Talk:List of works by Joseph Priestley
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This list is not complete. I will finish it up in a few days. Awadewit 08:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The list is complete (at least according to Schofield). There are some oddities regarding the Theological Repository. I will check those out when I get the time. Awadewit Talk 21:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I am reorganizing the list and making it more complete using Crook's bibliography. This will take a few days. Awadewit | talk 23:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "Edited works"
We read:
- Edited works
- This list of Priestley's edited works. . . .
I took the title to mean others' editions of Priestley's works, cf John Dover Wilson's editions of Shakespeare's works. I then realized that Priestley was the editor, not the editee. How about "works edited by Priestley"? -- Hoary 10:44, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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- Good. -- Hoary 14:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Parts and volumes
We read for example:
- —. "Dr. Priestley's Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents, No. 1." New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 116-21.
- —. "Dr. Priestley's Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents, No. 2." New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 121-24.
- —. "Dr. Priestley's Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents, No. 3." New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 124-27.
I think that
- —. "Dr. Priestley's Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents." New York Medical Repository 3 (1800). No. 1, 116-21; no. 2, 121-24; no. 3, 124-27.
or something like it would be neater and would lose nothing in precision or helpfulness. Similar simplifications could be made for the volumes of a multivolume work. -- Hoary 10:50, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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- Well, you and I have remarkably different preferences. -- Hoary 14:50, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Modern editions and reprints
I've just taken a look in the OPAC of a good library that I know (alas not one to which I have very simple access, though I can go there if I have good reason to). It has over forty books that are catalogued (or, imaginably, miscatalogued) as being by, partly by, or edited by, Priestley. Here's just the first screenful of ten items (with idiosyncratic OPAC punctuation intact):
- Letters to Burke, 1791 / Joseph Priestley --Poole : Woodstock Books , 1997 --(Revolution and romanticism, 1789-1834 )
- Miscellaneous observations relating to education / Joseph Priestley ; introduced by Jeffrey Stern --Bristol : Thoemmes ; Taipei : Unifacmanu Trading Company , 1995 --(Classics in education series ; 55 )
- Political writings / Joseph Priestley ; edited by Peter N. Miller --Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press , 1993 --(Cambridge texts in the history of political thought )
- A course of lectures on the theory of language and universal grammar / Joseph Priestley ; with a new introduction by Roy Harris --London : Routledge/Thoemmes ; Tokyo : Kinokuniya , 1993 --(History of linguistics . British linguistics in the eighteenth century )
- An essay on a course of liberal education for civil and active life / Joseph Priestley --London : Routledge/Thoemmes Press ; Tokyo : Kinokuniya , 1992 --(History of British educational theory 1750-1850 )
- A farewell sermon : letters to the members of the New Jerusalem Church 1791, and The present state of Europe compared with antient prophecies; a sermon preached at the gravel pit meeting in Hackney, 1794 / Joseph Priestley --Oxford : Woodstock Books , 1989 --(Revolution and romanticism, 1789-1834 )
- Letters to a philosophical unbeliever, part I / Joseph Priestley --New York : Garland Pub. , 1983 --(The Philosophy of David Hume )
- A free discussion of the doctrines of materialism and philosophical necessity in correspondence with Joseph Priestley, 1778 / Richard Price --New York : Garland Pub. , 1978 --(British philosophers and theologians of the 17th & 18th centuries )
- An examination, 1774 / Joseph Priestley --New York : Garland Pub. , 1978 --(British philosophers and theologians of the 17th & 18th centuries )
- Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit and The doctrine of philosophical necessity illustrated, 1777 / Joseph Priestley --New York : Garland Pub. , 1976 --(British philosophers and theologians of the 17th & 18th centuries )
They're all new. And unless I've missed something, all of this information is new to the list/article. I imagine that the ten include facsimile editions and reset but otherwise unaltered editions, but wonder if they also include some editions that incorporate substantial corrections, restitutions, etc. I think such information would be very useful for anyone researching Priestley, or indeed anyone merely wishing to read his works. I don't expect that any editor here will leap up, go to a first-rate library, look in every one of these and more recent reprints/editions and edit the list/article accordingly. But I think that this would be a healthy direction to head for. -- Hoary 11:25, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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- No bibliographical researcher has yet assembled a list of all of the reprints of Priestley's works. This is essentially a random list of the reprints that this particular database has. Including it would be original research and would make the list even more incomplete than it is. Besides, who would decide what counts as a modern reprint? I have chosen to stick to first editions because that is one common type of bibliography and that was the information available to me. Awadewit | talk 12:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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- It may indeed be a good idea to keep to first editions; but if so, it could be argued that the article title is a bit misleading. The question of who would decide what counts as a modern reprint is a reasonable one. It might be problematic but I doubt that the problems would be insuperable. Information on new editions of Priestley's works is available to any of us with access to the internet or good libraries. I am amazed to read that including works gathered in ways such as this -- of course not only the arbitrarily chosen first ten that pop up in the OPAC of an arbitrarily chosen library -- would constitute "original research" in the odd sense in which this phrase is used in WP. I've skimread WP:OR and don't see this kind of thing mentioned there. If it is indeed "original research", then a number of lists of works I've created are also heavily dependent on "original research"; nobody has yet complained, but maybe they will. If they do, if the ban on "original research" rules out any kind of intelligent, original (but non-POV-pushing) use the of library, then the prospect of editing WP becomes hugely less interesting to me. But perhaps that's just me. -- Hoary 15:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- I would like to keep the article title as is - hopefully someday a scholar will do the rest of the work and we can then add it to this article. There is no doubt in my mind that collecting citations and posting them as a list is original research; since scholars publish books that are only bibliographies (such as the Crook I used for this page) and get tenure credit for such work (it is field called bibliographical research), I do not believe that our random attempts to create lists should be put on par with those. I would never create a list of works without first having a scholarly bibliography. It is true that WP:OR is hugely restrictive (in fact, I don't think most people understand just how restrictive it is), but it does not mean that we cannot use the library. I don't see that at all. To me it just means that you cannot say anything that hasn't been said before. If a list of works hasn't been collected, that is new work. It may be useful, but it is still new. Awadewit | talk 15:13, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- But the existence of every one of the books that I listed, and of others besides, is something that has been said before. The library that I happened to use was has an OPAC with a Japanese-language interface, but I'm pretty sure you'd find all these books, and more besides, authoritatively listed at Copac or in the Library of Congress catalogue. ¶ If a list of works hasn't been collected, that is new work. Yes, in a very humdrum way. Is it original research? Not by my understanding of WP:OR (let alone the normal definition of the term). And I don't think anybody gets tenure for publishing a bibliography that says no more than what's already made clear in OPACs. -- Hoary 16:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, people do get tenure for this work, because tracking down every edition of every work that someone wrote is actually incredibly time-consuming and difficult. There are even books written on how to produce a useful scholarly bibliography (there are many different ways). Good bibliographies are not just lists of works that someone found - they track changes in editions, they include descriptions of the book (size, binding, etc.), they compare translations with the original. I could go on and on. Awadewit | talk 16:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, yes, people do (or at least may) get tenure for creating bibliographies that embody plenty of original research, in both the normal and the WP sense of that term. But I haven't proposed that and haven't considered doing so. I've not suggested that this article/list should be a "good bibliography" in your stringent sense. ¶ It is not WP:OR to announce the existence of, say, A Course of Lectures on the Theory of Language and Universal Grammar, as published in London by Routledge/Thoemmes and in Tokyo by Kinokuniya in 1993, within the series "British linguistics in the eighteenth century" (itself a subseries of "History of linguistics"), with a new introduction by Roy Harris. My own immediate authority for this assertion happens to be Keio University Library, but either of us, or anybody else, could find the same information at Copac. Neither would it be WP:OR for some editor eventually to take a look at a copy of this edition to see if it is a facsimile (and if so of what, and if not whether it has a prefatory note about any editorial work on the text), and to summarize the findings. (An example of WP:OR would be if some fanatical editor were to embark on an original comparison of an old edition -- or more likely a facsimile thereof -- with a new edition, looking for textual differences.) -- Hoary 23:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, people do get tenure for this work, because tracking down every edition of every work that someone wrote is actually incredibly time-consuming and difficult. There are even books written on how to produce a useful scholarly bibliography (there are many different ways). Good bibliographies are not just lists of works that someone found - they track changes in editions, they include descriptions of the book (size, binding, etc.), they compare translations with the original. I could go on and on. Awadewit | talk 16:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- But the existence of every one of the books that I listed, and of others besides, is something that has been said before. The library that I happened to use was has an OPAC with a Japanese-language interface, but I'm pretty sure you'd find all these books, and more besides, authoritatively listed at Copac or in the Library of Congress catalogue. ¶ If a list of works hasn't been collected, that is new work. Yes, in a very humdrum way. Is it original research? Not by my understanding of WP:OR (let alone the normal definition of the term). And I don't think anybody gets tenure for publishing a bibliography that says no more than what's already made clear in OPACs. -- Hoary 16:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- I would like to keep the article title as is - hopefully someday a scholar will do the rest of the work and we can then add it to this article. There is no doubt in my mind that collecting citations and posting them as a list is original research; since scholars publish books that are only bibliographies (such as the Crook I used for this page) and get tenure credit for such work (it is field called bibliographical research), I do not believe that our random attempts to create lists should be put on par with those. I would never create a list of works without first having a scholarly bibliography. It is true that WP:OR is hugely restrictive (in fact, I don't think most people understand just how restrictive it is), but it does not mean that we cannot use the library. I don't see that at all. To me it just means that you cannot say anything that hasn't been said before. If a list of works hasn't been collected, that is new work. It may be useful, but it is still new. Awadewit | talk 15:13, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- It may indeed be a good idea to keep to first editions; but if so, it could be argued that the article title is a bit misleading. The question of who would decide what counts as a modern reprint is a reasonable one. It might be problematic but I doubt that the problems would be insuperable. Information on new editions of Priestley's works is available to any of us with access to the internet or good libraries. I am amazed to read that including works gathered in ways such as this -- of course not only the arbitrarily chosen first ten that pop up in the OPAC of an arbitrarily chosen library -- would constitute "original research" in the odd sense in which this phrase is used in WP. I've skimread WP:OR and don't see this kind of thing mentioned there. If it is indeed "original research", then a number of lists of works I've created are also heavily dependent on "original research"; nobody has yet complained, but maybe they will. If they do, if the ban on "original research" rules out any kind of intelligent, original (but non-POV-pushing) use the of library, then the prospect of editing WP becomes hugely less interesting to me. But perhaps that's just me. -- Hoary 15:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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I think that it is simply irresponsible to start listing random modern reprints. It would be an arbitrary list and I don't think that such information is all that helpful. Those people who want to read these works have any number of options open to them (databases, microfilm, reprints) - they already know that. I don't feel that this page would be enhanced by a list of the modern editions that my library happens to own. Awadewit | talk 12:54, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
- I hadn't thought of adding editions that happened to be held by a single library, thus my mention of Copac. So there'd be no randomness or arbitrariness. -- Hoary 14:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
- I might be willing to cede your point if there were a database that included every text ever published from the eighteenth century to the present, but there isn't, so any work would have to be a long arduous process of compilation from many databases and even that would not assure that every later edition was caught. Many rare books and manuscript libraries have not catalogued their works electronically yet. Also, I still feel that this work is best done by scholars with training in bibliographical research. Attempting to determine if a work is really a new edition or not is surprisingly difficult. I would not be able to do that simply by looking at an electronic record. This list, with its first English edition focus, reflects the published and therefore the reliable bibliographies that exist for Priestley. I am comfortable with relying on that work but uncomfortable with embarking on a crusade to myself track down every later reprinting (that is a huge project and one that I should get published credit for, if I were to do it). Including only a smattering of reprints would not be beneficial to anyone. Awadewit | talk 20:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
