The relation of bibliographical and textual investigation to literary criticism is a thorny subject, not from the point of view of bibliography but from the point of view of literary criticism. In contrast to the general uniformity among textual critics about ends and means, literary critics—as we might expect—hold diverse opinions about the operation of their discipline. At one extreme are those higher critics whose chief concern is for the ‘total’ or ‘essential’ values of literature, and whose contemplation of an author's work is correspondingly lofty. At the other extreme are critics whose analysis of a work is so detailed that scarcely a word of the text, no matter how ordinary, can escape a searching interpretive inquiry.

In so far as the application of large philosophical and aesthetic concepts to broad problems may dull a critic's awareness of the significance of small details, it is easy for a bibliographer to understand that not all critics may be expected to share his concern for the exactness of representation given to the physical form of the work to be handled. On the other hand, what sometimes seems to be a critic's almost perverse disregard for specific accuracy may offer the bibliographer a nasty shock.