Response to one of the questions on my ERP

It seems in my previous ERP I kept making the distinction--however superficially--between details seeming peripheral to the text (watermarks, signatures, catchwords, the paper, how much white space existed on that paper, etcetera)  and the narrative composed in the text itself.  Rereading this, it's now apparent to me that I'd still clung to the old idea of the central primacy of the author and her actual accomplishments on the page, instead of embracing the ways other facets of the"Communication Circuit" manifest themselves in the book itself.  When thinking about descriptive bibliography, it's the book, as O'Donnell states, that we must first listen to, not necessarily the narrative contained within its pages.  This reversal is key.  For instance, since ever book in the pre-industrialized were purchased then bound on a case by case basis, one can tell much about the status of the work at the time of its binding if, say multiple inks were used (this would be expensive), or the source of its paper by its watermark.  Anyway, as prompted by Dr. Snead's comments, these issues do become central, not peripheral, and when it comes to Descriptive Bibliography, you search the material body of a book--even in terms of its text--and look for anomalies in the typeset or traceable clues that will key us into the world of the book as imprinted by commercial, social, and political forces.