subtracted newspaper offices, printers, and individuals who publish books only incidentally and occasionally, the list of live American publishers scarcely reaches 200. No one appreciates so fully as the bibliographer himself the difficulties and imperfections of any work of bibliography; and it is seldom that any other obtains a realizing sense of the great cost at which such work must be done if it is to be done at all well. Accuracy means patience, and patience means time, and time means money. The American Catalogue of 1876, for instance, showed on the 31st of December, 1886, an outlay of $27,622.46, without counting interest or the personal services of its editor, and the total income, all the sets having been sold, a considerable number at more than double the original price, had reached but $27,321.21. And even the painstaking and consequent delay which this large outlay represented did not succeed in fulfilling the ideal of its founder. It is frankly admitted that this ANNUAL CATALOGUE is by no means a complete and perfect record of the books published in America in 1886, though continuous advertising, persistent circulars and individual letters, research among a wide range of exchanges, and all the resources of a thoroughly organized bibliographical office have been used to induce publishers to report fully each of their issues. The copyright records, indeed, show a deposit of 8352 so-called books in the calendar year 1886, while the entries of the PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY were 4676, many of these being books imported in editions and non-copyright, but of the apparent discrepancy a great part are scarcely to be counted books at all or are the trash of the penny dreadful" series, of which neither library nor book-store, properly speaking, take account. Of books that are books there are not many serious omissions in this catalogue, which probably covers 99 per cent. of books generally sold and read, and is complete as respects the issues of the great body of the book-trade. Nevertheless there remains in the copyright records and elsewhere a considerable number of titles which we should gladly record, and the persistent offers of this office to make public, in whole or in part, in a systematic manner, the titles now hidden in the Copyright Office, may ultimately be of effect. Each year the record grows more and more approximately complete, though each year there is the corresponding disadvantage of increased cost. If the practical demand for such a publication as this on the part of the book-trade, libraries, and others interested, justifies the continuance of an ANNUAL CATALOGUE, that support will render it more possible to make our entire bibliographical system and method more and more comprehensive and complete, until we can fairly claim for the AMERICAN CATALOGUE and its ancillary system the credit of being a full record of American book-production and of holding its own with the national bibliography of other nations. R. R. BowKER. |