The fifty-sixth volume of Studies continues its tradition of presenting a wide range of articles by international scholars on bibliography, textual criticism, and other aspects of the study of books.

The volume opens with a historical consideration of the role of judgment in editing and a prognosis for its future. In a sequel to his 1971 article on the history of book-jackets, G. Thomas Tanselle surveys the growing recognition of the importance of jackets over the past thirty-four years and provides a greatly expanded list of pre-1901 examples. Two major studies assess the growing field of book history and offer recommendations for its development. Two others deal with paper: one provides the earliest detailed description of a European paper mill and its manufacturing processes, and another considers the bibliographical implications of changes in papermaking at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Additional articles treat the bibliographical description of early printed music, offer new information about some eighteenth-century poems set to music, analyze the first publication of Shakespeare’s plays in small formats, and investigate the role of collaboration in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper and the implications for modern editors.

The articles and their authors are:

"Tanselle’s ‘Editing without a Copy-text’": Genesis, Issues, Prospects," Richard Bucci, Mark Twain Project; "Dust-Jackets, Dealers, and Documentation," G. Thomas Tanselle, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; "Historiographical Problems and Possibilities in Book History and National Histories of the Book," Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Fordham University and Campion Hall, Oxford; "How to Read Book History," David L. Vander Meulen, University of Virginia; "The Bibliographical Description of Italian Printed Music of the 16th and 17th Centuries," Stanley Boorman, New York University; "New Light on John Hoadly and His ‘Poems Set to Music by Dr. Greene,’" H. Diack Johnstone, St Anne’s College, Oxford; "Paper Making in Seventeenth-Century Genoa: The Account of Giovanni Domenico Peri (1651)," Conor Fahy, University of London; "British Paper in the Transitional Period (1794-1830)," B. J. McMullin, Monash University, Australia; "The Dissemination of Shakespeare’s Plays circa 1714," Don-John Dugas, Towson University, and Robert D. Hume, Pennsylvania State University; "Cooper and His Collaborators: Recovering Cooper’s Final Intentions for His Fiction," Lance Schachterle, Worcester Institute of Technology