The idea for Other People's Books was conceived in 2007 when Steve Tomashefsky, then President of the Caxton Club, actively supported a project to create a collection of essays revealing the stories behind association copies.

Other People's Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell

G. Thomas Tanselle

Hal Kugeler

The Caxton Club

<p>"This book offers a comprehensive guide to descriptive bibliography--the activity of describing books as physical objects. The function of descriptive bibliography is to provide detailed historical accounts of the varied material forms in which texts have been transmitted and to show the relationships among those examples that claim to carry texts of the same work. The first part of this book contains five essays on general topics: an introduction to the field and its history; its relation to library cataloguing; the concept of ideal copy; the meanings of edition, impression, issue, and state; and tolerances in reporting details. The second part covers more specific subjects: transcription and collation; format; paper; typography and layout; typesetting and presswork; non-letterpress material; publishers' bindings, endpapers, and jackets; and overall arrangement. At the end is an appendix containing a sample description with detailed commentary, followed by a record of the literature of descriptive bibliography"--</p>

Descriptive Bibliography

The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia

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Books by G. Thomas Tanselle

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by G. Thomas Tanselle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Other People's Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell

Descriptive Bibliography