Item 32 - Letter from Kenneth Sisam to R. B. McKerrow

4 single sheets

Clarendon Press, Oxford.—Discusses arrangements for reprinting. Evaluates various accounts of the history of abbreviations, and comments on several points in the text.

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Transcript

The Clarendon Press, Oxford
11th January, 1928.

Dear Mr. McKerrow,

I have been waiting to reply to your letter of December 23rd, until I should have the sales of your Introduction to Bibliography up to December 31st. Our figures are only approximate, because we do not take stock at branches and depots, but I reckon the sales, exclusive of presents and review copies, at about 600 to January 1st; the demand continues, and in fact holidays in the Bindery have left us for a few days short of bound copies, though that is now made good. I should reckon a sale of 800 by March 31st—the end of our financial year; and allowing for presents and review copies, we get the remarkable result that half the edition is gone! I don’t expect the pace to keep up, but from the nature of the book, it will not be a flash in the pan, and my own view is that we should keep the type standing till the autumn of this year, and then reprint more copies and take moulds, even though we may still have a good lot of the first impression in hand. I have been looking into the book from time to time, and am most surprised by the amount of new information you give, without even exciting differences of opinion. That means the book will last for a very long time, and we need not fear to take moulds.

I can see nothing wrong with figure 9, and can only suppose that Winship’s pupils have made the mistake you suggest. {1}

I rather agree with Wise that you might have said something of the history of the half-title, {2} if you feel it is sure enough. I imagine we could somehow find room for additional notes and work the references into the index, if we were reprinting from standing type.

When you ask me about the history of abbreviations, I find that I cannot put my hand on any broad and accurate summary of a subject that has produced innumerable special studies since Traube led the way in his Nomina Sacra—a wonderful book. There however, he does not go much farther than distinguishing the kinds of abbreviations, and clearing up the early history of that particular kind to which he limits the name ‘contraction’ i.e. dñs, etc., where the first and last letter of the form are included. Probably you know the work, but anyhow he shows that the con-traction proper arose from unwillingness to write out in full sacred names; and that the bar over the top was not a mark of contraction, but a mark of emphasis on foreign words, etc., like our underlining. From the original simple types all the later types developed—at first slowly; then more rapidly wherever parchment was short and writing quick; until in the 12th and 13th Centuries when writing was applied to all sorts of practical purposes—lecture notes, etc.—the contractions which once had local homes spread to such an extent that it is hard to classify them, or to find any regularity in scribal practice. He does not go so far, if I recollect, in Nomina Sacra, but in other works he gives useful summaries.

Lindsay, in Notae Latinae, which I think Cambridge published, gives extraordinarily full lists of contractions with references up to about the 9th Century, and I suppose his collection is the fullest for the early developments. But I find the book a dull one, for Lindsay has always a slightly mechanical outlook, which is very different from Traube’s. Unfortunately the shorter accounts, e.g. in our own Companion to Classical Texts by F. W. Hall, are seldom good—in fact Hall is utterly confused in his statements. For the early period, because of the interest the subject has for the localization of texts, not a great deal remains to be done. I am inclined to think that there has been no really scientific study of abbreviations from the 12th to the 15th Century in Western Europe. But I think there is a certain usefulness in distinguishing basic types—the contractions, originally nomina sacra; the suspensions like S.P.D.; the Tironian notes or shorthand forms.

But all this is very much behind your proper province.

I noticed one or two small points in reading the book, though I don’t suggest modification:—

p. 85 top. I wonder was it usual to number the leaves of MSS. before the last quarter of the 15th Century? I am not very well up in MSS. of that period, but most of the foliations I have noticed in older MSS. are 16th Century or thereabouts. Perhaps that is because the MSS. I am most accustomed to were rediscovered in the 16th Century; but as foliation can be added so easily, I think the point requires more investigation from the palaeographers. I notice that you express yourself warily.

p. 122. I am not sure that your deduction at the foot of the page is not put a trifle too high. In these times they had a great experience of price control, more, I suppose, than at any time until the War. But it is a practical rule that you must guard against evasions, because for some reason buyers are always to be found who will collusively defeat the regulation if they can. At the Ministry of Food we made the rule to specify and control on a parity all the ways of selling we could think of; and if there still seemed to be more possible ways, we limited the ways of selling to those we could specify.

The maximum price for bindings might then be not so much evidence that the practice of selling bound books was ordinary, as evidence that it might be developed in order to defeat a price control limited to sheets. Naturally if the legislators had such practices in mind, there is a likelihood that they existed. My only point is that such a piece of legislation does not necessarily prove that the alternative forms were ordinarily on sale by producers.

p. 316. I am inclined to think that the colon with the dash prefixed is an attempt to represent in type a MS. question mark. I have not had an opportunity of looking at 15th Century MSS. to see if I could find a form of the question mark which is very close; but I think I have seen some; and a printer with no special type might be tempted to botch a sign.

But I dare not follow up all the interesting points which your book raises.

By the way I think headlines almost deserve a note along with indexes and half-titles.

The book ought to have a companion dealing with English MSS. in the same way. E. A. Lowe has the method and the power of palaeographical analysis, but he has not been able to give a great deal of his time to English MSS., and even one century requires years of work, because such unexpected things happen here and there.

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Sisam

P.S. Dealing always with one printer, we arrange that the printer supplies illustration paper, and so avoid all difficulties about stocks. I think this is a convenient arrangement; and there is much to be said for having all illustrations in half tone on separate plates done by a single printer who specialises in that kind of work, and gets accustomed to a particular blockmaker’s technique.

KS

R. B. McKerrow Esq.,
Enderley,
Little Kingshill,
Great Missenden,
Bucks.

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Typed, except the signature, the initials, the tittle in ‘dñs’, and a comma. At the head are the reference ‘L.B. 5889/Corrn./K.S.’ and, elsewhere, the letter ‘C.’

{1} See Add. Ms. a. 355/4/13.

{2} See Add. Ms. a. 355/4/8.