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David Pearson, Provenance Research in Book History: A Handbook. [London:] The British Library / Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Pp. ? + 326. Illus. ISBN 0-7123-0344-8. £45.00.
This interesting and valuable volume was created for researchers in general, not for classical scholars in particular. But many, probably most, classical scholars own classical libraries; most, perhaps all, of these libraries contain second-hand books; and, not uncommonly, these second-hand volumes carry evidence of their former ownership.
That such evidence can have scholastic, biographical, or romantic interest is obvious enough. Thus, editors are known to use marginal notes to improve their texts. ' Biographers take marginalia into account in treating the lives of scholars.2 Doubtlessly, many classical scholars have been pleased, or at least interested, to discover books signed or marked by their more notable predecessors. But all who see books possessing any of these elements face difficulties.
Pearson's is a work 'intended to provide a basic reference source for people who are concerned with the provenance - the previous ownership - of printed books and manuscripts' (p. 1), and his volume breaks much new ground.3 In particular, the author aims to help investigators variously to decipher inscriptions; to identify bookplates, book labels, bookstamps, and armorial bookstamps; to discover information about other books owned by collectors; to find copies of auctioneer and booksellers' catalogues; to investigate book collecting and book collectors in particular periods; and, lastly, to record provenance information in catalogues (pp. 10 sq.).
His single volume thus encompasses numerous fields of study and, given the large amount of material available in each area - some fields, indeed, are independent disciplines in their own right - the author has understandably chosen to limit himself 'primarily [to] British book ownership from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth' (p. 1).
The work itself is very well done. The author is always knowledgable about the various fields he treats; his organisation of the book is good enough; the illustrations are well chosen; his sane and intelligent comments, enhanced by occasional warnings about pitfalls, make his a Handbook worth possessing by anyone interested in the enterprise of provenance research. But there are defects. Misprints are not rare;4 the author inadvertently claims for himself discoveries...