21 March 2003, 4 PM, McGregor Room
The fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia was convened at 4:00 p.m. in the McGregor Room of Alderman Library.
President G. Thomas Tanselle thanked the other Council members and staff for their work over the past year. He expressed special thanks to David Vander Meulen and Elizabeth Lynch for their effort in producing vol. 53 of Studies in Bibliography, maintaining,and even enhancing the quality of that journal. He also thanked the Secretary-Treasurer for her efficient handling of many tasks during the year.
Mr. Tanselle announced the publication that day of “The Studies in Bibliography Ebook Archive,” an ebook version of the entire back run of Studies in Bibliography that can be downloaded without charge from the Society’s website. Studies in Bibliography, he noted, was the first journal with a long history to have its entire back run freely available on the internet, and the ebook publication represents another first for the Society. One of the Society’s most popular on-line publications, Lorraine de Montluzin’s “Attributions of Authorship in the Gentleman’s Magazine,” received 23,000 visits in the past year. It will very shortly be available as one database rather than three.
In addition, Mr. Tanselle announced that the Society is reprinting three of its earlier publications: Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing, by Fredson Bowers; and Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing, and The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers, both by G. Thomas Tanselle. All three titles should be available from Oak Knoll Books in a few months.
The minutes of the last Annual Meeting on March 22, 2002 were approved. The Nominating Committee’s proposal that Karin Wittenborg, University Librarian, be elected to another term on the Council was approved unanimously. The President also reported that the current officers of the Council had been re-elected at the Council meeting earlier in the day.
The speakers for today’s meeting would, Mr. Tanselle observed, display the breadth and depth of the work being done at the University in the field of bibliography and textual studies. He introduced the moderator, graduate student Kevin Seidel, who then introduced the presentations by four graduate students in the English Department. The speakers and their talks were: John Buchtel, “The Memorial Engraving in Chapman’s Homer”; Catherine Rodriguez, “Foreign Editions of Burney’s Cecilia”; Michelle Gallinger, “Transatlantic Variants in Nightwood and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”; and Kristin Jensen, “Transatlantic Variants in Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
The talks were followed by a reception in the Rare Book School rooms.
Respectfully submitted,
Anne Ribble
Secretary-Treasurer