[DCRM-L] Almanacs WAS RE: Book

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Points well taken. I'll revise our records for almanacs in Hamnet and have documented the decision in Folgerpedia. <http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Almanacs>. My question now is the level of confidence is appropriate in the corrected date and the accompanying note. You'll see that I've expressing a high level of confidence by saying that "Almanacs were printed ..." instead of "Almanacs were typically...", and by not putting a question mark in the 260‡c.

Comments? 

Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie at folger.edu | 202.675-0369 | 201 East Capitol St., SE, Washington, DC 20003 | www. folger.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: JOHN LANCASTER [mailto:jjlancaster at me.com] 
Sent: Saturday, 11 July 2015 15:06
To: Deborah J. Leslie
Subject: Re: Book

I’m afraid I don’t see any rationale in the STC statement - just a statement of practice, which has no particular value or authority beyond STC, any more than modern practice with regard to modern books.  And it states clearly that “printing usually took place during the preceding autumn”.

The majority of the STC entries with alternative dates (many of which have been incorrectly entered in ESTC as “[i.e. <date>]”) are in fact records of colophon dates that differ from the title-page dates, which are entered in STC within, as the introduction calls them, “round brackets”.  These should not be confused with corrections, which I believe (impressionistically; I haven’t tried to count) are mostly providing a later date than that in the imprint, i.e. for reissues or concealed reprintings.

John Lancaster