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variations amongst copies of books that may be intentional; for instance, an issue of a title might be given a different colored binding, or be printed on large paper, or be trimmed to a different size. Any such physical variation raises the question of identity and requires resolution.
    The bibliographer’s next task after identifying the book is to ascertain if it is perfect; that is, if it embodies the proper intentions of all the agents in its production correctly. Some errors are obvious; some will only be detected from comparison of many copies of the same title, often by optical collation of the text. When the Hinman Collator (developed to compare copies of the Shakespeare First Folio) was applied to the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the result was “the discovery of ‘a variant state or concealed impression’ . . . for every one of the first English editions collated” (Howard-Hill 1992: 124). From analysis of variations in copies in relation to their understanding of the physical processes that made the book, bibliographers move toward writing a description of the book based on the concept of the “ideal copy,” that is, the intended form of the book against which particular copies can be measured. (Hence such notes on copies of books in catalogues as “Lacks leaf [A4]”. )
    Analytical bibliography of the material object is fundamentally historical. To understand the production of the book at a certain period in history, employing the characteristic means of production of the age within the social practices that influenced both labor and capital, involves bibliographers’ knowledge of those processes and social conditions and the ability to apply them to the material object at hand. Not all bibliographical analyses may lead to formal descriptions of books, but as an historical science analytical bibliography needs no further object.
    Descriptive Bibliography
    Descriptive bibliography, which Tanselle (1992a: 25) characterized as “history, as a genre of historical writing,” seeks to establish a description of the book beyond the simplest level used in basic enumerative bibliographies in relation to various levels of potential use. Its primary function is “to present all the evidence about a book which can be determined by analytical bibliography applied to a material object” (Bowers 1949: 34). Descriptive bibliographies differ from enumerative “in respect of the quantity and kind of detail which is included” (Stokes 1969: 96). To illustrate this point, Stokes compares the one-line entry for the Shakespeare First Folio in the
New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature
, adequate for its simple purpose; the twelve- (now nine-) line entry with additional bibliographical information in Pollard and Redgrave (1976–91: no. 22273); the more detailed four-page description in Greg’s
A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration
(1957: 1109 –12); and the 468 pages of his
The Shakespeare First Folio : Its Bibliographical and Textual History
(1955). Now, following Hinman’s magisterial analysis of copies of the Folio in the Folger Shakespeare Library (1963), Anthony James West (2003) has been able to extend the description of the Folio to details of the surviving copies, in a volume of 438 pages. These last works show how strenuous analytical and descriptive bibliography may be, especially when, as in the preparation of a descriptive bibliography of the works of a prolific author, a bibliographer must travel widely to obtain access to multiple copies of the author’s work. This and the formal requirements of bibliographical description (Bowers 1949), elaborated in recent years by Tanselle (see Howard-Hill 1992: 129), render the preparation of a descriptive bibliography a most demanding scholarly task.
    Historians of the book do not always need to be able to undertake bibliographical analysis or description themselves: they may have other concerns. However, they should be