[DCRM-L] Sammelband, Omnibus, Nonce

Fri Jan 4 16:47:54 MST 2013

As far as I can tell, we are talking about 3 phenomena here.

1) Separately published works bound together and issued in that format by
a publisher.  These are called an omnibus volume or Sammelband (German
usage).

2) Separate works bound together, usually with a common t.p., by the
printer/publisher as sort of a one-off arrangement.  That is, there is no
"edition" of these collections because are constructed in response to a
purchaser's requirements.  There seems to be some consensus that these are
referred to as "nonce collections."

3)  Separately published works bound together subsequent to publication by
the bookseller, owner, library, whatever.  Such as volume has been called
a Sammelband (US usage).  Richard suggests pamphlet volume, which suffers
from the fact that on occasion the items cannot be characterized as
pamphlets.

"Omnibus volume," seems to be clearly defined term though I find it
interesting that contemporary publishers do not use the term (e.g.
Ashgate's Variorum editions or Collected studies series).

"Nonce collection" likewise seems to be a fairly clear category, although
I would be curious to know whether an atlas factice would be considered a
nonce collection in the same way that a one-off volume of editions of
Fielding's works would be.  Or would that fall in category 3?  The DCRMC
editorial team is considering the term "composite atlas."  Questions: Do
the works have to be issued by the same printer/publisher to be a nonce
collection? Do they have to be by the same author?  A collection of
separately published items with a new title leaf issued in multiple copies
with the same contents would not be a nonce collection because it would
not be "nonce?"

The third category is termless if we abandon Sammelband, which seems to be
confusing if one is not bothered by an English adoption of a foreign term
in a different sense than used in the original language.  Perhaps someone
can up with a one-word term?  Until then, I'm stuck with "bound together
subsequent to publication" as the best phrase.

Larry

-- 
Laurence S. Creider
Interim Head
Archives and Special Collections Dept.
University Library
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM  88003
Work: 575-646-4756
Fax: 575-646-7477
lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu

On Fri, January 4, 2013 9:08 am, JOHN LANCASTER wrote:
> The usage goes back at least to Greg’s bibliography of drama up to the
restoration.  Carter’s ABC doesn’t include it.
>
> Fredson Bowers, in “The function of bibliography,”
> (https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/5844/librarytrendsv7i4c_opt.pdf?sequence=4),
writes (pp. 500-501):
> It may come as something of a shock to the cataloger, trained to record
only the characteristics of the copy before him, to be faced with the
paradox that in some occasional instances the bibliographer's "ideal
copy"
> may very likely never have been issued in any concrete example by a
publisher. On the one hand, therefore, the cataloger may be busy
describing the single copy at hand, whereas the bibliographer may be
concerned to analyze and describe, at the other end of the process, a
copy
> that does not exist. Most commonly this odd split in theory and
procedure
> occurs when parts of a book have been separately printed and are joined
in
> random combinations by the binder.  The simplest example ordinarily met
with is the nonce collection - such as those made from any available
Dryden quartos between 1691 and 1695-in which a group of independent
books
> designed for separate sale is formed for issue as a collection under a
general title- page. Intermediate would be the 1611 to 1617 Spenser
Folios
> described by F. R. Johnson in his Spenser bibliography, in which
reprinted
> sheets complicate the changing combinations of editions collected.
>
> I suggested the term for the RBMS thesauri back in September 2009; it
doesn’t seem to have been acted on as yet.
>
> The term “nonce collection” has occasionally been used in the same sense
as “Sammelband” is widely used (at least by incunabulists), i.e. a group
of separately published items bound together subsequent to publication,
by
> an owner rather than a bookseller-publisher, and without a printed title
page or contents list (though they often have such in manuscript), but I
don’t find this to be very common.  Nicholas Pickwoad urges using the
phrase “composite volume” for such collections, which has the virtue of
not using a German term in English, when the German usage may vary from
what is intended in English.  (And would avoid the awkward English
plural
> “Sammelbands” found in the RBMS Provenance Thesaurus, with a reference
from the German “Sammelbände”.
>
> Aside from this occasional confusion (not unheard of in other
> bibliographical terminologies), the phrase “nonce collection” seems to
me
> a very useful one to describe the collection of multiple
> separately-published items (almost always short pamphlets) by a
> bookseller-publisher, usually furnished with a collective title page,
sometimes with a contents list.  Each instance of the collection may
(and
> often does) vary in content - at least in the edition of any given
component, sometimes in the number of items included.
>
> John Lancaster
>
> P.S.  Thanks to Mac Mail’s search function, I find I wrote on this on
ExLibris a couple of years ago; here’s what I said (apologies for
repetition, like Mark Twain, I don’t have time to write a shorter
version):
>
>
> By a ‘nonce collection’, I mean a collection of separately published
works
> put together by a bookseller/publisher with a collective title page (and
sometimes other preliminaries).  Different copies of such collections
may
> at times contain different editions of the individual works – it’s
generally assumed that this was a way of trying to move stock.  It’s
also
> a way to put together a “collected works” or “collected sermons” without
the expense of reprinting them.
>
> Search for instance in ESTC “fielding dramatic works 1755” – you get the
collection under that title, plus records for all the separate works
that
> made up the collection, with a note “also issued in 
” (or some such
wording).  “Synge works 1740” will bring up a similar batch (many of
which
> were printed by William Bowyer, who also printed the collective titles).
>
> See Arthur Freeman on the subject:
> http://library.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/s5-XVIII/1/51.pdf  [But
his
> examples are sort of counter-examples, since they don’t for the most
part
> include a title page, and the evidence for collective issue is thus
circumstantial rather than documentary.  Still, he makes clear how the
term is used.]
>
> The usage goes back at least to Greg’s bibliography of drama up to the
restoration.  Carter’s ABC doesn’t include it.
>
> In at least 1869 and 1871, Fields, Osgood, & Co. (1869) and then their
successor James R. Osgood and Co. (1871) issued a collection with a
general title page, Companion Poets, which included three works also
separately published: Whittier’s National Lyrics, 1869, published by
Field, Osgood, & Co.; Bryant’s Voices of Nature, published by Appleton
(in
> 1869, the 1868 printing was included; in 1871, it was the 1865 printing
–
> at least in the copies I’ve seen); and Holmes’s Humorous Poems, 1869,
Field, Osgood, & Co.
>
> These publishers also put out at least one other collection with the
same
> title, Companion Poets, but collecting three different works.  I’ve only
seen the Google Books copy, with an 1871 title page, including an 1865
Longfellow, an 1871 Tennyson, and an 1871 Browning.
>
> There are OCLC records (indicating that the collections started with
Ticknor & Fields, and that there was quite a bit of variation in the
dates
> of printing of the individual works included) at #19941975, #12429242,
#21095102, #187311751, #58885510, #191281690, #9657799, #21095054,
#37000939, #316951914, #27026578, #27046526.  Also several for
electronic
> versions: #262632885, #256744107, #68767711, #325823654.
>
> That is, the phenomenon wasn’t limited to pre-1800 printing.  I suspect
it
> was less common later – but then, if we had the means to gather
> information about such collections, maybe we’d find it’s more common
than
> I imagine now.
>
> John Lancaster
>
>
> On Jan 4, 2013, at 10:39 AM, "Noble, Richard" <richard_noble at brown.edu>
wrote:
>
>> The subject line is a formula for raising biblio-terminological imps.
See the forwarded item of correspondence below. - Richard Noble
---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu>
>> Date: Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:32 AM
>> Subject: Re: Terminology
>> To: ...
>> Dear ... ,
>> There really is no single substitute word or phrase for the thing that
we Anglo-American bibliographer types call a  sammelband (usually
treated typographically--lower case, roman--as a loan word). In fact
"omnibus volume" is by definition just what a sammelband isn't: per
Webster 3, "a book containing reprints of a number of works (as of a
single author or on a single subject or related subjects)". Since
"reprints" is one of those slippery words that even too many librarians
don't correctly understand, I rather like the definition given in
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/omnibus
>> "a printed anthology of the works of one author or of writings on
related subjects".
>> I suppose the lack of an unambiguous English-language term has to do
with the fact that few people confront a sammelband in their daily
lives.
>> To add to the complexity of all this, it appears (from the same "Free
Dictionary") that a Sammelband, to a German, is an omnibus volume: "ein
Buch, das Texte eines oder verschiedener Autoren enthält Der Sammelband
enthält Beiträge verschiedener, sehr namhafter Autoren". Indeed, my
Cassell's German to English dictionary defines Sammelband as "an
omnibus
>> volume". Moreover, neither Webster nor OED has an entry for
>> "sammelband", the upshot being that the meaning that we have assigned
to
>> the word has no lexical authority outside our little circle.
>> Given that degree of linguistic conflict, and that the object in
question is almost always a bound-up collection of pamphlets, and that
"pamphlet" clearly denotes a discrete physical object, the better term
might be "pamphlet volume". In other contexts one might prefer "bound
collection of plays" or "bound volume of separately published poems".
There's a related phenomenon that wants a designation: separate
publications, often of multiple dates but usually with the imprint of
the same publisher or printer, reissued as a single volume with a
collective title page. I was taught to call this a "nonce collection",
perhaps given the now rather archaic use of "for the nonce" to mean
"for
>> the purpose", i.e. for the purpose of selling the pieces together. (See
also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammelband).
>> We cataloguers have our "with" note, "bound together subsequent to
publication", for a ... hmm ... sammelband; it's rather a mouthful. I'm
not aware of any such fixed formula to describe a ... uhh ... nonce
collection.
>> I wish this were an entirely trivial question, but those of us who deal
with these objects ought to be able to talk about them coherently. I'm
going to forward this to DCRM-L, to see whether any fellow RB cats have
come up with an elegant formulation. (Note: "Sammelband" is in the
index
>> of RAK, pointing to §107.4, but the available pdf
>> ftp://ftp.ddb.de/pub/standardisierung/regelwerke/rak-wb/RAK_WB_ErgLfg4.pdf
omits everything before §117.3)
>> Does this help??
>> Best wishes,
>> Richard
>> RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
>> PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-3384 :
>> RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU
>
>