Bibliographer: Adriana Obiols Roca

Mary: a Fiction

This short stop-motion film reimagines bibliographic description as the embodied, material experience of paging through a copy of Mary: A Fiction by Mary Wollstonecraft. The digital video form and contemporary setting emphasize the experience of handling the book in the present (November 2014) moment rather than an idealized historical reconstruction of the novel’s earlier readers.

Traditional Description

Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary: A Fiction. 1st ed. London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1788.

Title: Mary, | A Fiction | “L’exercise des plus sublimes vertus éleve et nourri: | le génie ROUSSEAU. | LONDON: | Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church-Yard. | MDCCLXXXYIII.

Pagination: Arabic, immediately following first page of the text.

Format: 8vo

Contents: pp.1 blank, A1 title, A1v blank, A2r – A3v (?) prefatory advertisement, B1r-N6r Text, N6v blank.

Notes:
- Swarthmore College Special Collections, Swarthmore, PA.
- Annotation on the back of the cover.
- Annotation on the margin of page 178 – the word “returned” has been crossed out, what has been written on the margin is unclear. Facsimile in ECCO has the same indecipherable annotation on a copy of the book held at the British Library.
- The gathering for signature A only has three pages, and the blank page at the beginning of the book seems to not be included.

Experimental Description