The Bibliography by A.G. Potter is without question a useful tool for the bibliographer, the collector or the scholar, but as Martin and Mason noticed “it is marred by a very idiosyncratic index” (See: https://omarkhayyamrubaiyat.wordpress.com/) This Index only refers to items listed in Part 1 and Part 2 of the Bibliography: the translations and editions of the Rubáiyát, including references to publishers and artists as well.
In 2017 Douglas Taylor and Bob Forrest issued an Index to Ambrose George Potter’s Bibliography, in which they also critised the original index for not being complete and not being free of errors. This new index was extended to deal with Part 3 of Potter’s listings that contains prose, verse and parodies pertaining to the Rubáiyát. Furthermore it included a “list of duplicate entries and a few errors in Potter”, and if it wasn’t for this it would be the way the contents are organized that this new effort is undoubtedly a great improvement.
This index has the following sections:
Artists; Publishers; Translators, Editors, Commentators, Parodists etc.; Authors in periodical literature, with titles in brief; Titles of anonymous articles.
Apart from all this, the new document also provides a provisional biography of A.G. Potter, giving hitherto unknown details about his life. The document can be accessed at www.bobforrestweb.co.uk/The_Rubaiyat/N_and_Q/Potter_Index.pdf
Nevertheless a few comments can be made on the new index as well, more specifically on the chapter on “Translators, Editors, Commentators, Parodists etc.” One major issue is that all authors are listed under the heading “Translators …” There is no way of knowing whether we deal with a translator, an editor or a commentator. The only clue is looking at the Potter number: if it is higher than 586 the person in question is not a translator. However, some items higher than 586 do have a translator as selections of a translation can be included in a prose work or an article.
This Index chapter builds on the work by Taylor and Forrest. The chapter is divided into the following categories of entries:
Translators
Names of translators, mainly taken from Part One in Potter’s Bibliography. Included are translator’s names in Part Three, where translations of the Rubáiyát are part of books, articles or parodies that are found in chapters IV-X.
A separate index is created for FitzGerald as translator found in Part One, section IX, and in Part Two and Part Three.
Artists
Alphabetical list of artists involved in illustrating, decorating, illuminating, embellishing of the rubáiyát.
Contributors
Alphabetical list of contributors to the rubáiyát editions and works related thereto as listed in Potter: authors of introductions, prologues and epilogues, forewords, notes and many more. In a number of instances introductions may have been published independently or as articles in journals or magazines. In that case the authors are listed under Authors.
Authors
Alphabetical list of authors taken from Part Three.
Editors
List of editors taken from Part One, Two and Three.
Parodists
Names of parodists, taken from Part Three, sections IX and X.
Anonymous parodies
Alphabetical list of parodies published anonymously, taken from Part Three, sections IX and X.
Publishers
Alphabetical list of publishers from Part One, Two and Three.
Privately printed editions are listed under PP.