Bibliographical Analysis in the “Digital Age”

  The study of human artifacts is one of the chief tools we have for the difficult work of   learning about the human past. Printed objects constitute one of the largest classes of   such artifacts, and they are an especially productive source for understanding the   interrelations of objects and human thoughts and actions. Books and related items   have long been analyzed in this way, but the relatively recent development of   electronic technology provides occasion to look to the future by reflecting on the role   of computers in such scholarship, both as indispensable aids and as potential threats.

  David L. Vander Meulen is Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where   he teaches eighteenth-century English literature, descriptive and analytical   bibliography, and textual criticism and scholarly editing. In 1984 he joined the UVA faculty to work with Fredson Bowers   on the journal Studies in Bibliography, which he has edited since the death of Bowers in 1991. He   devotes much of his scholarly attention to bibliographical study of the eighteenth century,   especially to Alexander Pope. His current research focuses on the publishing history of Pope and   on the work of the twentieth-century American book designer Warren Chappell. He has also   published editions of works by Pope, Samuel Johnson, and William Faulkner. Among his honors   are the Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf Fellowship at the University of Texas, the Engelhard Lectureship at the Library of Congress, and fellowships from the Bibliographical Society of America, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation.