"A masterwork. ...Tanselle emphasizes the bibliographer's paramount obligation to study and compare multiple copies of any book before drawing conclusions about its makeup or publication history. ...Not least, Tanselle closes by presenting and commenting on a sample bibliographical description, using Herman Melvilles novel Redburn as a test case."
- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

This pamphlet reprints an appendix from G. Thomas Tanselle's Descriptive Bibliography, published in 2020 by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia - an appendix that serves in two ways as a summary of the book. First, it brings together the basic definitions set forth in the volume, along with the examples of descriptive paragraphs (treating specific features of books) that were presented at various places in the text. Second, it provides an extended sample description, accompanied by a detailed commentary that offers practical advice and the underlying rationale regarding each element in the description. This booklet therefore stands on its own; but frequent cross-references identify pages in the book where fuller discussion of each point occurs, and readers can turn to those passages when they wish to have more information. The material republished in this form will be a convenient guide for students of descriptive bibliography as well as for those who write and read descriptive bibliographies.

G. Thomas Tanselle, former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and adjunct professor of English at Columbia University, has served as president of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Grolier Club, and the Society for Textual Scholarship.