Tom Stoppard: A Bibliographical History, and: Arthur Miller: A Descriptive Bibliography, and: Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography (review)

Once again Oak Knoll has produced—either alone, or in association with the British Library—three excellent author bibliographies. The form has developed considerably in the last few years, with each of these titles including a CD-ROM; and, while the standard of these three works is generally high, it is perhaps interesting for students of the genre to consider their differences.

Professor Baker has collaborated with the collector Gerald N. Wachs to produce a lively and useful work. This reviewer was pleased to give a favourable notice to Baker’s Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History (2005), and this new volume does not disappoint. In the Introduction we read that ‘the aim of this bibliographical history [. . .] is to provide as comprehensive and as complete an account of the creative output wholly or partly authored by Tom Stoppard as can be managed in relation to certain conditions, among them the absence of closure and the imperative of having to stop somewhere’: evidently some of Stoppard’s wit has rubbed off on the authors. While Baker is thorough and reliable on the bibliographical details, his main concern is the development and transmission of the texts; the second, of course, requires the first, but this book includes details of archival and computer-stored material when it supplies ‘evidence of creativity’. As with the Pinter bibliography, it is clear throughout that Professor Baker is an enthusiastic admirer of his subject, but this has not blunted his faculties. One minor cavil is that the illustrations of the dust wrappers supplied on the CD-ROM do not reproduce the inner flaps, as this is where changes are quite likely to be made, in price if nothing else; but one imagines that Stoppard must be pleased by this handsome tribute. In these difficult times, it may also be observed that the modest price also represents something of a bargain.

The other two books are in a larger format—almost a small folio. In the case of George W. Crandell’s work one wonders whether it was strictly necessary, given that the text runs to a total of 256 pages. The CD-ROM is also guilty of failing to reproduce the dust wrapper flaps, in most cases, and the PDF format makes it a little harder to zoom in on the images without loss of detail than in the Stoppard bibliography. However the expected information is clearly and efficiently laid out, and, while the lack of information on print runs is regrettable, the book will be a useful resource. The price, though, does seems a little steep.

C. Edgar Grissom’s monumental work (more than two and a half times as thick as Crandell’s, and more densely designed) is an exceptional treat, in many ways one of the most impressive bibliographies this reviewer has ever encountered. There is a vast amount of information and the illustrations for the CD-ROM have been chosen very thoughtfully: it is useful, for instance, to be able to compare all the variant dust wrappers for The Old Man and the Sea, although regrettable that only one of the states of the Henry Strater frontispiece to in our time (the Three Mountains Press edition, Paris, 1924) is reproduced. However Grissom makes up for this (perhaps minor) omission by describing the two states of this uncommon book in considerable detail in the text, and reaching sensible and intelligent conclusions from that description. He also writes sensibly on the plain glassine wrapper sometimes found on Hemingway’s first...