The Annual American Catalogue 1887

Excerpt from The Annual American Catalogue, 1887: Being the Full Titles, With Descriptive Notes, of All Books Recorded in the Publishers' Weekly, 1887, With Author, Title, and Subject Index, Publishers' Annual Lists and Directory of Publishers The number of books recorded this year in our main list falls somewhat below the record of the previous one, being 4437 in I887, as against 4676 in 1886. This, however, is without Special significance, as publishers' carefulness in reporting their issues varies con siderably from year to year, and the production is perhaps not less in I887 than in 1886. Our system of bibliographical record, nevertheless. Has on the whole become better year by year, so that our columns present a fairly adequate key to the current literature of America. But with all the careful work which has been done from this office to obtain full information from all quarters. We find, nevertheless, that a considerable number of small or special publishers who had issued books during i8s7 had not reported their pub lications. A special circular was sent to all such of whom we could find any trace, and the results are given in the Supplementary Index, the starred titles being those of books which are not included in the lists by publishers which form the last division of this vol ume. It is most discouraging to the conscientious and careful bibliographer that so many publishers should fail in the simple matter of putting their works on record, especially since it involves only the cost of a little trouble and a two-cent postage-stamp. The list of publishers is about the same as last year. Including as before a number of houses which are printers or publishers of but one or two incidental books. The number of the impor tant names in the publishing trade does not seem to vary greatly from year to year. So many questions have been asked, in connection with the discussion of international copyright. As to the relative proportion of books of American authorship and foreign reprints. That we endeavored to make some compilation of statistics on this subject, The lack of information as to copyright entry, and other difficulties connected with the task, have made it impossible to gather such statistics in any presentable shape. We trust, how ever. Before many years. To have our records so nearly perfectas to make possible adequate report of this sort from year to year. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.