Portraits and reviews

"This volume brings together a selection of the biographical sketches and reviews that G. Thomas Tanselle has written since 1959. Taken together they show how a biographical approach can serve to characterize a whole field--in this case, the world of books and bibliographical and textual scholarship. Because the pieces gathered here deal with major figures and landmark works, along with representative (if less famous) ones, covering the wide spectrum of bibliography, the collection provides a picture of what was going on in the scholarly book world of the past half-century. The twenty-eight portraits comprise accounts of, or tributes to, collectors, booksellers, librarians, scholarly editors, publishers, bibliographical scholars, literary and historical scholars, and authors. The Reviews section consists of forty-two pieces, mostly book reviews but also including some responses to essays, introductions to anthologies, and retrospective assessments, plus several bibliographies, bibliographical reference works, books on book collecting, and scholarly editions. Other items involve bookcloth, textual theory, book preservation, and the antiquarian book trade. The pieces in both sections of the book sometimes have an autobiographical element, for the author has known many of the people whose lives and works are taken up here"--Provided by publisher.