| SIR: You are very considerate to your readers in the
provision of bibliographical information about the books reviewed and discussed
by your contributors. You supply ISBNs and up-to-date prices,
and, unlike too many journals, recognise the existence of paperbacks. The
time and trouble it must take to gather this information are well justified. But the box of data that accompanies Hans Aarsleff's contentious article on Isaiah Berlin’s assessment of Vico (LRB, Vol. 3, No 20) makes me wonder about the principles and method of compilation of such data. You give price and publisher for both hardback and paperback editions, but ISBNs only for the hardbacks (the missing numbers are: Russian Thinkers, 0 14022260 X; Concepts and Categories, 0 192830279; Against the Current, 0 19 2830287; Vico and Herder, 0 7011 25128). You (rightly) intend, it seems, to include preliminary pages in your calculations of extent, but in two cases you omit them (Against the Current is not 394, but 448 pages long, Personal Impressions 250 rather than 219). Concepts and Categories (220 pages, not 224) is out of print in hardback, which makes the hardback data of historical interest only. Personal Impressions was published not in 1979 but in 1980 – which makes it less anomalous that there is as yet no paperback edition (due from Oxford in October 1982). Finally, in his second paragraph Professor Aarsleff alludes to Four Essays on Liberty, the only collection of Isaiah Berlin’s work you do not list, and it may be worth adding its details for the sake of completeness: Oxford, 278 pp., £5.50 and £2.95, 1969, 0 19 215861 9 and 0 19 281034 0. These remarks are made in the hope than an already excellent service can be further improved. The errors may only reveal inaccuracy in your source (British Books in Print?). If so, it seems there is no substitute for getting the data from the physical books themselves. It is a pity to geld the lily. Henry Hardy
Oxford University PressWe take our figure for the number of pages from the last numbered page of the book. Editor, London Review of Books
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