Baedekers to Book Collecting
by Roger Gozdecki

While we tend to discourse at length about the romance and art of book collecting, bibliophiles frequently neglect the fact that bibliography is the science of book collecting. As essential to collectors as the distinctive red Baedeker guides were to world travelers during the late 19th and early 20th century, a descriptive bibliography is the foundation for building a successful collection. It consists of the close physical description of books, including their format (page divisions), their typeface, kind of paper on which they are printed, and details of the binding in which they are housed. A descriptive bibliography gives us the tool we need to accurately identify the various editions of a book and guide us in what we should aim to collect.

Bibliographies are lists of systematically described books that have some relationship to each other. They might be devoted to the work of a single author or include multiple authors' work. They might focus on works pertaining to just one subject, like the California Gold Rush or cookbooks, for example, or might include all the various publications from a particular press or publisher, like the Kelmscott or Grabhorn presses. Some bibliographies attempt to list all the books originating under a specific regional or national imprint, say all the books published on the island of Macao before 1875. No matter what their focus or scope may be, bibliographies are the most essential of all specialized reference books for both dealers and collectors.

Some bibliographies are strictly enumerative, consisting of simple basic checklists of authors and titles, like the Hubin Bibliography of Crime Fiction. While these are generally the least useful kind of bibliography, it is almost always better to have one of these than nothing at all. Descriptive bibliographies are much more pertinent to book collecting since they enable us to tell one edition from another. In addition to information concerning size and format, the most useful descriptive bibliographies will present verbatim transcriptions of the first edition text on both the title and copyright pages. They describe the collation (arrangement of gatherings or signatures) and numerical pagination, including blank leaves and advertisements. By citing the number of copies printed, they give us some idea of the comparative scarcity of the work. The description of the binding will include the color and type of cloth, the layout of the lettering and decoration on the spine and boards, and a similar account of the dust jacket if the book was issued in one. Many of the best modern descriptive bibliographies provide photos of the books, and facsimile reproductions of the title and copyright pages.

In the case of subject bibliographies, incorporating textual information concerning hundreds of different books, it is especially helpful when they include analytical comments and annotations that help to convey some sense of the relative importance of a book within its field. By identifying the cornerstones that delineate the foundations for a particular subject, the most useful and frequently cited analytical bibliographies help collectors distinguish key books from the marginal ones, and to focus their energy and resources more appropriately.

No matter who or what you wish to collect, you are bound to find a relevant bibliography to guide your efforts. You'll find lists of bibliographic references in the catalogues of leading booksellers. Because of their specialized nature, bibliographies are usually published in small quantities and can be fairly expensive. In a short time however, most will be out of print, all but unobtainable, and selling on the secondary market for prices rivaling many of the best of the books that they describe. If you want a copy of the Goldstone and Payne John Steinbeck bibliography, for example, you can expect to pay more for it than you would for almost all of his later first editions combined. Invest in those bibliographies that are germane to your interests and become familiar with their contents. They will pay dividends almost every time you consult them.

In a very real sense, no bibliography is ever complete and there are plenty of opportunities for new contributions by dedicated book collectors. The passage of time frequently gives rise to the need for corrections and revisions in many bibliographies, or opens up some new line of inquiry to spur interest among collectors for a particular kind of book. In this case, dealers and collectors are often uniquely qualified to prepare their own bibliographies. I can think of no higher aim for the true bibliophile than the production of a comprehensive and useful bibliography.