February 1, 1997

Dear Fellow Members,

I am writing this annual letter a month earlier than usual because I want to describe our fiftieth-anniversary celebration early enough to give those of you who can attend time to make your plans.

This year marks the Society's fiftieth anniversary, and we have scheduled two events in honor of the occasion. On the evening of Thursday, April 3rd, there will be a dinner (black tie optional) in the McGregor Room of Alderman Library--a most appropriate setting, since the founding meeting of the Society took place in that room. (Dinner will be at 7:00, with a reception beforehand, starting at 6:00.) After dinner, David L. Vander Meulen, editor of Studies in Bibliography, will give a talk on the history of the Society. The next day (Friday, April 4th), at 4:00 p.m., the annual meeting of the Society will take place in the Dome Room of the Rotunda. It, too, will be a special event because William B. Todd has agreed to give the anniversary address on that occasion. He is not only one of the most distinguished of twentieth-century bibliographers, but he also had many associations with the Society and with Fredson Bowers in the Society's earliest years (as well as having been a regular contributor to Studies in Bibliography). After the meeting there will be a reception in the McGregor Room of Alderman Library.

I hope that many of you (and any guests you wish to invite) will be able to come to Charlottesville for these events. The price of the dinner is $50 per person; checks should be sent by March 20th (or as early as possible, since seating is limited) to our Secretary-Treasurer, Penelope Weiss, at the address on this letterhead. If you respond early enough, she will be able to send you more detailed information, including a list of Charlottesville book dealers, whom you may wish to visit during the day on Friday. Also on Friday, Terry Belanger will hold an open house in the Book Arts Press rooms (in Alderman Library) for members of the Society.

In the business part of the Society's meeting on April 4th, we shall vote on the makeup of the Council for the coming year. My term expires this year, and the Nominating Committee proposes that I be re-elected for another seven-year term, which I shall be glad to accept if the membership wishes. The Committee also suggests that David Seaman be elected to the Council. As Director of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, he has been a great friend to the Society in overseeing the Society's project to convert the text of the entire run of Studies in Bibliography into electronic form and make it freely available on the World Wide Web. Electing him to the Council would not only recognize the contribution he has already made to the Society but also symbolize the Society's commitment to further electronic publication. The Council is limited to seven members, but David Vander Meulen has graciously offered to give up his place so that David Seaman can be elected to fill out his term (and later, I hope, be elected for a full term); David Vander Meulen, as editor of Studies, would continue to attend Council meetings ex officio.

Publishing is indeed the Society's primary activity, and in this anniversary year we will have six new publications (four in printed form and two in electronic form), in addition to Volume 50 of Studies in Bibliography (in its traditional form) and the electronic back file of Studies. Two of the printed books will be available in the coming weeks: the eighth (and final) volume in G. Blakemore Evans's distinguished series on Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the Seventeenth Century and Frederick G. Ribble and Anne G. Ribble's Fielding's Library: An Annotated Catalogue. Shortly after those two, Thomas L. McHaney's edition of the manuscript of Faulkner's Mosquitoes (with a transcription prepared in collaboration with David L. Vander Meulen) will appear in book form. And by this time next year a volume collecting some of my essays, Literature and Artifacts, will be out. (All these publications can be ordered directly from the Society; see the enclosed announcement.) The two electronic publications, which will be freely available through the Society's Web site (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/bsuva/), are a database version of Emily Lorraine de Montluzin's Attributions of Authorship in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1731-1868: A Supplement to Kuist and the whole of Evans's Prompt-Books series. The new volume of Studies in Bibliography, which will be published at the time of the annual meeting, gives substantial attention to the anniversary: it includes a history of the Society and a checklist of Society publications by David L. Vander Meulen; a history of Studies in Bibliography by me; and an author index to the complete run of Studies by David L. Gants and Elizabeth K. Lynch.

For the excellence of the Society's publication program, I want to repeat my annual thanks to Ruthe Battestin, chair of the Publications Committee, and David L. Vander Meulen, the Society's editor. In order to maintain the Society's increasingly ambitious publication activity, including the free dissemination of electronic publications as a service to the scholarly world, the Council has decided on a modest increase in basic membership dues and has instituted several new categories of membership. The basic dues will be 335 per year ($17.50 for students) and will include a subscription to Studies. Members in three additional categories will receive all publications of the Society and by their contributions will assist in furthering the Society's work: Contributing Members (at least $125 per year), Patrons (at least $250 per year), and Benefactors (at least $500 per year). (The names of individual and institutional Contributing Members, Patrons, and Benefactors will be listed annually in Studies.) The Secretary-Treasurer will be sending the 1997 dues notices, reflecting this new dues structure, in the spring. Let me encourage all of you to consider contributing at one of the higher levels, and I hope you will suggest to persons interested in bibliographical matters that they join the Society.

Thanks are due, in the warmest possible terms, to our Secretary-Treasurer, Penelope Weiss, for her continuing loyal and effective service on behalf of the Society. She and Elizabeth Lynch, assistant to the Editor, deserve our special thanks this year for handling--in addition to their regular duties--the many details connected with the anniversary dinner. I also take this opportunity of thanking all the Council members, each of whom has served on one or more committees during the year.

On behalf of the Council, I send you all good wishes and thank you for your support. I hope to see many of you at the dinner and meeting in April.