College and Research Libraries 52 I College & Research Libraries • January 1978 Eastern European printing often neglected elsewhere. Colin Clair is the prolific English author and editor of books on vario1,1s subjects, in- . eluding several on the history of the book. Teachers of this subject already will have found his Chronology of Printing (1969) an invaluable handbook. In addition he has written Christopher Plantin (1960), A His- tory of Printing in Britain (1965), Unnatural History-on bestiaries-(1967), and Early Printing in Malta (1969). Obviously well qualified, he writes a readable, no-nonsense text, packed with names ana dates and fol- lowing a strongly chronological approach. One of the major uses of this book will surely be as a text in history of the book courses in library sGhools. As such it must inevitably be compared with the long- popular text, Steinberg's Five Hundred Years of Printing, now in its third edition, revised by James Moran in 1974. Both cover essentially the same mater.'al. Clair is more detailed, with a longer text, heavily factual and chronological, and with a more extensive bibliography. Steinberg-Moran is broader in viewpoint, more topical in ap- proach, with chapters on such culturally re- lated subjects as libraries, the reading pub- lic, and censorship. From a practical point of view, the inexpensive paperback by Steinberg will probably continue to be a text required for student purchase, while the Clair hardback at $28 will be restricted to assigned readings from reserVe collections. In this age of elaborately illustrated books, especially in the humanities, the format of this volume is modest indeed. A standard octavo of 526 pages, closely printed on smooth blue-white paper and bound in paper-covered boards, it bespeaks its practical textbook purpose. Despite the publisher's claim of lavish illustration, they are in fact unimpress~ve. Ninety-one black- and-white figures, mostly in-text, a few full-page, are scattered through the book. The quality varies; some line reproductions are clear, others are too heavily printed with resultant loss of detail, some are too small to be legible, and a few of the half- tones lack clarity. They are well integrated into the index but less well into the text, which seldom if ever refers directly to the illustrations. The book has two appendixes, both tabu- lations of the spread of printing in Europe, and an excellent index. The bibliography is extensive, including titles in many lan- guages and a goodly . quantity of recent ma- terial. However, the bulk of the bibliogra- phy is arranged in sections that at first glance appear to parallel the chapters, but this is not strictly the case and results in some confusion. In summary, Colin Clair's History of European Printing is an excellent book that should find wide usage as a textbook in li- brary schools and in such subject depart- ments as literature and history, as well as for reference and general reading in public and academic libraries.-Budd L. Gambee, Professor, School of Library Science, Uni- versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Maltby, Arthur, ed. Classification in the 1970s: A Second Look. Rev. ed. London: Clive Bingley; Hamden, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1976. 262p. $12.50. LC 76-43965. ISBN 0-85157-221-9 Bingley; 0-208- 01533-7 Linnet. This work is a revision of the editor's Classification in the 1970's: A Discussion of Development and Prospects for the Major Schemes, which was published in 1972 and well received. The original work was a col- lection of ten papers prepared at Maltby's invitation by various authorities in the field, who were directed to specifically review the role of classification systems and techniques in the present decade and beyond, and the papers meet the editor's charge very well indeed. The revised edition contains eleven pa- pers addressed to the same charge, ten by the same authors writing on the same sub- jects as in the original work. The ~leventh, "Automatic Classification" by Karen Sparck Jones, is new and is nontechnical review of the main lines of work on automatic in- formation classification to date and the prospects for automatic classification, par- ticularly in the large, on-line retrieval sys- tems of the future. The author concludes that the apparent propects for automatic classification for library purposes are not very bright. Comparing the ten original papers with 1' their counterparts in this revised edition, one can only conclude that rather little has changed since the early 1970s. Three papers appear unchanged apart from a few updat- ings and corrections, others show only minor revisions, and a few have major sec- tions rewritten. Maltby's excellent introductory essay, "Classification-Logic, Limits, Levels," has been admirably enlarged. "The Biblio- graphic Classification" by J. Mills is basi- cally the same but contains an outline of the new Bibliographic Classification and other changes, reflecting the author's work toward the comprehensive revision of this classifica- tion scheme as chairman of the Bliss Classi- fication Association. M. A. Gopinath' s "Colon Classification" shows only minor changes. This is true also of the following paper, J. P. Immroth's "Li- brary of Congress Classification," as well as the papers by B. C. Vickery, "Classificatory Principles in Natural Language Indexing Systems"; E. M. Keen, "Prospects for Clas- sification Suggested by Evaluation Tests"; and Robert R. Freeman; "Classification in Computer-Based Information Systems of the 1970s." G. A. Lloyd's "Universal Decimal Classi- fication" follows the same general outline as his earlier paper but contains new informa- tion, mainly additions on UDC in relation to the broad system of ordering for UN- ISIST, and also an epilogue somewhat less optimistic about the future of UDC than that expressed in his paper published in 1972. Sarah K .. Vann's "Dewey Decimal Classi- fication" includes many rewritten sections as well as a new section on the eighteenth edi- tion. A detailed appendix in the first edition appraising the then forthcoming eighteenth edition has been deleted, however. Of major interest is Derek Austin's "The CRG Research into a Freely Faceted Scheme," a revision of his earlier paper, "Trends towards a Compatible General Sys- tem." Initially similar, the new paper con- tains much additional information on the development of PRECIS. This is a most worthwhile collection of papers on the current state and prospective developments in classification, both theory and practice, by recognized authorities in Recent Publications I 53 the field. Anyone with even a remote inter- est in the subject who missed the first edi- tion should certainly consider this revision. While there is much identical material, those who have the first edition and are concerned with the subject will find the changes significant and will want this re- vised edition as well.-]. R. Moore 1 Gradu- ate School and University Center, The City University of New York. Sutherland, J. A. Victorian Novelists and Publishers . . Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr.; London: The Athlone Pr. of the Univ. of London, 1976. 251p. $13.95. LC 76-8216. ISBN 0-226-78061-9. The past few years have been witness to an encouraging growth of scholarly interest in publishing, as distinct from literary or printing, history. Recent publications (e. g., Studies in the Book Trade in Honor of Graham Pollard and the long-awaited first number of a new journal, Publishing His- tory) have begun to circulate some of the best research that has been done on this critical aspect of the history of books. John Sutherland's Victorian Novelists and Pub- lishers is a superb book, an indication of the works of synthesis to which, one hopes, the more specialized studies will give birth. Between 1830 and 1870 publishing in England evolved rapidly and permanently from the modest trade of booksellers into the big-business world of publishing firms still with us today. Simultaneously, and not incidentally, the production of fiction in- creased enormously, both in quantity and quality. New formats and methods of distribution-the three-decker, publication in parts, magazine serialization, and the cir- culating libraries-were the new . charac- teristics of fiction publication. Dickens, the Brontes, Trollope, and others, when mar- keted by publishers like Chapman and Hall or Longman or distributed by M udie' s, ap- pealed to a new middle·-class reading public that differed from both the armchair novel reader of earlier times and the working-class reader of subliterary writing. Other factors also contributed to the growth of literary fic- tion: the railways, for example, were an ideal place for the reading of fiction; gas lighting increased the places where it was possible to read.