3 Review(s)

The fifty-seventh volume of ""Studies"" continues its tradition of presenting a wide range of articles by international scholars on bibliography, textual criticism, and other aspects of the study of books. The essays extend chronologically from the identification of Middle English poetry in early prose documents to an analysis of revisions in a post-modern novel. Their geographical span is also broad, ranging from a study of an English play with revisions sometimes believed to be in Shakespeare's hand to trendsetting g innovations in early Italian printing and to the history of Henry Fielding's writings in China. The opening essay, by G. Thomas Tanselle, expands the scope thematically as well by applying principles of textual criticism of verbal works to the visual and aural arts. Two major studies refine significant bibliographical accomplishments of the past by examining anew the printing of Spenser's Faerie Queene and the paper of Shakespeare's plays in quarto. The volume also includes another contribution to the series on great bibliographers. Other important essays provide Mary Astell's manuscript revisions for one of her works, consider the implications of bibliographical insights for the understanding of literary history, and analyze a controversial theory of attribution.