| The dissertation presents an annotated bibliography of American books on bees and beekeeping from the earliest books through 1992. The stated scope of the bibliography is to include single subject publications on bees and beekeeping, as well as publications with more than ten pages on bees, (1) which are written by Americans in any language, irrespective of place of publication; and (2) which are written in (or translated into) English by those not American, and published in America north of Mexico.; Chapter One presents an overview of the relationship of books on bees and books on beekeeping and presents an historical view of the growth of beekeeping from a cottage industry to an economically significant honey production industry. It discusses the early bee books and their introduction and growth in pre- and post-revolutionary America, and states the premise that a bibliography of American bee books is a useful tool in the hands of those interested not only in bees and beekeeping, but also in agriculture and agricultural education, and in the history of science.; Chapter Two discusses the scope of the bibliography and discusses existing bibliographies and research materials.; Chapter Three outlines in some detail the protocols and conventions used in the presentation of the bibliographical data. The emphasis is on the physical description and publishing history of each book, reflecting a commitment to the idea that careful identification of the textual history of (certainly the most important) books will assist in the understanding of the history of American beekeeping, an inquiry for which this dissertation is intended to be a valuable map.; Chapter Four is an essay exploring the identity of the "first" bee book in America, addressing not only the first single subject book, but also a twelve page section in a farming book.; Chapter Five is the bibliography itself, an alphabetical-by-author bibliography containing more than two thousand entries, with annotations containing biographical data about the authors, and the publishing history and significance of many of the books. In addition, each book is identified by one or more of forty-five categories. These categories are collated in a database of books-by-categories in an appendix. |
