This volume has been eagerly awaited for many years by people who have been aware of this aspect of the authors’ activities, but it will be a revelation to many others who only know their previous joint work, commonly called A&R, A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England 1558–1640, published originally in Biographical Studies, 1956, the predecessor of Recusant History. That publication has long been available separately and its findings, though not all its information about locations of copies, have also been taken into the second edition of the Short Title Catalogue by Dr. K. F. Pantzer. Now the authors announce that they plan to publish as volume II of their new work an augmented revision of the English catalogue, but rearranged on the same lines as the volume under review. The assignment of fresh numbers to the entries in that revision, mentioned here, is a proprosai which has already aroused serious misgivings (to put it mildly) among habitual users of the established A&R references. They are conscious of the confusion caused by the late Donald Wing’s alteration of numbers for items in the second edition of volume I of his Short Title Catalogue 1641–1700, which are having to be reversed in the third edition. The reason for the proposed change to A&R is presumably that in this new work they are offering more of a subject than author-related handbook, although part I of the present volume is still arranged alphabetically under individual and institutional names (not all authors, yet mainly so) and is much longer (1428 items plus and minus afterthoughts) than part II, which is arranged chronologically by a number of historical episodes and amounts to only about 190 items.
