d
in series.

This last issue has 939 pages. Its only defects (aside from its
inevitable omissions of many unrecorded books) are the double alphabet,
and the want of collation, or an indication of the number of pages in
each work, which should follow every title. Its cost in bound form is
$15, at which the two preceding American catalogues 1876-84, and 1884 to
1890 can also be had, while the catalogue of books in print in 1876,
published in 1880, is quite out of print, though a copy turns up
occasionally from some book-dealer's stock.

The American Catalogue has now become a quinquennial issue, gathering the
publications of five years into one alphabet; and it is supplemented at
the end of every year by the "Annual American Catalogue," started in
1886, which gives, in about 400 pages, in its first alphabet, collations
of the books of the year (a most important feature, unfortunately absent
from the quinquennial American Catalogue.) Its second alphabet gives
authors, titles, and sometimes subject-matters, but without the
distribution into subject-divisions found in the quinquennial catalogue;
and the titles are greatly abridged from the full record of its first
alphabet. Its price is $3.50 each year.

And this annual, in turn, is made up from the catalogues of titles of all
publications, which appear in the _Publishers' Weekly_, the carefully
edited organ of the book publishing interests in the United States. This
periodical, which will be found a prime necessity in every library,
originated in New York, in 1855, as the "American Publishers' Circular,"
and has developed into the recognized authority in American publications,
under the able management of R. R. Bowker and A. Growoll. For three
dollars a year, it supplies weekly and monthly alphabetical lists of
whatever comes from the press, in book form, as completely as the titles
can be gathered from every source. It gives valuable notes after most
titles, defining the scope and idea of the work, with collations,
features which are copied into the Annual American Catalogue.

I must not omit to mention among American bibliographies, although
published in London, and edited by a foreigner, Mr. N. Truebner's
"Bibliographical Guide to American literature: a classed list of books
published in the United States during the last forty years." This book
appeared in 1859, and is a carefully edited bibliography, arranged
systematically in thirty-two divisions of subjects, fill