Antedating of "Bibliography"

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

This is another one of those historical shape-shifters, isn't it? In
the 17th & 18th c's "library" was sometimes used in the modern sense
of 'bibliography', as the OED notes. (Roger Chartier has a very good
discussion of these words in L'Ordre des Livres.)

In French and Italian, I've seen 'bibliographie' and 'bibliografia'
used in direct opposition to 'epigraphie/epigrafia' -- that is, to
mean writing in books, as opposed to writing on walls. The historian
Armando Petrucci makes the distinction this way in his book la
Scrittura, and I think it's adopted in the English translation from
U. Chicago Press, which was called Public Lettering. I've never seen
the word used this way in non-translated English, and the OED doesn't
mention it, but you'd figure someone would have used the word like
this somewhere along the way. Is there anything in the OED files?

Geoff


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>Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Antedating of "Bibliography"
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>bibliography (OED, 2., 1814)
>
>1756 Abel Boyer _Dictionnaire royal, francois-anglois et
>anglois-francois, tire des meilleurs auteurs qui ont ecrit dans ces deux
>langues. Nouvelle edition, revue, corrigee, & augmentee
>considerablement_ 71 (Eighteenth Century Collections Online_ 71
>BIBLIOGRAPHIE ... _Bibliography_, the knowledge of the ancient way of
>writings, and _manuscripts_.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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