William Thomas Lowndes

William Thomas Lowndes (c. 1798 – 31 July 1843), English bibliographer, was born about 1798, the son of a London bookseller.

His principal work, The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature—the first systematic work of the kind—was published in four volumes in 1834. It took Lowndes fourteen years to compile, but, despite its merits, brought him neither fame nor money. "For years Lowndes was the national British bibliography."[1] It is regarded as a "bibliographical classic"[1] although "pleasurably more scattershot than systematic."[2]

Lowndes, reduced to poverty, subsequently became cataloguer to Henry George Bohn, the bookseller and publisher. In 1839 he published the first parts of The British Librarian, designed to supplement his early manual, but owing to failing health did not complete the work.

References

1. RQ, 8, 1969, ISSN 0033-7072
2. Thomas F. Bonnell (2005–2006). "When Book History Neglects Bibliography: Trouble with the 'Old Canon' in 'The Reading Nation'". Studies in Bibliography. 57. ISSN 0081-7600. JSTOR 40372113.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lowndes, William Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 78.

Further reading

William Thomas Lowndes (1869). Henry G. Bohn (ed.). Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature. London: Bell and Daldy.
Volume	From	To
Volume 1	A (1)	C (576)
Volume 2	D (577)	H (1155)
Volume 3	I (1157)	O (1756)
Volume 4	P (1757)	Sim (2400)
Volume 5	Sim (2401)	Z (2037)

• The Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, Volume 6: Appendix, Bell & Daldy, 1865.
• George Watson Cole (1939), Do You Know Your Lowndes? A Bibliographical Essay on William Thomas Lowndes and Incidentally on Robert Watt and Henry G. Bohn
• Francesco Cordasco, "William Lowndes and The Bibliographer's Manual: A Retrospective Essay," in: Lowndes, The Bibliographer's Manual (1967 reprint), 1:v-xii.
• David A. Stoker, "William Thomas Lowndes," in: Nineteenth-Century British Book-Collectors and Bibliographers, ed. William Baker and Kenneth Womack (1997), pp. 265–70.

External links

• The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature, Vol. 1, William Pickering, 1834