Thursday, 9 February, 2012
Quadrant Online

July-August 2009

Volume LIII Number 7-8

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Books

The Bibliographer as Detective

Milton Osborne

The Celebrated George Barrington: A Spurious Author, the Book Trade, and Botany Bay by Nathan Garvey; Hordern House Rare Books, 2008, $64.

Several decades ago the distinguished Yale historian Robin Winks published a series of essays under the title, The Historian as Detective. With the publication of Nathan Garvey’s account of the life and disreputable times of “the Celebrated George Barrington”, and the publishing industry that became associated with his name, it’s now the case that readers have available to them a classic example of the bibliographer as detective.

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