Open House @ MHS This Saturday

To mark the 225th anniversary of George Washington's Newburgh Address, the MHS will be holding an Open House this Saturday, 15 March, from 1-4 p.m. The original manuscript copy of the address will be on display (it's also on the web, but is naturally much cooler in person), and at 2 p.m. former MHS director Bill Fowler will speak about the speech and its significance.

Guided tours of the building will be offered at 1, 1:30, 2:30 and 3, and visitors will be able to view the current exhibit, "John Adams: A Life in Letters" (part of Adamspalooza). There will, of course, be "special refreshments."

Book Review: "About a Boy"

After reading Nick Hornby's Slam earlier this year (review) and enjoying it fairly well, I thought I might read a few others from his backlist, since they seem to be nice light reads quite suited to train rides and down moments. About a Boy is the first of those I've picked up, and I found it even a bit funnier than Slam. As in Slam, Hornby has mastered the perspective of an adolescent boy; he complements that here by also mastering the perspective of an adolescent man (who manages to grow up a bit whether he likes it or not).

Dealing with deeply emotional issues (divorce, suicide, &c.) in an affecting way by combining depth with his trademark humor, quirky style, and fascinatingly rich (and reliably odd) characters, Hornby pulls it off again with this one.

Quick Links

Just to clear out my inbox a bit, a few things that have come through so far this week:

- The BL is hosting a conference regarding library security on 20 May sponsored by the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). "The aim of this conference is to share information on market intelligence, technology watch, trend analysis and research into collection security. It will provide a forum to share experience in managing risks to library collections, investigating incidents and preventing loss. International speakers from law enforcement organisations and national libraries as well as leading academics have been invited." Program and registration information here.

- The Friends of Coleridge have set up a site to document the ongoing debate over the attribution to Coleridge of an 1821 translation of Faust. This will be very useful; I'll check in often.

- Everett Wilkie noted on Ex-Libris yesterday this article about the new Pennsylvania State Library facility. He writes "One interesting aspect of the new library is that they seemed to have banned traditional writing instruments entirely from the reading room" (the article says "No pens or pencils are allowed here, lest graphite dust and stray ink mar its treasures. Instead, patrons can use laptop computers to take notes"). Not allowing even pencils is a step that I know of no other library taking (if there are others, I'd love to hear of them). Everyone's just supposed to have a laptop now? Of course it's entirely possible the author misunderstood the policy (she notes elsewhere in the piece that Franklin's "kite-and-key" experiment "resulted in the discovery of electricity", which is, of course, not the case).

- Paul van den Brink reports on MapHist that the Leiden Archives have digitized their Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas of 1659 (by Blaeu). Another very "high tech" viewer, but if the images will load on your computer it looks excellent. The website text is in Dutch.

Stanford Gets Fliegelman's Books

The Stanford Report notes today that Stanford University has acquired the wonderful collection of association copies created by the late Jay Fliegelman, who died in August at the age of 58. Stanford paid an undisclosed sum for the 258-volume collection, which was partially donated by Fliegelman's widow, independent scholar Christine Guth.

There's some good background on Fliegelman's collection and collecting habits in the article, so I recommend reading the whole thing. I have not yet heard what if any plans are being made to publish Fliegelman's final manuscript, a book about his collections tentatively titled Belongings: Dramas in American Book Ownership, 1660-1860.

Now That's a Donation!

The NYTimes reports today that Steven Schwarzman, a Wall Street "buyout guru," has "agreed to jump-start a $1 billion expansion of the library system with a guaranteed $100 million of his own." The donation is being hailed as one of "the largest to any cultural institution in the city’s history."

The main NYPL library building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street will be named for Schwarzman, library officials said. Current plans call for some major renovations to the building over the next few years: a "new circulating library will be situated in a vast space that currently houses eight levels of stacks below the Main Reading Room and overlooks Bryant Park through strip windows. The stacks will be moved to an existing three-acre storage area beneath the park, opening the way for the space to be gutted and reconfigured with new rooms for children and teenagers and ample computer work stations. ... The plan also calls for a new cafe and information center to enliven Astor Hall just inside the Fifth Avenue entrance, wireless Internet access throughout the building, refurbishment of branch libraries and the creation of two new libraries in Upper Manhattan and Staten Island."

Secret's Out!

I've a post over at LibraryThing which explains my radio silence this weekend - I was trying to edit 1,600+ books in John Adams' library. That proved slightly ambitious in the end: I'm still only about halfway done. I probably could have finished, but I figured sleep was a little more important. So we've released JA's library in beta form, and I'll continue the process of adding notes, reviews, tags, transcriptions of Adams' marginalia and links to digital scans of the Adams books.

This project is pretty exciting, not only for its timing but also for the level of collaboration we've been able to achieve: LT's MARC guy worked with BPL staff to arrange a batch import of the raw records, and now I'm working with the great JALibrary folks to make the enhancements that will really bring this catalog to life.

I should also note that I've now officially become the "historical consultant" for LT, which I'm pretty excited about. The possibilities are endless!

Miller Gets 18 Months

Travis reports that Jay Miller was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in prison, the exact sentence sought by the prosecution (the defense had requested 8 months). Travis adds "all things considered, not a horrible sentence. Since he’s been in jail for almost a year now, I think we can expect him to be out in six months. At that point he’s got three years of supervised release." He was also ordered to pay more than $10,000 in restitution.

Should have been more time, but 18 months is better than nothing.

Links & Reviews

- In today's Boston Globe, JCB Library director Ted Widmer has an essay on Samuel de Champlain's New England voyages and the 400th anniversary of Quebec's founding. An exhibit curated by the JCB, "Champlain's America: New England and New France," will run at the Boston Public Library from 13 March to 31 May.

- Paul Collins expands on Paul Constant's The Stranger piece on chasing book thieves. Travis notes "the profile of this group is almost exactly like the profile of my book thieves, just younger. My guys are white, middle-aged, males with some education, money problems and (often) mommy issues. I couldn’t help thinking, after reading the article, that these thefts were gateway book crimes. In ten years that idiot who threw A People’s History into Puget Sound is going to be cutting up a Blaeu Atlas."

- Three men have been arrested in India for trying to sell Mughal-era Quran manuscripts. "The exact source of the books is yet to be traced, [but] police said they were stolen from either Haryana or Rajasthan."

- Michael Lieberman has a post on the Booksellers Provident Retreat, founded in 1843 and still in existence as "the only estate dedicated to providing homes for people who have worked in book publishing, distribution or sales, where they can live safe in the knowledge that they have a home for as long as they need it, within a community of like-minded people who share a common interest." Michael asks "How long is the waiting list?"

- In Paper Cuts, Jennifer Schuessler comments on Nicholson Baker's Deletopedia idea (which I mentioned here last week). She also points out a profile of Baker which recently appeared in the NYTimes.

- From BibliOdyssey, a collection of anthropomorphic trade cards and images of the Montgolfier balloons.

- Laura at Bookn3rd has found a fascinating new book on birds: Walter Buller's A History of the Birds of New Zealand (online here). NB: Seeing a kiwi in person is one of the things that's on my list of things to do before I die.

- Bauman Rare Books is opening a showroom in Las Vegas. (h/t Book Patrol)

- David King notes the impending publication of his new book, Vienna, 1814.

- LT unveiled another fun new feature this week, LibraryThing Local.

- David Rubenstein, who bought the Magna Carta in December, returned the document to the National Archives this week. (h/t fade theory)

- In the TLS, Peter Porter comments on Shakespeare as poet and dramatist.

- Fort Wayne, Indiana's Lincoln Museum will close on 30 June, the Journal-Gazette reported recently. "Much of the ... extensive collection – a treasure trove for historians that includes 18,000 books and 350 documents signed by Lincoln, among other rarities – will be digitized or sent to other museums around the country, possibly making it more difficult for researchers to access them all." (h/t RBN)

Reviews

- In the NYTimes, Robert Sullivan reviews Jonathan Rosen's The Life of the Skies, which he calls "part birding history, part birding travelogue."

- In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda reviews Steven Waldman's Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.

Run Silent, Run Deep

Just a quick note that I'm entering what will hopefully be a short period of radio silence so that I can (hopefully) finish up a big editing project and make an exciting announcement during the early part of next week. In the meantime, as part of Adamspalooza, NPR will be airing a series of Adams-related segments next week ... you can get a sneak preview here.

I'll try to put up links and reviews tomorrow at some point, and if I hear what happened at the Jay Miller sentencing yesterday I'll be sure to post that too.

Recent Acquisitions

- Penn State has acquired a collection of Ernest Hemingway correspondence called "the last sizeable and significant known collection of the famed novelist's letters still in private hands. Amassed by his sister Madelaine "Sunny" Hemingway Mainland and passed on to her son, Ernest Hemingway Mainland, the set includes more than 100 unpublished letters, telegrams, and notes from Hemingway to his family between 1917 and 1957." The archive will be cataloged and available for research use later in the year.

- Emory University will house an 1,100-box collection of materials from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a major civil rights organization. "Highlights of the collection include photographs documenting events such as voter registration workshops during the civil rights movement, and drafts of speeches by Ralph David Abernathy and others - many annotated in the hands of their authors." Emory purchased the archive for an undisclosed sum.

- And from BYU, a brief overview of the special collections acquisitions process.

Murder Pamphlet Exhibit at NLM

Stephen Greenberg writes:

"The History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit, "MOST HORRIBLE & SHOCKING MURDERS: True crime murder pamphlets in the collection of the National Library of Medicine." It is located in display cases in the HMD Reading Room, on the first floor of the National Library of Medicine, Building 38, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. The exhibit is open Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5:00pm, and Saturday 8:30am to 2:30pm, through June 15, 2008.

Ever since the mid-1400s, the public's appetite for tales of shocking murders-"true crime"-has been one of the most durable facts of the market for printed material. Murder pamphlets were hawked on street corners, taverns, coffeehouses, newsstands, and bookshops. Typically, the pamphlets claimed to be true accounts of a murder, consisting of a narrative, trial transcript, or written confession of the murderer before his or her execution. Sometimes they featured medical commentary. The pamphlets on display in "MOST HORRIBLE & SHOCKING MURDERS" were printed between 1692 and 1881. Some deal with cases of interest to the emerging field of forensic medicine. Others deal with cases in which doctors were accused of-or were victims of-heinous crimes. Still others have no medical connection whatsoever. Today, murder pamphlets are a rich source for historians and crime novelists, who mine them to study the history of medicine, class, gender, the law, the city, religion and other topics.

The exhibit was curated by Michael Sappol, PhD. For further information on the exhibit, contact Stephen Greenberg, e-mail greenbes@mail.nih.gov, phone 301-435-4995. Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NIH Visitors and Security website at: http://www.nih.gov/about/visitorsecurity.htm."

If crime broadsides are up your alley, don't forget to check out Harvard's digital collection of more than 500 examples.

Book Review: "Rebellion in the Ranks"

I had been looking forward to John Nagy's Rebellion in the Ranks: Mutinies of the American Revolution (2008, Westholme), and started reading it this week so as to coincide with the 225th anniversary of Washington's famous Newburgh Address, which we'll celebrate on 15 March.

Unfortunately, I wasn't even able to make it through the introduction, though I did sample long sections from several chapters later in the book just to see if things got better. The prose is incredibly clunky, and the text appears to have entirely escaped even a moment of an editor's time (I found at least eight typos in the first four pages, and I wasn't even looking). It is simply impossible to take seriously a piece of writing which contains such noticeable and prominent errors (including, I must add, a printing mistake on the title page).

I could continue to pile on (I thought about providing sample paragraphs) but I'll refrain. The only circumstance under which I would ever recommend this book to anyone is if they were looking to do their own research on mutinies: the bibliography is not horrible. Otherwise, unless you have a much higher tolerance for misspelled words and short, choppy sentences than I do, steer clear.

Book Review: "The Forgery of Venus"

Michael Gruber's second novel in two years (after 2007's The Book of Air and Shadows) is The Forgery of Venus, forthcoming from William Morrow. Like its predecessor, this one fits squarely into the literary thriller genre, although its plot focus is the art world rather than rare books. Also like Air and Shadows, this one kept me guessing, mainly because it's difficult to tell from first to last what's real and what's not.

Using a 21st-century version of a classic literary framing device, Gruber's story is told in the form of digital audio files which artist Charles P. Wilmot Jr. (aka Chaz) passes off to a friend after drunkenly informing him that he's responsible for painting a newly-discovered work by Diego Velázquez. The main portion of the novel consists of the narration in the files, revealing Chaz's tale of a "creativity drug" trial which takes a bizarrely supernatural turn and a descent into the glamorous but dangerous underworld of European art forgery.

Nice use of art history, psychological suspense and imagination. Interesting characters (even if some seemed a bit flat) and a plot that held my attention and made me want to know what the heck was going on. Recommended without reservation.

Faustus Editor Responds

Frederick Burwick, one of the editors of Faustus, From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, has responded to my post regarding a review essay [PDF] critical of the attribution. Please see his comments here.

Maine to Appeal Declaration Decision

I thought I'd look this morning and see if there were any updates on a case I posted about back in early December: the state of Maine had sued a Virginia man in an attempt to force the return of a 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence (all the backstory is here). The trial in Fairfax County was set for 15 January, but I hadn't - until this morning - been able to find any discussion of what happened.

Portland's WMTW reports today that the Virginia judge ruled last month in favor of Richard L. Adams, Jr., the current owner of the Declaration, but that Maine officials have decided to appeal the ruling. I haven't yet been able to figure out how to pull up the case in the Virginia court system database so I don't have any further information than that just yet - but as soon as I can find anything, I'll post more.

[Update: Still don't have the text, but Everett Wilkie found another news piece about the case in the 28 February issue of the Wiscasset Newspaper.

Long excerpt: "Several factors hurt Maine's case. One was the testimony from Maine's own expert witness, Albert H. Whitaker, Jr. who said the 'broadsides were not typically kept.' The court found that Maine had not proved its public record statute applied in this case, and even if it did, the statute defines public records as 'received and maintained' by a municipality. 'Whether the Pownalborough Print was 'maintained' by Pownalborough or Wiscasset has not been conclusively established here,' the court said.

"Maine tried to prove that the print was kept by the town clerk because of the manner in which it was folded, the 'docketing' on the back of the print, and the fact that Sol Holbrook was the town clerk and the print was found in his daughter's attic. Specialists in colonial era documents from Sotheby's testified that they had seen between 80 and 100 broadsides of the Declaration of Independence, and that all of them were folded because of the odd size of the paper, but not necessarily because they were kept by town clerks. Another expert witness testified that 'anyone could have made the docketing entries, and that one docketing struck him as incorrect because it identified it as a 'warrant,' when in fact, it was not a warrant.'

"Maine argued that because the Pownalborough Print was not one of the many town documents recorded in the town book, 'it must have been wrongfully removed.'

"But the court found that such records of documents - 'an index, in effect of what was retained - were presumably passed from clerk to clerk. Any clerk doing an inventory of the town records would have known which records were missing by looking at the town book. If the original print was to be retained as an official town record, then, at some point, some clerk receiving the book without also receiving the broadside would have realized that it was missing. Yet, Maine presented no evidence that any town clerk ever realized the Pownalborough Print was not among the town records, and, as a result, sought it out. The print was never believed 'missing' until Maine learned of its sale.'

"Maine tried to prove ownership because it was found in the attic of town clerk Sol Holbrook's daughter. However, the court said since Sol Holbrook never lived in the house where the print was found, there was no evidence this was true.

"And, even if Sol Holbrook had once had it in his possession, the court said, 'It still begs the ultimate question… whether Sol Holbrook gave to someone a town record as opposed to a discarded broadside.'"

Without having read the full text, the ruling actually seems quite fair to me. I'll be interested to see what grounds Maine chooses to appeal on.]

[Further update: A colleague's forwarded me another local newspaper story, this one from the Lincoln County News. Another very interesting bit from the court's ruling: "The State of Maine introduced no evidence that any applicable statute in effect in 1776 required a state or town to retain broadsides generally or the Pownalborough print specifically. In fact, the Order printed on the Pownalborough print only requires it be read by the ministers of each parish and then delivered to the town clerks so that the clerks could record the words into the town books." Such a recording was made 10 November, 1776.

"The court reasoned under Virginia law, Maine as the party not possessing the copy had to bear the burden of proof that the print was 'converted' from its rightful owner." Maine's claims failed to meet this burden, the court ruled.]

All Adams, All the Time

As you may have heard, HBO is about to air a mini-series based on David McCullough's John Adams, with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney starring as John and Abigail. The very flashy series website contains trailers, clips, interviews, and all sorts of other goodies. HBO has arranged a tie-in marketing campaign with the US Postal Service which is highlighted at poweroftheletter.com: among other things, first class letters will be postmarked with a special cancellation in March containing a 1765 quote from JA: "Let us dare to read, think, speak and write."

The USPS website also contains "see the original letters" links to the Adams Electronic Archive here at MHS, where you can view images and transcriptions of the entire John-Abigail correspondence (among other things). Our web guru has also mounted a brand-new site designed specifically to complement the HBO mini-series.

Beyond the virtual, there will be two physical exhibits of Adams letters and other manuscript materials. Here at the MHS in Boston, "John Adams: A Life in Letters" will be open to the public from 8 March through 31 (Monday through Saturday, 1-4 p.m.). And at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, "My Dearest Friend" will run from 5-30 April in the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library.

Recent Catalogs

- Oak Knoll's having a Bibliographies Sale for March: 588 titles offered.

- E.K. Schreiber Rare Books offer their Spring List [PDF]. Forty-five titles, published from 1467-1767. The list is elegantly designed, with very nice descriptions.

- Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts has a whole bunch of new web catalogs up - these are always eminently browsable, well-illustrated and with a great selection of books. The list: Illustrated Books, Arabica, Agriculture, Conduct, and 18th Century. They write "The first and last of these are long, and we have taken to reminding webshop visitors that it can be rewarding, when it comes to such extensive offerings, to be merrily illogical. Instead of starting at "A" and marching on through, try a Bi-Bz or a Cor-Cz, then K-Le, then N-Pk - let chance have its chance, as it would if you were poking around on our *actual* shelves here at the Arsenal!"

Audubon's Birds, Digitally

It is an absolutely beautiful early spring morning in Boston today: my walk to work was filled with the sounds of birdsong, the sight of plants started to poke through the leaf litter and that wonderful, elusive smell that only wafts in on a warm spring breeze. (Of course, true to New England form, it's going to rain this afternoon, but hey, we'll take what we can get).

Mornings like this usually make me feel a little bit guilty that I didn't get up much earlier and go out birding - I can do some by ear on my walk in, but not at the leisurely pace I'd prefer. So I was absolutely delighted to learn this morning from a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the University of Pittsburgh's Darlington Digital Library has mounted the first complete digital version of John James Audubon's Birds of America: all 435 plates plus the accompanying text from the five-volume Ornithological Biographies.

I like the layout and design of the site, and I especially like that they have retained Audubon's original order of the birds (they were released to subscribers in batches of five, with each batch generally containing one large bird, one medium-sized bird, and three small birds).

Miller (Probably) Gets Wrist-Slap

Jay Miller, our most recent cross-country book thief, is set to be sentenced on Friday, and Travis has the skinny on the prosecution's sentencing recommendation: "The government is recommending 18 months. And we haven’t even heard from the defense yet. Unless there’s some rogue, super strict federal judge - in the Northern District of California - don’t expect any more than that." Travis runs through the sentencing guidelines to show how that number was reached, and also lays out what should have happened.

Scholars Urge Caution on Coleridge Attribution

In last weekend's links and reviews post I noted the TLS review of a new Oxford University Press edition of an 1821 translation of Goethe's Faustus, which has been attributed by Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Not so fast, say Roger Paulin, William St Clair and Elinor Shaffer, who have rushed a 35-page review essay [PDF] into publication via the Institute of English Studies at the University of London's School of Advanced Study.

Paulin, St Clair and Shaffer take strong exception to the presentation of the volume as "containing a work of Coleridge not previously accepted as such. ... The attribution of Faustus to Coleridge is presented ... not as a hypothesis but as established fact. Nowhere in this volume is any indication given that the question is an open one, a decision that raises the scholarly stakes. If the attribution of the translation can be validated, the republication of Faustus would indeed be a major event. On the other hand, if Faustus is not a translation made by Coleridge, or is not likely to have been made by Coleridge, in whole or in part, then it is not only the reputation of the volume's editors that is hazarded but those of the managers, the academic advisers, and the Delegates of Oxford University Press who decided that it deserved to be published in the uncompromising form in which it has now appeared."

The team walks us through the entire "contemporaneous biographical documentary record" using transcriptions of letters between Coleridge and the publishers Boosey and Sons, the firm by which the Faustus edition in question was first published. From the correspondence they conclude, as they note previous scholars have also done: "The sequence seems clear. Booseys, who had heard that Coleridge had once intended to translate of Faust [sic] ... approached him with a proposal; Coleridge declined the invitation; Booseys thanked him and turned elsewhere, picking up some of Coleridge's suggestions. ... The conjecture [made by Burwick and McKusick] requires that, after the completed exchanges with Booseys in May 1820, there was another exchange, or series of exchanges, that are unrecorded. The conjecture requires that Coleridge changed his mind, took an initiative, decided to break an agreement that he had made in 1814 with the publisher Murray, went back to Booseys, and despite his earlier indignant protests that he would never accept anonymous subliterary jobbing work, and that he would never bargain, he nevertheless negotiated a publishing agreement. ... The conjecture also requires that Coleridge, a writer well known for his table talk and loose tongue, acted so far out of character that he never permitted a hint of his involvement with Faustus to pass his lips. Indeed it requires that he misled his closest friends over the remainder of his life." Well when you put it like that ...

The review essay includes several items of correspondence which appear rather damaging to the editors' claims if taken at face value. A letter from Maria Gisborne recording a 25 June 1820 visit with Coleridge reads in part "He should like to translate the Faust, but he thinks that there are parts which could not be endured in english and by the English, and he does not like to attempt it with the necessity of the smallest mutilation." And, the team notes, "For their conjecture to be sustained, Burwick and McKusick have to disregard or overturn explicit denials made by Coleridge near the end of his life" ("I need not tell you, that I never put pen to paper as translator of Faust," he said on 16 February 1833). A series of correspondence from Boosey and Sons to Goethe (through an intermediary) regarding the translation and publication of his works and some accompanying engravings fails entirely to mention Coleridge.

Another section of the review essay takes up the question of the engravings which appeared in the Boosey and Sons volume, reproductions of those done by Henry Moses in 1820. They take issue with the way the images have been portrayed by Burwick and McKusick - arguing, and fairly so in my view, that rather than seeing the engravings as simple illustrations to a printed text, it was the text which "presented itself as a piece of subliterary work that was a useful ancillary to the engravings." Burwick and McKusick have, they argue, "forced a modest text that was commissioned, designed, and manufactured to accompany an art publication into the conventions of a literary text with inserted illustrations."

But that's not all. Paulin, St Clair and Shaffer also claim that Burwick and McKusick have cherry-picked evidence from contemporary reviews to support their hypothesis - and the evidence for this is remarkably clear (see pp. 24-27).

The authors conclude their essay by suggesting several possible sources for the translation, including George Soane (who has been the accepted translator for quite some time), and by noting flatly "The case that Faustus is a work by Coleridge has not been made. The conclusion of the predecessors of Burwick and McKusick, who went over the ground with the information available in 1947 and decided that the piece was not written by him, has not been overturned. Indeed, the large amount of more recent research, and the new archival, unnoticed and other information that we ourselves have added, makes the attribution even less plausible." They suggest that the volume "could have been presented as a matter on which questions of attribution are more open - entitled, for example, 'Goethe's Faust: Translations, prefaces, engravings, analyses, and other writings associated with the early reception of Goethe's Faust into English.' ... As it is, with Faustus, From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, potential purchasers and readers should be warned. This volume is not what it appears to be. Nor is it consistent with the normal standards of Oxford University Press. We suggest that [OUP] should consider amending their website or including a reference to this review article."

The current OUP web-catalog text certainly doesn't leave any room for the reasonable doubt which I think has been inserted into the debate: "The major work of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (1808), was translated into English by one of Britain's most capable mediators of German literature and philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Not being by any stretch a Coleridge scholar, I don't have a dog in this fight - but I think the review essay does raise extremely serious questions about the attribution that I hope Burwick and McKusick (as well as OUP) will see fit to answer.

[Update: Please see Frederick's Burwick's reponse to this post in the comments]