The Anatomy of Bibliography - Illinois

2. (Apr. 9, 10)
written contract that, as Edmund Burke proposed, ties together “those who are
living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.”
Boccaccio and his successors, it may be argued, were guided by the angel
who, in the Barnabite library of St. Eloi in Paris, sat for the portrait seen in the
frontispiece of this book. 2 (Admitted: this portrait was done many years later,
well after Boccaccio visited Monte Cassino. For angels, time is irrelevant.) The
angels’ diligent scribal work is an act of faith: readers will exist some day. Their
duty is to cite God’s evidence, convincing and dubious, for readers credulous
and questioning, scrupulous and casual. The metaphors of Boccaccio – the
prototypical reader – and the angel of St. Eloi – the prototypical compiler –
watch over this essay on bibliography.
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What exactly is bibliography? Those who ask the question – the audience for
this book – usually also ask, what all is it, and how do its parts fit together? It is
lists, study, catalogues, references, and history, in fact all of them. All deal with
books, as defined either narrowly – physical objects in folded sheets, the kind
that have been produced by and have guided our civilization since the 1450s –
or broadly – objects of all kinds that are meant to be read. There are millions of
books, and countless readers who have used them and will continue to use them
in countless ways. Many practices have been devised to help the readers find
and use the books. This book, as its subtitle says, is an anthology of perspectives
on those practices. It is meant mostly to describe and celebrate bibliography in
all its parts. Its original contributions to any one of its parts, most of which are
already well developed, are implicit.
My title pays tribute to Holbrook Jackson’s The Anatomy of Bibliomania, in all
its breadth of scope and joyous profusion of specifics, which in turn honors
Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (which Jackson had earlier edited for
Everyman’s Library). Burton and Jackson, to be sure, deal mainly with the
body’s “humours,” not its organs, which are the main concern here. Both are
inquisitive and self-consciously curious, like this book, although they deal with
what thoughtful people feel rather than with bibliographers do.
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2 Reproduced from copies of the catalogue, ca. 1703, of the Barnabite library of Saint-Eloi in Paris,
which survives in the Bibliothèque Mazarine. See further p. 7.
2