A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American Verse Printed from 1610 through 1820 by Roger E. Stoddard (review)

Roger E. Stoddard’s bibliography of American verse tries to present chronologically all the poetry that was composed in what is now the United States of America and printed in America or elsewhere in the form of books or pamphlets, but not broadsides or leaflets, before 1821. Approximately half the poetry included was printed before the year 1800, and half in the nineteenth century. The cut-off point of 1820 is that of Stoddard’s predecessor, Oscar Wegelin’s Early American Poetry (1903; 2nd edn 1930), and Wegelin presumably chose 1820 as Charles Evans’s intended (although ultimately not actual) terminus for his American Bibliography. This date can also be seen as marking the end of the period during which poetry was the leading genre of American belles-lettres. The bibliography draws together small, rare, ephemeral works: half of the editions consist of twenty-four pages or fewer, and nearly half (forty-seven per cent) are thought to survive in a maximum of three copies. The fruit of forty years of labour in the field, the work results from the examination of over 6,900 books. It presents 1,332 editions in 1,041 titles and 1,318 numbered entries, and is truly magisterial. The misleading modesty of the verb ‘tries’ (p. [vii]) arises from the author’s awareness that texts and the relationship between them continue to emerge, such that bibliography is never complete.

The work begins with a revision of Stoddard’s essay ‘Poet and Printer in Colonial America: Some Bibliographical Perspectives’, published in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 92 (265–361) in 1982, at a time when 1,299 editions, just nineteen fewer than now, were known. Stoddard has amended his 1982 figures, with adjustments occurring partly from the emergence of additional editions, largely from the correction of information pertaining to editions previously known. The patterns established forty years ago remain extremely similar in 2012, although nearly every precise number has changed. The proportion of apparently unique copies, however, has risen from one in five to almost one in four, while the number of titles printed more than once has sunk from thirteen per cent to eight per cent, and the percentage of books to have omitted the printer’s name has changed from twenty-three to thirty-four. The altered essay functions well as an introduction to the book, although its lengthy lists of dedicatees, illustrations, and bindings, relevant in the periodical article, might be seen as superfluous in their new context: especially the list of dedicatees, since the bibliography indexes these.

In a break from bibliographical convention the bibliographical descriptions regularize capitalization and do not indicate line breaks. The page height of each copy examined is given, as is evidence of provenance, such that to an extent the bibliography merges into a union catalogue. An introductory conspectus of the bibliography provides a quick overview. Eight indexes complete the volume: of places of publication; printers and publishers; artists and engravers; bookbindings signed or attributed; dedicatees; provenance; subject; and author and title.

Stoddard explains convincingly the importance for bibliography of examining multiple copies, to discover new editions, issues, and states, and to establish the ideal copy: ‘I suppose I examined half a dozen copies of Phillis Wheatley’s London-printed Poems on Various Subjects (1773) before a copy shattered my draft description and forced me to admit that there was an immediate and concealed reprint of the book, only slightly variant in makeup and text’ (p. 2); ‘[O]nly Robert Southey’s copy of Washington Allston’s The Sylphs of the Seasons (1813) in the British Library contains the errata leaf [. . .] Only the British Library copy of a Philadelphia satirical pamphlet of 1801, Olio; or...