The fifty-second 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. Their topics, ranging in time from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century, include the scribes and manuscripts of Langland, Chaucer, and the Rolin Master; editions of Spenser and other Renaissance texts; books in Massachusetts in the eighteenth century; nineteenth- and twentieth-century periodicals; and typographical alterations in nineteenth-century books and in bibliographical classics. This volume also proposes a new system for transcribing manuscripts and provides a guide to the practice of analytical bibliography and the presentation of its results.

The articles and their authors are:

"The Treatment of Typesetting and Presswork in Bibliographical Description," G. Thomas Tanselle, Guggenheim Foundation; "Uncharacterizable Entities: The Poetics of Middle English Scribal Culture and the Definitive Piers Plowman," Andrew Galloway, Cornell University; "Back at Chaucer's Tomb--Inscriptions in Two Early Copies of Chaucer's Workes," Joseph A. Dane, University of Southern California, and Alexandra Gillespie, Corpus Christi College, Oxford; "Corrective Notes on the Structures and Paper Stocks of Four Manuscripts Containing Extracts from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," Daniel W. Mosser, Virginia Tech; "The Diptych by the Rolin Master Detached from Autun, Biblioth#65533;que Municipale, MS. 110 (S. 133)," Peter Rolfe Monks, Chapman, Australia; "Watermark Evidence and Inference: New Style Dates of Edmund Spenser's Complaints and Daphnaida," Adrian Weiss, Vermillion, South Dakota; "The Printer and Date of Q4 A Looking Glass for London and England," Laurie E. Maguire, Magdalen College, Oxford; "A Joint-Purchase Agreement for Books in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts, James E. May, Pennsylvania State University, DuBois; "'A Sort of Bird's Eye View of the British Land of Letters': The Monthly Magazine and Its Reviewers, 1796&endash;1811," David Chandler, Kyoto University; "Leigh Hunt's Contributions to the Guide," Nicholas A. Joukovsky, Pennsylvania State University; "Alteration of Leading within Editions," Gillian Kyles, Charlottesville, Virginia; "The Cambridge Review," Arthur Sherbo, Michigan State University; "A System of Manuscript Transcription," David L. Vander Meulen, University of Virginia, and G. Thomas Tanselle, Guggenheim Foundation; "Textual Revisions in Bibliographical Classics: 'McKerrow' and 'Bowers,'" David L. Vander Meulen, University of Virginia; "Bowers's Principles at Fifty," G. Thomas Tanselle, Guggenheim Foundation.