December 18, 2009

Bartlett's Literature of the Rebellion

When I posted a week ago about John Page Nicholson's 1914 Civil War bibliography, I felt it might have been the first book of its type ever published. Boy, was I wrong. The true granddaddy of all such books has to be John Russell Bartlett's Literature of the Rebellion: A Catalogue of Books and Pamphlets Relating to the Civil War in the United States which first appeared in 1866, only a year after the war ended.

This hardbound book was fully cloth bound, published in Boston by Draper & Halliday, and clocked in at 477 pages. Like most obscure reference books, it was a very limited edition as it was printed in a total run of only 310 copies: 250 in royal octavo (roughly 6" x 9") and 60 copies in quarto (roughly 9 1/2" x 12") .

Barlett's book was the first and still one of the most comprehensive bibliographies on the literature of the American Civil War. Because of this, and as with the Nicholson book, Martino Publishers reprinted the book in recent years. It also still appears to be available direct from them at $65. Included are 6073 printed items divided into the following categories: 1] Books and pamphlets relating to the Rebellion and to related topics published anywhere, 2] Congressional reports and speeches etc., 3] Official publications of the several States covering the period of the war, 4] Official publications of the British government relating to the War, 5] Works on American Slavery, and several other headings. It's also available online at Google Print. This one looks like it might be indispensable for researchers seeking those obscure nineteenth-century pamphlets pertaining to the "Late Unpleasantness."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is also available as a free download from http://www.archive.org/details/literatureofrebe00bart.