The Third Way

Abstract

N THE "FABLED FACULTY" COLLECTION of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia is a now sepia-toned, though no less stunning, photograph of Fredson Bowers taken in 1954 in what looks like spring or early summer and featuring the "father of Anglo-American bibliography" standing before the Long Island Kennel Club's award-winning wolfhound. A sign at Bowers's feet-not the wolfhound's-reads "Best in Show." In the photograph, Bowers, dressed in an off-white and slightly crumpled linen suit, looks serious, perhaps a little sad. IfJ.C.C. Mays's account is accurate, Bowers's sadness may be explained by the fact that, by the time this picture was taken, his new focus on bibliography made his former passion for wolfhounds seem a mere distraction. Although Bowers appears to be looking directly into the glassy eyes of the gentle hound, his inner eye may in fact have been focused on his precious edition of Shakespeare. This edition, also part of the "Fabled Faculty" exhibit, is covered with Bowers's penciled marginal notes. Since Bowers's career roughly spans the years between 1936, when he joined the English department at the University of Virginia, and 1991, when his death at last required him to cede editorship of Studies in Bibliography,