Personal bibliographies compile works by, about, or belonging to a specific person or group of people. Personal bibliographies are usually created for people deemed to have been historically significant. Personal bibliographies are especially useful for finding primary sources that otherwise lack adequate bibliographic control, such as unpublished works, and documents published in non-book formats (e.g. signed newspaper articles, unsigned newspaper articles, and magazine articles).
Some examples of personal bibliographies:
Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement by
Entries organized by year of publication. Includes a subject index.
Ulysses S. Grant by
In Ulysses S. Grant: A Bibliography, Dr. Kelsey has created an invaluable resource for Grant scholars. The bibliography consists of twenty chapters covering Grant's early life, his careers both as soldier and as president, his associations with various individuals, his post-presidency activities, the role alcohol played in his life, his battle with throat cancer, and ultimately, his tragic death. What makes this book truly special is that Kelsey cites not only the usual books and journals but also a wide variety of nontraditional materials ranging from manuscripts to musical scores. Additionally, she has created a list of cited journals with OCLC numbers, making precise identification of old and obscure journals easy for researchers. Kelsey's sources are varied and multidimensional: she includes scholarly, popular, and ephemeral works to present the fullest possible picture of the legendary president.Kelsey also lists many obscure sources on not only Grant but also his associates, including all his cabinet members. The work includes citations about Julia Dent Grant, Other Grant family members, Grant's cabinet members, John Rawlins, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ely Parker, Abraham Lincoln. Libraries of all types could benefit from including this resource in the reference collection. The text might get the most use in historical society libraries, as well as in the libraries of colleges and universities. Public libraries and private individuals interested in Grant and the Civil War would also appreciate the book's comprehensive nature.
Catalogs can also be used as bibliographies, although the two are fundamentally different: a catalog is a list of documents known to exist in a certain repository (or to have once existed in that repository). A bibliography is a list of documents known to have existed, regardless of whether or not they still exist, or whether their present location is known.
Many personal bibliographies are in the form of catalogs, since a common type of personal bibliography is a list of books owned by a person or an organization--the fact of their provenance can often be of interest to to researchers, as in the following:
Wordsworth's Reading, 1800-1815 by
Wordsworth's Reading 1800-1815, first published in 1996, lists all of the authors and (where possible) books known to have been read by William Wordsworth during the years which saw the composition of some of his greatest poetry, including Poems, in Two Volumes, The Thirteen-Book Prelude, The White Doe of Rylstone and The Excursion. The information is presented in an easy-to-use form, and includes dates of reading and full discussions of evidence. It draws on analyses of Wordsworth's manuscripts contained in current and forthcoming scholarly editions of his works, and incorporates hitherto unpublished research into the poet's intellectual development, including a thorough survey of manuscript materials. Together with Duncan Wu's companion-volume, Wordsworth's Reading 1770-1799, this is a most complete study of Wordsworth's reading, and it will be an essential reference tool for all scholars and students of his work.
Often, personal bibliographies will make attributions for anonymous or pseudonymous works, or else correct mistaken attributions, as in the following:
George Eliot : a bibliographical history by
This well-annotated and carefully organized work documents all of Eliot's major novels in English as well as other languages. Additional sections in the book list all her minor fictions, articles, poetry, and miscellaneous writings. The 700-page work is also well illustrated with over one hundred and forty-five photographs of rare bindings and title pages.
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