In addition to historicizing, recording, and defining the nature of the 20th century's most significant textual and bibliographical achievements, this volume offers a useful introductory guide to bibliography and textual criticism and their scholarly evolution. Supplemented with expansive author, subject, and title indexes, the book provides annotated entries for more than 750 monographs and articles published during the 20th century. These are grouped in topical chapters devoted to general bibliography and textual studies, analytical bibliography, descriptive bibliography, textual criticism, historical bibliography, and enumerative bibliography.

In tracing the history of 20th-century bibliographical and textual criticism, this book surveys numerous issues and topics. These include the New Bibliography, computer and information technologies, the history and art of book collecting, the history of the book, the controversial publication of such texts as the Oxford Shakespeare and the Hans Walter Gabler edition of Ulysses, and the influence of literary theory and criticism on the contemporary direction of bibliographical and textual studies. Thus the work demonstrates the wide-ranging activities of bibliographers and textual critics, their fundamental aims, and their continuing efforts on behalf of our understanding of the physical, literary, historical, and technological aspects of authorship, the editorial process, and book production.