Because dealer catalogs and auction catalogs usually do not include a glossary, it is quite easy for book collectors -- especially novice book collectors -- to become a bit confused when different terms are used to describe what appear to be "the same thing." Dealers and auction houses, for example, frequently use the terms fascicles and parts somewhat interchangeably to describe volumes that originally were published piecemeal.
The terms, however, are not precisely equivalent, because the intent of the publisher is different in each case.
Parts were especially popular in the 19th century, when they were issued primarily for the purpose of reducing up-front costs to subscribers. This enabled publishers and their authors to reach a much wider potential audience. Such an audience invariably included many readers who could not afford a novel (with its higher attendant publishing costs), but could afford an installment of a novel (many fewer pages to print, much cheaper paper covers, usually bound with advertisements to further reduce publishing costs):
Parts were issued as stand-alone publications. For that reason, parts were published in sequence. There was no intent on the part of the publisher that the parts eventually be bound together (although many such parts eventually were bound together by wealthier subscribers, a fact that authors such as Dickens took into account when planning their installments),
Although fascicles also were sometimes published as a cost-saving measure, that was not, and is not, the usual reason for publication. Fascicles are published when a title requires research, illustration, etc., that is expected to extend over a considerable period of time:
Fascicles might or might not be "complete" relative to the larger work which they comprise. Accordingly, sequence of publication is rarely the major concern. It is more important that once a particular bit of research, illustration or whatever is completed, that it be published, and so on, until all the research, illustration, etc., is complete. Only then is organization imposed upon the whole by binding the fascicles into one or more volumes.
In short, parts are intended as permanent divisions of a title, while fascicles are intended as temporary divisions of a title.
As with many other bibliographic distinctions, this distinction is not always as clear-cut as the above might suggest. In addition to bound parts, for example, one also sometimes encounters fascicles that are stand-alone units in one sense, but part of a larger whole in another sense. One sees this, for instance, when collections are published that span many different institutions -- e.g., Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum....
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