March 30, 1993

Dear Fellow Members,

You have already been informed (at the back of the latest volume of Studies in Bibliography) that I have been elected your next president, to succeed Irby Cauthen; but I want to convey my greetings to you directly and to say how delighted I am to have this opportunity to serve a society that I have respected and been associated with for so long.

I feel particularly honored to be the first president of the Society from outside the Charlottesville area, and I hope that my election can serve to symbolize the fact that the Society is in no sense a purely local organization.

The annual meeting of the Society, which this year will consist simply of a brief business meeting, will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, April 30, 1993, in the Taylor Room of Alderman Library. The first item of business at that meeting will be a vote on an amendment to the Society's constitution: the Council recommends that the sentence reading "Council members shall also choose a Secretary and a Treasurer from the staff of the University of Virginia, who shall be ex officio members of the Council" be changed to read "Council members shall also choose a Secretary and a Treasurer (or a Secretary-Treasurer), who may be elected to the Council or may serve on the Council ex officio."

The second item of business will be the election of three members of the Council. The Nominating Committee has proposed that the following persons be elected for terms ending in the years indicated:

• Penelope Weiss (1996)
• G. Thomas Tanselle (1997)
• Terry Belanger (2000)

I wish to thank, on behalf of the Society, the three persons who are leaving the Council--Irby Cauthen, Nancy Essig, and Mrs. Linton Massey--as well as the retiring Secretary and Treasurer, Ray Frantz. I am happy to say that Mrs. Massey, whose service goes back eighteen years (and whose husband was a Council member and president before that), has been designated an Honorary Councillor. Irby Cauthen has been a member of the Council for thirty-two years and Ray Frantz the Secretary and Treasurer for twenty-four; such devoted attention to the affairs of the Society deserves the profound gratitude of all of us, and we send them every good wish for the future.

Let me take this opportunity to announce the Society's latest venture: a series of occasional publications, under the direction of our editor, David Vander Meulen. These will in most cases be shorter and less formal than our monographic publications and will be distributed directly by the Society (rather than through the University Press of Virginia, as the books are). Some of them will be separate printings of articles from Studies in Bibliography, and others will contain previously unpublished material. The first two are from Studies, pieces for which separates appear to be in demand. One is my essay on Fredson Bowers, which will be reprinted along with the checklist of his writings by Martin Battestin (and the volume will include a foreword by David Vander Meulen and an index). The other is Donald D. Eddy and J. D. Fleeman's handlist of books to which Samuel Johnson subscribed. These two publications will be ready shortly, and an order blank with further details is enclosed with this letter. In the late summer or early fall you will receive notice of another publication in this series (this one to be published jointly with The Johnsonians), a facsimile and transcription of the surviving portion of Johnson's translation of Sallust, edited by David Vander Meulen and me. This manuscript, in the Hyde Collection, has never before been published. I look forward to working with the Council on these and other projects and to serving the Society as its president.

With thanks and best wishes to all of you.