2 works

Write a maximum 2000 word descriptive bibliographic analysis of a printed volume. The work(s) being analyzed MUST BE PHYSICALLY PRINTED. YOU CANNOT DO THIS ASSIGNMENT USING ONLY ONLINE RESOURCES.

NOTE: SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FRIDAY APRIL 3rd.

The purpose of the editions comparison is to consider two editions of a text and compare them for their bibliographic and print contexts. THIS IS NOT A LITERARY ANALYSIS. In class I outlined the ideal comparison as consisting of some discussion of the four print contexts outlined in the Robert Hume article: genesis, production, dissemination and reception. The ideal editions comparison will consider all four of these in roughly equal measure. You will almost certainly require at least one or two secondary sources and I recommend choosing an author with a published descriptive bibliography or good scholarly biography about them. Please do not make up physical attributes of the texts that are not there. For most of the books you will be considering, most of the details of the physical composition will be fairly uniform, as most of the editions we encounter in our daily reading lives are machine offset printed publications on generic wood pulp paper. You will not get bonus marks for guessing that the book you are using is a "quarto," when I can tell it isn't from reading your MLA formatted works cited page.

If you have already examined your volumes and submitted your initial bibliography I would encourage you to finish the assignment as is. I expect many students will be more reliant on online resources given the current COVID-19 situation. I will also allow students to do a material bibliographic analysis of a single printed volume with reference to at least three secondary sources, as an alternative assignment if you are unable to get back to a library due to current health scares, travel or other course pressures. Please send me an email to discuss your chosen title if you have not already submitted your initial annotated bibliography. YOU DO NOT NEED TO ANALYZE A LIBRARY BOOK as originally stipulated in class. The work you choose however must be a printed volume. You may consider the printed volume in comparison to an electronic resource version of the text, and your secondary sources can also include online articles and resources. However, the purpose of the analysis is the exposition and consideration of the printed volume, not the contrasting of the text with electronic media, or the effect of reading from electronic media devices. In other words, do not make your paper about how computers are different from books.

NOTE: YOU MAY NOT WRITE YOUR EDITIONS COMPARISON ON A HARRY POTTER BOOK.

The editions comparison paper (30% of final grade) is due on April 1. The first draft of the annotated bibliography was due March 13. Please edit this document following feedback, and resubmit with the final assignment for grading (10% of final grade).

Suggested authors for comparison assignment:

Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Arthur C. Clarke, Morley Callaghan, Sheila Watson, Michael Ondaatje, Henri Nouwen, Cecil John Eustace, Flannery O’Connor, Chester Himes, Alice Munro, GK Chesterton, William Shakespeare, Willa Cather, Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, TS Eliot, Amos Tutuola, Oscar Wilde, WH Auden, Graham Greene, William Carlos Williams, Virginia Woolf, Nora Zeale Hurston, Philip K. Dick, Edgar A. Poe, Herman Melville, Emile Zola, Marshall McLuhan, Edmund Carpenter, Jane Jacobs, Marjorie Lamb, Agatha Christie, George B. Shaw, Robert L. Stevenson, Dashiell Hammett, Kurt Vonnegut, Mavis Gallant, WB Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Miriam Mandel, Ursula K. Le Guin, Evelyn Waugh.

Or choose an author with whom you are already familiar.

Requirements of the assignment:

Variant texts must be available, or a descriptive bibliography should exist. Primary sources must be available (including standard editions or multiple editions).