Note 9 — OF DIFFERENT DESCRIPTIONS OF BOOKS.

Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes … par A. A. Barbier … Paris, 1806, 4 vols, 8o. It is curious to note that Barbier had not settled in his own mind at the date of the above the first edition, what was an anonymous work. He describes it as one upon the title page of which the author is not named, and he then states that sometimes the author’s name is found in the work; but he says it is the custom to class them all as anonymous and not to distinguish different degrees of anonymity. In the second edition in 1826 he very properly eliminated so far as he was able such works as contained the authors’ names. For many things the first edition is better than the second, in which many of the titles we are told were abbreviated. In the third and last and best edition, part of which was published in 1872, his son, (see p. xxix., note) has so far as he was able, re-instated such titles because so many editors and others still continue to consider a work anonymous if the author’s name does not occur on the title page. This is a step backwards, and the sooner M. Olivier Barbier throws the editors and others overboard the better.