Stephen J. Greenberg's recent article in these pages, “Dating Civil War Pamphlets, 1641–1644,” commendably calls attention to the two nearly identical manuscript catalogues that George Thomason had drawn up to catalogue his collection. Quite properly, Greenberg emphasizes the manuscript catalogues' difference from (and for some purposes, superiority to) the printed catalogue of the collection edited by G. K. Fortescue. A generation ago Lois Spencer did the same thing in two important articles on Thomason and his collection, but for lack of a follow-up, her insights have been largely ignored. Greenberg also attempted some statistical comparisons of dates of Fortescue's catalogue, Thomason's catalogue, and the Stationers' Registers.

Greenberg's study of the Thomason collection grew out of his project of discovering the time lag between the occurrence of an event and its publication in the press. While Greenberg's interest in the collection is welcome, his efforts are misleading, and in some respects, seriously flawed. My purpose here is to clarify the nature of the Thomason collection, which is still surprisingly misunderstood, and to assist other researchers in its most profitable use.