Bibliomania in the Middle Ages

Merryweather's Bibliomania has earned the right of reincarnation, but not at any price. Who wants this fantastic old chronicler panoplied in slip-case, vellum back and deckled edges? What a crude compliment to puff him up with large paper! Merryweather needs no such monumental aids, for, in spite of the strides bibliography has taken since 1849, he is no curiosity of literature, but so show more readable and likeable a bibliophile that it is improper to make a museum-piece of him.

We owe this dubious edition to the fact that the late Walter A. Copinger, First President of the Bibliographical Society, had 'made considerable manuscript notes to the book with the object of bringing out another edition'. Because it seemed a pity that the notes should be lost to the world, his son, Mr. H. B. Copinger, has permitted them to come to us in their present questionble shape. Nor is it only the shape that is questionable. Walter Copinger's notes are useful as far as they go, but are hardly in themselves sufficient excuse for a new edition of such a work; and the present editors have added irritation to superfluity by committing the bibliographical sin of leaving the reader to discover which are Copinger's notes and which Merryweather's.

... So a curious and admirable work is mutilated in the name of good taste, and, unkindest cut of all, not an asterix to mark the place of the excisions. The offences have only to be named to indicate the character of the reprint, and the book has only to be opened to reveal its lack of typographical distinction.

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F. Somner Merryweather, Bibliomania in the middle ages (London : The Woodstock Press, new & rev. ed. by H. B. Copinger, 1933). show less