College and Research Libraries


494 College & Research Libraries 

the book remains a valuable standard 
work. It provides a thorough, coherent in­
troduction to acquisitions for the novice 
and a convenient source of reference for 
the veteran. It would be a suitable text­
book for a course on acquisitions, and the 
practitioner will find valuable suggestions 
of sources and procedures for acquiring 
materials in formats that are unfamiliar. 
This new edition should join its predeces­
sors on the shelves of acquisitions depart­
ments and library school collections 
alike.-Eric Carpenter, Oberlin College Li­
brary, Oberlin, Ohio. 

Grafton, Anthony. Forgers and Critics: Cre­
ativity and Duplicity in Western Scholar­
ship. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 
1990. 157p. alk. paper, $14.95 (ISBN 0­
691-05544-0). LC 89-28347. 
Accounts of the production and un­

masking of forgeries have universal 
appeal-pitting the forger's superior un­
derstanding of what must have existed 
against the critic's belief that systematic 
comparison of data leads to truth. Most 
studies of forgery familiar to librarians 
deal with specific items (Mormon docu­
ments, the Vinland Map), perpetrators 
(Thomas Chatterton, T.J. Wise), types 
(facsimiles of newspaper issue or Lincoln 
letters), or historical periods. Studies of 
criticism-whether biblical, historical, lit­
erary, or textual-are categorized sepa­
rately. 

In this brief but tightly written essay, 
Anthony Grafton analyzes serious and 
skillful forgeries including textual matter 
produced in Western culture over the past 
2,500 years, always with intent to deceive. 
Thousands are known: historical records 
of an heroic past, literary remains of a ca­
nonical nature, sacred texts offering spirit­
ual authority, and legal documents legiti­
mizing practices and possessions. In 
modern times, personal or professional 
gain has proved a temptation to creative 
and often prominent scholars, as they but­
tress an argument or fill in a gap. Con­
cerns of the forger include not only the 
text's linguistic and physical aspects but 
also a convincing explanation of its prove­
nance. 

From extensive reading and hundreds 
of examples familiar and unfamiliar, Graf-

September 1990 

ton argues compellingly that criticism de­
veloped not through some abstract need 
for it but as a result of the stimulus pro­
vided by forgers. The critical method is 
not an invention of Renaissance human­
ism or nineteenth-century German schol­
arship but continues a tradition begun in 
classical Greece. It has increased iri so­
phistication concomitantly with the chal­
lenge of better forgeries and has changed 
chiefly in the mass of data supporting its 
contentions. It tends to be less discrimi­
nating when dealing with texts that coin­
cide with the critic's assumptions and de­
sires. "Forger and critic have been 
entangled through time like Laocoon and 
his serpents," writes Grafton in his intro­
duction; 11 the changing nature of their 
continuous struggle forms a central theme 
in the development of historical and philo­
logical scholarship" and has given us a 
richer sense of what the past was really 
like. 

The author's erudite and wide-ranging 
theory-originating as a public lecture at 
Princeton University where he is Profes­
sor of History-represents a logical exten­
sion of his ground-breaking publications 
in the history of classical scholarship and 
in Renaissance education. His exposition 
of 11 a fascinating but troubling feature of 
the Western tradition'' gives perspective 
to the critical judgment bibliographic in­
struction librarians endeavor to instill and 
to the "spurious works" catalogers find 
pervasive in the P A schedule of the Li­
brary of Congress classification. More 
generally, Grafton's lucid thought offers 
academic librarians a rare and welcome 
opportunity to step back and consider the 
authenticity and intellectual origins of 
some of the materials we care for, as well 
as the motivations behind the scholarship 
our efforts support.-Elizabeth Swaim, 
Wesleyan University Library, Middletown, 
Connecticut. 

Libraries and Scholarly Communication 
in the United States: The Historical Di­
mension. Ed. by Phyllis Dain and John 
Y. Cole. New York: Greenwood, 1990. 
148p., $37.95. (ISBN 0-313-26807-X). LC 
89-23248. 
The collection of essays in this book de­

rives from a conference of the same name