often format and, for longer works, page totals are neglected. Contents, understandably not detailed for long works, are too incomplete for short ones; for instance, entries for Samuel the Younger's The Battle of the Sexes never identify the presence of Thomas Cooke's preface nor does the entry for the 2nd London edition indicate the presence of Christopher Pitt's prefatory verses peculiar to that edition (Mr. Rogal just notes "prefatory pages," No. 74). Notes sometimes mention the location of a single copy, almost never more, and often none; they sometimes describe how a copy is bound, yet as often as not fail to locate the copy. This mistakenly implies that most copies have that binding, as the leather binding described for the three-volume Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems, 1744 (No. 306), but Frank Baker thought it probably issued in wrappers. (One wonders if Mr. Rogal describes his own copies.) Sometimes the sole copy noted was bound with another work, and this is recorded as if the two works were generally published together (No. 15 is the same as No. 14 except it is bound with another elegy to her Majesty). Oddly, some nineteenth-century auction prices are noted for unexceptional copies. Information specific to important copies, as John Wesley's own of An Extract from Dr. Young's Night Thoughts, 1770 (No. 664), is often not noted (here we are told of appended advertisement leaves, though they appear in almost no extant copies).

As the inclusion of copy-specific information suggests, Mr. Rogal does not try to combine the description of multiple copies into an ideal copy. Nor does he identify some listings as merely reissues with cancellans titles or sort out copies with varying issues. For instance, we learn from the ESTC but not from Mr. Rogal that the 1694 edition of Samuel the Elder's The Life of Our Blessed Lord is but a reissue with a cancel title. That both shared the same settings would be evident if paginations were routinely recorded, for, as the ESTC notes, pagination errors in 1693 recur in the 1694 reissue. Mr. Rogal has not examined enough copies to identify variant issues and states, as if supposing books of the period are more uniform than they are. Thus, he fails to note the two versions of John Wesley's preface to An Extract from Dr. Young's Night Thoughts (No. 664): one with A3v signed by Wesley, the other with A3 canceled...