The Personal History of David Copperfield. By Charles Dickens. With eight illustrations. London: Chapman & Hall, Piccadilly.
We proceed to write the principal entry to read:—
Dickens, Charles. The personal history of David Copperfield.
From the “fly-title” we learn that this is the “Charles Dickens’ edition.” We examine the book, and find it contains six prefatory pages, these being paged in Roman numerals, and 533 others paged in Arabic, with a portrait and seven other illustrations. This statement of the number of pages and illustrations is known as the “collation,” as to examine a book for the purpose of ascertaining that it is perfect is to collate it. As the place of publication is London, it is the practice in English catalogues to omit it from the entry, such omission signifying that London is understood. The date of publication not being given, and as there are no means of finding it out with certainty, the initials “n.d.,” meaning “no date,” are added, and the full catalogue entry will be:
DICKENS, Charles.
The personal history of David Copperfield. (Charles Dickens’ ed.) pp. vi., 533, port., illus. 8vo. n.d.
K 1200
The author’s name should be written at the outside left hand of the card at the top, the rest of the entry following with an indent at each side, the press mark alone coming outside at the right hand, as shown in the printed entry above.
16.—It is of the utmost importance that care be taken in transcribing a title, as it is much easier to make a mistake than to detect it afterwards, even at the time of printing. Errors of the hand and of the eye creep in imperceptibly. Besides, a mistake having once been made is likely to be repeated in all other entries, when copied from the first one. A very common cause of error is to let the mind become so absorbed in the consideration of a book in hand, that when a second comes to be dealt with some word from the first will unwittingly be written into its title, and if the result is not very obvious from its absurdity it escapes notice altogether until printed, and bears permanent witness against the cataloguer.