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DISTINGUISHED 

CLASSICS 

OF REFERENCE 

PUBLISHING 



DISTINGUISHED 

CLASSICS 

OF REFERENCE 

PUBLISHING 



Edited By 
JAMES RETTIG 



ORYX PRESS 
1992 




The rate Arabian Oryx is believed to have insprired the myth of the unicorn. This desert 
antelope became virtually extinct in the early 1960s. At that time several groups of 
international conservationists arranged to have 9 animals sent to the Phoenix Zoo to be the 
nucleus of a captive breeding herd. Today the Oryx population is over 400, and nearly 800 have 
been returned to reserves in the Middle East. 



Copyright © 1992 by James Rettig 
Published by The Oryx Press 
4041 North Central at Indian School Road 
Phoenix, Arizona 85012-3397 

Published simultaneously in Canada 

All rights reserved 

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, 
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and 
retrieval system, without permission in writing from The Oryx Press. 



Printed and Bound in the United States of America 



The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American Na- 
tional Standard for Information Science — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, 
ANSI 239.48,1984. 



Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publlcatlon Data 

Distinguished classics of reference publishing / edited by James 
Rettig; foreword by Charles Scribner, Jr. 

p. cm. 
Includes bibliographical references and index. 
ISBN 0-89774-640-6 

1 . Bibliography — Best books — Reference books. 2. Reference books- 
-Publishing — History, 3. Reference books — Bibliography. 
I. Rettig, James. 

21035. 1.DS7 1992 91-33629 

O1T.02— dc20 CIP 



With love and gratitude, 

the editor dedicates this book to Monica Mary Rettig 

"I'm so lucky to be loving you." 



Contents 



Foreword: Publishing the Dictionary of Scientific Biography ix 

Charles Scribner, Jr. 

Introduction xiii 

Documenting the Travel Experience: Baedeker Guidebooks 

Harold M. Otness 1 
"The Most Famous Book of Its Kind": Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 

Kerry L. Cochrane 9 
Black's Law Dictionary: Ninety-Nine Years, 1891-1990 

Pamela S. Bradigan 18 
An "Alms-Basket" of "Bric-A-Brac": Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 

Charles Bunge 24 
"The Indispensable Guide": The Chicago Manual of Style 

Richard D. DeBacher 31 
The "Instinctive Grammatical Moralizer": H. W. Fowler and His Dictionary of Modern English 
Usage 

William A, McHugh 41 
"The Most Amusing Book in the Language": The Dictionary of National Biography 

Johannah Sherrer 54 
Controlling the Beasties: Dissertation Abstracts International 

Mary W. George 66 
The Circle of Learning: Encyclopaedia Britannica 

Sandy Whiteley 77 
The Book that Built Gale Research; The Encyclopedia of Associations 

Carol M.Tobin 89 
Code of Courtesy from the Roaring Twenties: Emily Post's Etiquette 

Richard W. Grefrath 98 
"Of Permanent Use and Usefulness": Granger's Index to Poetry 

Milton H. Crouch 113 
A Cornerstone of Musical Scholarship: Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians 

William S. Brockman 117 
"Monument": Guide to Reference Books 

Stuart W. Miller 129 
"Unbeatable": The Guinness Book of Records 

Christine C. Whittington 138 



jiiiiS 




vui 



DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



i , 



A Household Word for Four Generations: Moody's 

Elizabeth J. Wood 147 
"The Bibliographical Wonder of the World": The National Union Catalog 

John R. M. Lawrence 161 
The Record of Record: The New York Times Index 

Jo A. Cates 174 
"The Jewel in the Crown": The Oxford English Dictionary 

James Rettig 180 
"Mom in the Library": The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature 

Mary Biggs 198 
Demystifying Parliamentary Procedure: Robert's Rules of Order 

Sarah B. Watstein 21 1 
"Wings of Flight": Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases 

Marta Lange 220 
Eugene Garfield's Contribution to Bibliography: Science Citation Index 

David A. Tyckoson 234 
"The Baby Figure of the Giant Mass": Pollard & Redgrave's and Wing's Short-Title Catalogues 

Robert W, Melton 242 
Continuity in a Changing World, Statesman's Year-Book 

David M. Pilachowski 259 
Permanently Definitive: Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible 

Edward D. Starkey 269 
The World in One's Hands: Times Atlas of the World 

Mary L, Larsgaard 27 8 
The Legacy of Noah Webster: The Merriam-Webster Family of Dictionaries 

Marie C. Ellis 286 
Afternoon Tea, Parliament, and , . . Who 's Who 

Linda K. Simons 306 
All Things for All People: The World Almanac 

Margaret Morrison 3 1 3 
"The Best of Its Type": World Book Encyclopedia 

Holly D. Rogerson and E. Paige Weston 322 

Contributor Profiles 335 



Index 339 



V 



Foreword: Publishing the Dictionary 
of Scientific Biography 



Charles Scribner, Jr. 



Distinguished Classics of Reference Publishing 
relates the stories of 31 major reference works, 
many of them very ambitious undertakings that 
from concept to completion spanned years or 
even decades. One must have great admiration 
for the dedicated, hard working editors who 
created them. The Dictionary of Scientific Biog- 
raphy was the most ambitious publishing proj ect 
that I ever dreamt up. As a schoolboy I was 
greatly impressed by the history of Chartres 
Cathedral and used to marvel at the dedication 
of the ancient French townspeople who were 
willing to commence a building that none of 
them would live to see finished. Frankly, I am a 
little less amazed now by that part of the story. 
It is obvious that they expected to see it finished. 
My own experience as a publisher of the DSB 
has given me a good deal of insight into the 
planning of long-term projects. The truth of the 
matter is that at the start no one can imagine how 
long they are going to take. Perhaps it is just as 
well that our chronological depth perception 
fails us so often when we look into the future. 
Wemightneverbeginmanyworthwhileprojects 
if we knew ahead of time their actual comple- 
tion dates. Dan Boorstin, the Librarian of Con- 
gress, commented on this remark saying that it 
constituted a proof of the existence of God. 

Although th&DSB was conceived, planned, 
written, and edited almost entirely by historians 
of science, it was our original hope that it would 
also serve a wide readership outside that special 
field. We hoped that it would be useful and 
interesting to historians in other fields as well as 



to teachers and students, journalists, and gen- 
eral readers. 

It was natural that the idea for a biographi- 
cal dictionary of science should have been 
taken up enthusiastically by Scribners. In the 
earliest years of our company's history we 
were active in publishing multi-volume refer- 
ence works in such fields as literature, religion, 
and history. At one time — over a hundred 
years ago, as noted elsewhere in this book — we 
published the mnth&ditionofiheiEncyclopaedia 
Britannica in the United States. In the 1920s we 
entered into an agreement with the American 
Council of Learned Societies to publish the 
Dictionary of American Biography and in the 
1950s we had begun to be active in publishing 
books on science for the general reader. My 
own interest in history of science had been 
greatly stimulated by a little book by James B. 
Conant entitled Science and Common Sense 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951). He 
proposed that the study of history of science 
would be valuable in science teaching and 
especially so for beginners who would find it 
easier to grasp the purposes and methods of 
science by reading case histories taken from 
the earlier and simpler periods in the develop- 
ment of various sciences. 

With all those ideas somewhat confusedly 
in mind, I wrote to Dr. Charles Gillispie at 
Princeton University asking to see him. I had 
not met him but was familiar with his splendid 
book in history of science entitled The Edge of 
Objectivity (Princeton: Princeton University 



&.-HW— "Jf i* ** 



x DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Press, 1960). I told him that I wanted to discuss 
some publishing ideas in his field and had been 
"nursing the hope" that he would assist us as an 
advisory editor. Dr. GUlispie responded courte- 
ously, and I visited him at Princeton a few days 
later. In the story of th&DSB I consider that visit 
as eventful as Dr. Watson's first meeting with 
Sherlock Holmes. (Incidentally, Dr. Gillispie 
said, "Which one of us is Sherlock Holmes?" I 
said, "You, of course.") We talked about the 
possibility of Scribners publishing a series of 
books in history of science. Dr. Gillispie was 
obviously doubtful and pointed out that most of 
his colleagues were already over-committed as 
far as writing was concerned. In the following 
days I brooded over the difficulty of launching 
any major effort in history of science. In hind- 
sight, now, given our success in commissioning 
articles from leading historians for the Dictio- 
nary of American Biography, it seems almost 
inevitable that the idea for a DAS of scientists 
would dawn on us. But the inevitable is not 
always perceived promptly. In any case, that 
idea did finally occur to me. Considering the 
subject, I have later thought it very auspicious 
that this inspiration took place one morning in 
the bathtub. I did not rush out shouting "Eu- 
reka!" I telephoned Dr. Gillispie almost imme- 
diately to see what he thought of a dictionary 
approach. His response was unhesitating and 
splendidly positive. He liked the idea and was 
willing to help. His favorable reaction was the 
decisive event in the creation of the DSB. 
Without his enthusiasm the idea would almost 
certainly have aborted; with his support it had 
every chance of success. 

During the next few months a number of 
steps were taken — all of them important to our 
moving ahead on the project. A luncheon meet- 
ing of prominent historians of science resulted 
in a request that the American Council of 
Learned Societies take the DSB under its wing 
in the same way it had taken the DAB. A 
detailed grant proposal was prepared by Dr. 
Gillispie, which was then submitted by the 
ACLS to the National Science Foundation. All 
this sounds very complicated if not Byzantine, 



but it was absolutely necessary given the scale 
of the work and the strong sponsorships it 
would need to enlist the cooperation of scholars 
all over the world. In such a situation the 
publisher must emulate the cuckoo and lay its 
egg in another bird's nest for hatching. 

Once the National Science Foundation re- 
sponded affirmatively with what was the larg- 
est publication grant it had made until then, the 
DSB was a going concern. An editorial board 
was appointed under the chairmanship of 
Charles Gillispie and steps were taken to make 
a working list of subjects — that is, names of 
scientists — for inclusion in the Dictionary. The 
original estimate had been around 2,600 ar- 
ticles. The final list contained twice as many, a 
tolerable margin of error for reference books 
and cathedrals. I might add that in the very 
tentative first list of names that was typed up at 
Scribners, a shocking clerical mistake was made 
between the "M's" and the "N's" with the result 
that Sir Isaac Newton was left out. That was 
inauspicious — to say the least — and I never felt 
we enjoyed the Ml confidence of physics edi- 
tor Thomas Kuhn after that. I hasten to add that 
Newton is in the DSB. 

Each of the major reference works in- 
cluded in Distinguished Classics of Reference 
Publishing has generated its share of interest- 
ing stories. So has the DSB. To describe in any 
detail the events and trials of the decade and a 
half in which the successive volumes of the 
DSB were published, from Abelard to Zwelf er, 
would take a book in itself. But I shall share a 
couple of anecdotes given me by managing 
editor Marshall DeBruhl. 

It was the policy for the DSB to include no 
living subject, but it was not always easy to 
ascertain whether a particular scientist was still 
alive or not. For example, Dame Kathleen 
Lonsdale was asked to write the article on 
Ralph Wyckoff, which she did. A fact checker 
discovered no grounds for thinking the man had 
died, which would disqualify him. Meanwhile, 
Dame Kathleen died. We thereupon wrote to 
Wyckoff — at his last known address — and 
asked him to write the article on her. He agreed 



FOREWORD: PUBLISHING THE DICTIONARY OF SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY xi 



but had to give up the assignment because of ill 
health. It was the first case of the "author is 
dead, but the subject is alive." Also, if he could 
have completed the article on Dame Kathleen, 
and then died, we would have had a real first in 
biographical publishing. Incidentally, Wy ckoff 
did not die in time for the W volume. We held 
the article on him for a future supplement. 

The article on Max Planck was translated 
from the German language and in one passage 
the author seemed to be going on and on about 
Planck's knowing everything. The copy editor 
asked if he would let us reduce the paragraph to 
stating that Planck had a reputation for omni- 
science. The author replied "Omniscience is 
not sufficient." 

Planning and producing the index for the 
DSB turned out to be a much more difficult task 
than we had anticipated. It would have been 
comparatively easy had we limited ourselves to 
proper names, but given the organization of the 
Dictionary, which is biographical, we consid- 
ered it all the more necessary that the index be 
thoroughly topical as well. For a while we 
hoped that it would be possible to produce the 
index entirely by computer. In fact, we con- 
ferred with some of the experts at IBM to 
explore that possibility. But we soon learned 
that computers were not up to such a job — 
however well they may play chess. There 
seemed to be no way to develop a foolproof 
program that could cope with such statements 
as "Darwin was a man of great personal grav- 
ity" or "Pasteur had boundless energy as a 
researcher." Computers are strong in Vespritde 
geometric but weak in / 'esprit de finesse. 

In the end, the longest way around turned 
out to be the shortest way home and we engaged 
a top-notch indexer, Julia McVaugh, to take on 
the job in the old-fashioned way. Working at 
Chapel Hill with a small staff of assistants, she 
produced the index in ten years. The completed 
job required 65,000 cards for 75,000 entries. 
When these were shipped up to New York in 
three batches by train we did not dare let them 
out of our sight, but provided an escort for each 
shipment. This part of the DSB was almost as 



time-consuming and costly as our original esti- 
mates for the entire work. So much for our 
ability to foretell the completion of our cathe- 
dral! 

Although the principal purpose of theDSB 
is to describe the achievements of individual 
scientists from the earliest times to the present 
day, I believe that it is as much a humanistic as 
a scientific work — that is, if one accepts the 
idea that humanism is essentially a point of 
view that can be taken towards all departments 
of knowledge, including science. From the 
humanistic point of view, the creation of in- 
creasingly comprehensive and beautiful con- 
ceptual schemes in science, the production of 
more and more precise scientific data, and the 
continual application of scientific knowledge 
to practical human needs, are all to be seen as 
coordinated achievements in the life of the 
mind and additions to the contents of human 
experience. 

I would say further that no matter how 
complex or unfamiliar the subject matter of a 
particular science may become or how far its 
concepts and assumptions may be at variance 
with our ordinary intuition, the thought pro- 
cesses of scientists are not fundamentally dif- 
ferent from those of other researchers in other 
departments of knowledge who must apply 
imagination, reason, and factual investigation 
to whatever difficulties of understanding may 
arise in their work. In this connection one thinks 
of the simple definition of scientific method 
proposed by Percy Bridgman. He called it 
"Doing your damnedest with your mind — no 
holds barred." One of the advantages of the 
biographical approach to the history of science 
is that it consistently reminds the reader that 
science has no life of its own apart from the 
minds of the men and women who study or 
create it. That point is made implicitly by more 
than 5,000 articles in the DSB, and we have 
been fortunate to find a large enough pool of 
experts who have kept it going through its 
supplements. 

Similarly, the biographical information 
about the creators of the 31 landmark reference 



iZSBBaSCyiSa 



xii DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



works whose stories are told in Distinguished 
Classics of Reference Publishing demonstrate 
that these books, so often taken for granted, 
owe their existence to the hard work — noholds 
barred — of their editors. Anyone who has 
worked on a project like thsDSB can empathize 
with the difficulties the editors of these other 
great reference works encountered and tri- 



umphed over. Users of these indispensable 
works, while they might not be able to empa- 
thize, will surely sympathize. All will welcome 
the opportunity Distinguished Classics of Ref- 
erence Publishing offers to deepen acquain- 
tance with these books and to learn more about 
the stories behind them. 



Introduction 



"If there is such a thing as a work of reference 
that I cannot read through, I have yet to find it. 
Catalogues, timetables, chronicles of alum- 
nus and alumna, Companions and Concor- 
dances of every kind — all are a joy to me."* 

This is a book for everyone who derives such 
unbounded joy from reference works. Distin- 
guished Classics of Reference Publishing \e\\s 
the story of 31 reference books or families of 
reference books that have stood the test of time 
and become so indispensable that if any one of 
them did not exist, we would need to create it. 
Many of them have established the standards 
of excellence for their respective reference 
genres and all have proved themselves invalu- 
able. And they have, even if not read through 
from cover to cover (or through many vol- 
umes), provided their users more than a bit of 
joy over the years. Through an amusing ex- 
ample, a strikingphotograph, a carefully drawn 
map, and in innumerable other ways, all these 
books have been ever fresh springs of knowl- 
edge and of the joy reference works uniquely 
give. Distinguished Classics of Reference Pub- 
lishing shares with its readers that joy and 
explains how a select number of notable ref- 
erence books have evolved and refined them- 
selves to provide joy, knowledge, and infor- 
mation in abundance. 

Any collection of this sort is bound to 
engender differences of opinion about what 
items ought to have been included or ex- 
cluded. The 3 1 books and families of books 
were chosen because they have proved them- 
selves again and again. Although other refer- 
ence books have similarly proved their endur- 



ing value, those included here were selected 
because they illustrate the value of reference 
works in a variety of broad subject areas and 
specific reference types. Indeed, they were 
selected from a much longer list that the editor 
and Oryx Press editorial staff considered ini- 
tially. The selection is meant to be representa- 
tive, not exhaustive. Especially significant 
reference types (e.g., dictionaries and ency- 
clopedias) are represented by more than one 
example. For other genre, more difficult 
choices had to be made to select a single 
representative title to keep the scope of the 
project and size of the finished book manage- 
able. For example, the category of national 
and trade bibliographies, represented here by 
the National Union Catalog, could well have 
been represented by the Union List of Serials 
or Books inPrint. Choices hadto bemade. The 
editor and publisher hope there will be oppor- 
tunity in another volume to treat those signifi- 
cant reference works not selected for this 
book. 

With one exception, all of the books treated 
are English-language books. The single ex- 
ception is the Baedeker family of travel guides. 
These were included because of their shaping 
influence on the vade mecum travel guide 
genre and because they have long been avail- 
able in English editions. The absence of elec- 
tronic reference works should not be inter- 
preted as a slight; these worthy tools are 
simply outside the scope of this book. 

In most cases a single visionary person 
with determination, fortitude, and unflagging 






"John Russell, "Larousse's Dictionary Is Smart and Concise," New York Times (18 April 1982), p. D29. This passage is the 
opening of a review of the Larousse Dictionary of Painters. 



&&t&m*S~Vi 



xiv DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



dedication merits credit for the creation and 
maturation of each of the reference works. In 
others, for example, the National Union Cata- 
log, teams of individuals made them possible 
from the start. With few exceptions, such as 
Post's Etiquette and Bartlett's Familiar Quo- 
tations, all have become institutionalized and 
are today the products of many minds and 
hands. But all are alike in one telling charac- 
teristic; all meet day-to-day needs for thou- 
sands of ordinary people. Furthermore, all 
have been refined and rendered with such care 
and quality that they are unquestionably, be- 
yond any similar works (for none is the only 
book of its kind), a joy to their users, year after 
year, edition after edition. 

Distinguished Classics ofReference Pub- 
lishing offers glimpses behind the scenes. The 
essays tell about the people who often over- 
came seemingly insurmountable obstacles to 
bring these works into being, and the people 
who have carried them on and made them 
better over decades or generations. They ex- 
plain how and why the characteristics of each 
new title came over time to define its genre, 
and how these reference works, many prod- 
ucts of pen-and-paper processes in the nine- 
teenth century, have thrived and positioned 
themselves in the electronic age to move pro- 
ductively into the twenty-first century. 

The 3 1 chapters are organized alphabeti- 
cally by the titles of the books treated. Each 
chapter has a four-part structure. The first and 
most important section is an analytical histori- 
cal essay. This essay traces the origin of the 
book, places it in its historical context, and 
describes its present state and likely future 
directions. The second section is a biblio- 
graphic history of publication, recording vari- 
ous editions, title changes, etc. These publica- 
tion histories vary in form and content so as to 
accommodate the complexities of and varia- 
tions among the histories of the 31 books. 
None of these publication histories should be 
construed as an exhaustive bibliographic de- 
scription or final bibliographic history of any 
of these titles; telling the stories of the books 



and their value through narrative, not enumer- 
ating the niceties of their bibliographic histo- 
ries, is the primary purpose of this book. The 
third section is a selective bibliography, rarely 
numbering more than 25 entries, of secondary 
works about the title discussed. A headnote 
introduces each bibliography, points out high- 
lights, and explains the particular value of the 
most significant items in the list. The fourth 
section is the chapter notes; these are grouped 
at the end of each chapter. As the chapter notes 
show, the contributors consulted current edi- 
tors for information about present operations 
and future plans of their particular publica- 
tions. This information was gathered through 
correspondence and telephone calls and, in 
the case of the editors of the New York Times 
Index, through an on-site interview. On behalf 
of the contributors, this book's editor thanks 
these busy editors for their cooperation and 
hopes that each one will be pleased with the 
chapter describing their respective reference 
classic. 

The essays vary in length. This variation 
results sometimes from the the relative signifi- 
cance of the work in question, sometimes from 
the extent of the secondary literature extant, 
but usually from both. For example, little 
information other than reviews has been re- 
corded about either Granger's Index or the 
Guide to Reference Books. On the other hand, 
works such as the Webster dictionaries or the 
short title catalogs have been the subject of 
numerous reports, articles, essays, and re- 
views, only the most significant of which 
could be cited in their essays or listed in their 
bibliographies. 

As one who in the past ten years has 
reviewed more than 2,000 reference books 
and has read even more reference book intro- 
ductions, I am well acquainted with state- 
ments by editors of collective works in which 
they humbly assign credit for their books' 
virtues to their contributors and accept re- 
sponsibility for any defects. After reading 
hundreds of these statements, many of them 
virtually interchangeable, one could easily be 



INTRODUCTION xv 



tempted to dismiss them as pro forma.. How- 
ever, after having assembled a group of busy 
contributors and cajoled them to meet dead- 
lines, and to revise several times work they 
considered finished, this editor has gained a 
profound appreciation of the sincerity and 
veracity of those statements. Truly, the book' s 
virtues lie in the individual essays, and its 
editor humbly accepts responsibility for any 
shortcomings it may have. 

Many persons deserve thanks for their 
contributions. First and foremost I wish to 
thank the 3 1 other contributors; without them 
there would be no Distinguished Classics of 
Reference Publishing. On their behalf I thank 
the many individuals, too numerous to name 
individually, who assisted the contributors in 
their work by critiquing early drafts, offering 
advice, etc. Art Stickney, director of editorial 
development of The Oryx Press, merits spe- 
cial thanks for conceiving the idea for this 
book. I am grateful to him that he asked me to 
carry out his fine idea and that he and his 
colleagues at The Oryx Press were patient 
enough to let me complete several other 
projects before taking on this one. Both Anne 
Thompson and John Wagner, the editors at 
The Oryx Press who guided me through the 
project, have provided wise counsel and en- 
couragement; and their sense of humor has 
provided some laughs along the way. Special 
thanks are also due to Charles Scribner, Jr., 
truly a living legend in reference publishing, 
for graciously providing the Foreword. I am 
grateful to the College of William and Mary 
for awarding me a research grant to cover 
expenses related to the project. My fine col- 
leagues at Swem Library at William and Mary 
have been supportive and have taken an inter- 
est in the book's progress. At various times 
Andrew Magpantay, James Wilson, Patrick 
Page, and Bob Richardson converted files that 
contributors produced on IBM microcomput- 
ers so I could read and.edit them on a Macin- 



tosh computer; they also provided other tech- 
nical assistance, GlendaPage, as fine a secre- 
tary as one could wish for, helped prepare 
mailings, send fax messages, field telephone 
calls from contributors, and tend to other 
inglorious-yet-essential chores along the way. 
By providing invaluable legal advice, 
Philip G. Rettig proved one more time that his 
favorite pro bono client is his grateful son. 
Profound gratitude goes to the late Ann J. 
Rettig, who, through her tireless reading to a 
young boy, instilled in him a love of books so 
strong that today he is decidedly one to whom 
"Catalogs, timetables . . , Companions and 
Concordance of every kind" are a never end- 
ing source of joy. She knew of this book in its 
early stages; I wish she were here to see it 
finished. My children, Chris, Tony, and 
Katie — children who witness the infinite vari- 
ety of reference books as newly published 
review copies ebb and flow in and out of the 
house almost daily — have taken an interest in 
the progress of the book even though they 
have expressed deep doubts that any book 
about books (especially when some of those 
books are in turn about yet other books!) could 
be interesting to anyone. For their good humor 
I am grateful; I hope their doubts are ill- 
founded and that some day each of them may 
open this volume at least in curiosity, if not 
with burning desire to read it cover to cover. 
Along with editors' statements of responsibil- 
ity for their books' shortcomings, editors' ex- 
pressions of gratitude to patient, long suffer- 
ing spouses appear to be de rtgueur in refer- 
ence book introductions. But it is with a sense 
of obligation genuinely incurred rather than 
obeisance to convention that I express my 
deepest gratitude to my wife, Monica Rettig, 
for her encouragement and support through- 
out this project, Without that support, it would 
not have been completed as soon nor as well. 

— James Rettig 



I :i t 



DISTINGUISHED 

CLASSICS 

OF REFERENCE 

PUBLISHING 



w* 



*m 



Documenting the 
Baedeker 



ravel experience: 
ridebooks 



Harold M. Otness 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Above average" was the phrase recently used 
by a Booklist reviewer to evaluate the latest 
Baedeker guidebook. A few years ago such 
words would have been unthinkable for this 
venerable series because Baedeker was the 
unquestioned leader in the guidebook field. 
"Kings and governments may err," went the 
jingle of A. P. Herbert, "but never Mr. 
Baedeker."' One of the many bits of lore 
concerning this series is the story of Kaiser 
Wilhelm interrupting a high-level conference 
at the palace in Potsdam to appear at a window 
because, as he explained, "You see, it says in 
Baedeker that at this hour I always do." 2 So 
dominant was the series that the very name 
"Baedeker" became the generic term for all 
guidebooks, much like Kleenex and Xerox 
have become identified with their types of 
products. 

It is not that Baedekers have fallen so low, 
but rather that in recent years a fair number of 
guidebook series have risen to the level of 
thoroughness and objectivity that Baedeker 
established over a century ago. Baedekers still 
are among the best of the genre, and they 
remain the gauge against which other guide- 
books continue to be measured. The older 
Baedekers have considerable historical refer- 
ence value to attractions that no longer exist, 
while the current volumes provide a vast array 
of information on what is available for the 
traveler today both in terms of what to see and 
do, and the practical information of how to get 



there, where to stay, and where to eat and be 
entertained, 

Baedeker Beginnings 

Baedeker is an author (actually four gen- 
erations of the family), a publishing company, 
and the title of a guidebook series, as well as 
a generic name for all guidebooks. The father 
of the series was the first Karl Baedeker who 
was born in 1801 in Essen. He studied at 
Heidelberg University and did some local 
traveling before settling into the book selling 
business in Coblenz in 1827. Five years later 
he bought out a bankrupt publishing house 
whose titles included a somewhat scholarly 
survey of the history and art of the Rhine by 
Professor Johann August Klein entitled 
Rheinreise von Mainz bis Koln (Coblenz: F. 
Roehling, 1828). In 1835 Baedeker revised 
this work, extending the geographical range 
and adding to it the practical information on 
transportation, lodging, food, and health 
needed by travelers. In 1839 Baedeker for the 
first time put his name on the title page of 
another revision of this work. Any of these 
three dates could be argued as the beginning of 
the Baedeker guidebook dynasty. 

None of these dates, however, mark the 
beginning of the guidebook format. The credit 
for this is often given to Pausanias, a scholar 
who compiled a landmark description of the 
Greek world in the second century A.D., of 
which only fragments have survived. In medi- 
eval times guidebooks were published for 



2 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



pilgrims visiting holy shrines. Guidebooks 
were a response to the increased number of 
travelers; as the world become more settled 
and safe, more people began traveling for 
pleasure and education, In broad terms such 
travel was one impetus of the Renaissance and 
its consequent rapid spread of knowledge 
throughout and beyond Europe. The grandees 
of Renaissance tourism, traveling with reti- 
nues of servants from court to court became 
the "Grand Tour" aristocracy of later centu- 
ries.By the early nineteenth century, the emerg- 
ing middle class began to venture abroad 
without servant^ tutors, and interpreters, and 
a need thus arose for guidebooks. 

By the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, a fair number of local guidebooks were 
available, but most of these concentrated on 
describing the sights and their histories, rather 
than pro viding the practical information to get 
the traveler there. Another early guidebook 
format was the "itinerary" book, which simply 
listed the distances between places with a 
record of the post stops where teams of coach 
horses were changed. With the advent of 
railways, travelers could go faster and to more 
places and guidebooks were organized for the 
train traveler along railroad routes. Baekeker 
appeared at the beginning of this era of travel. 

Murray's Contribution 

While Baedeker is often credited with 
creating the modern guidebook, a combina- 
tion of practical travel information and a de- 
scription of things to experience, the original 
Karl Baedeker credited his English rival John 
Murray (also both a personal name and the 
name of a famous family publishing business) 
with perfecting the format. The second John 
Murray (his father was Lord Byron's pub- 
lisher) took a trip as a young man around 
northern Europe, and while doing so he com- 
piled notes organized by routes which in 1 83 6 
his father published as A HandBookfor Trav- 
ellers in Holland, Belgium, and along the 
Rhine, and throughout Northern Germany 



(London: John Murray). It was a success, 
quickly followed by similar works on south- 
ern Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Switzer- 
land. Baedeker was so impressed by the utility 
of these books that he copied the format, 
including eventual use of the term "hand- 
book" and the flexible red covers for his own 
German-language guidebooks. For years af- 
terwards he sent updated information fromhis 
travels to the grateful John Murray, since at 
this time Murray ' s guidebooks were published 
only in English, and Baedeker's only in Ger- 



man. 3 

Baedeker followed his Rhine guidebook 
with Holland (1839), Belgium (1839), and 
Germany ( 1 842) and each quickly became the 
standard for German-speaking travelers. The 
series soon spread overall of Europe. By 1 846 
the firm was translating its titles into French, 
and by 1861 into English. By 1862, when 
Baedeker brought out his first London guide- 
book (in German), the warmth between the 
Baedeker and Murray firms had cooled, and 
the former had achieved a dominance which 
was to last until the beginning of World War 
II. 

A Family Enterprise 

The compiling of guidebooks, which Karl 
Baedeker had done almost single-handedly on 
the spot, passed on to his capable sons and 
grandsons* as well as to such outsiders as 
Francis Muirhead, who authored the volumes 
on the United States and Canada and served as 
the English-language editor for many years, 
(Translated editions were not j ust literal trans- 
lations but actually reworked texts to satisfy 
the needs and interests of other language 
groups.) The last family member with the 
name Baedeker to be active in the venture, Eva 
Baedeker, passed away in 1984. This multi- 
generational continuity has been the key to the 
long-time standardization and high quality of 
the series. 

From the beginning, the strength of the 
Baedekers resulted from at least five factors: 



BAEDEKER GUIDEBOOKS 3 



1. The thoroughness of coverage, with 
even small, out-of-the-way places at 
least mentioned, 

2. The up-to-dateness of coverage, with 
substantial revision taking place be- 
tween editions, which appeared every 
two or three years for most titles. 

3. The wealth of detailed maps, and espe- 
cially city plans, included in all titles. 
Baedekers became virtual small-for- 
mat atlases with their foldout maps, 
panoramas, and detachable index plans. 

4. The authoritative and often scholarly 
introductory essays to the history and 
arts of the places covered. Some of 
these were signed essays, mostly by 
German academics, and they added to 
the accuracy and prestige of the series. 

5. The unbending objectivity in the de- 
scription and rating of sights (an aster- 
isk system was used to denote relative 
merit) and in the listing of facilities. 
The early Baedekers traveled anony- 
mously and, unlike many guidebook 
writers today, would never accept "free- 
bies," or other favors, nor would they 
accept advertising of any kind. The 
standard warning in the turn-of-the- 
century guidebooks stated: "To hotel- 
proprietors, tradesmen, and others the 
Editor begs to intimate that a character 
for fair dealing and courtesy towards 
travellers forms the sole passport to his 

commendation Hotel-keepers are 

also warned against persons represent- 
ing themselves as agents for Baedeker's 
Handbooks." 

The Baedekers always placed the well- 
being and fair treatment of the traveler first, 
and there was almost a paternal tone in the 
handing out of advise on health, safety, and 
where to get best value for the money. They 
have never been tools of the travel industry, 
puffing travel destinations and facilities; but 
display an integrity not matched in many of 
today's guidebooks. Generations of travelers 



came to rely upon the Baedekers, and people 
walking around with the little red volumes in 
hand became common to the tourist land- 
scape. 

Tributes to Baedeker Quality 

Because of their excellence, Baedekers 
were heavily mined, often without acknowl- 
edgement, by compilers of competing guide- 
books, and by authors of popular travel books 
of the day. Baedekers figured prominently in 
Graham Greene's Stambout Train: An Enter- 
tainment and E.M. Forster's Room with a 
View. T.E. Lawrence is said to have used them 
in the Middle East. 4 

They were complimented by Evelyn 
Waugh ("With his unfailing discernment 
Baedeker points firmly and inobstrusively to 
the essential." 5 ) and Theodore Dreiser ("Let 
me here and now, once and for all, sing my 
praises of Baedeker and his books." 6 ). Bertrand 
Russell was influenced by their clear and 
direct prose style. 7 (However Aldous Huxley 
took a swipe when he wrote "How often I have 
cursed Baron Baedeker for sending me through 
the dust to see some nauseating Sodoma or 
drearily respectable Andrea del Sarto! How 
angry I have been with him for starring what 
is old merely because itis old." 8 ) Mark Twain 
had great fun with them: "I was aware that the 
movement of glaciers is an established fact, 
for I had read it in Baedeker; so I resolved to 
take the passage for Zermatt on the Gorner 
Glacier." 9 Indeed Baedekers were an integral 
part of both the travel experience and its 
resulting literature. 

Baedekers and Two World Wars 

In 1872Baedekermovedfrom Coblenzto 
the German book center of Leipzig where it 
evolved into a large publishing organization 
with extensive book-making and geographi- 
cal information resources. By the beginning of 
World War I Baedeker coverage had extended 
to North Africa, the Middle East, across Rus- 




m s TlNGmSHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



sia and through Siberia as far as Peking, the 
Indian subcontinent, and North America, and 
worldwide coverage seemednear. But the war 
halted growth of the series, and anti-German 
sentiment in the 1920s encouraged the devel- 
opment of other guidebook series including 
the excellent Blue Guides (edited by a former 
Baedeker editor), which were near clones. 
The Italian Touring Club lured away 
Baedeker's skilled map lithographers to work 
on their own extensive series of guidebooks to 
Italy and its then expanding territories. The 
French published several competent series of 
guidebooks, including the Michelins which 
today dominate the crowded European guide- 
book market. The "golden era" of Baedekers 
had passed, but during that era an estimated 
two million copies, in three languages, had 
been sold. 

Between the wars the firm updated some 
titles, but concentrated on regional guide- 
books to Germany for the local market. It also 
began to restructure the guidebooks for the 
emerging automobile traveler. 

World War II was an even greater disaster 
for the firm. In ways it could not envision, the 
firmplayed a role in the war's destruction. The 
Baedeker on Scandinavia was said to be in- 
strumental in General VonFalkenhorst'splan- 
ning for the 1940 invasion of Norway. In 

1942, following the Royal Air Force's bomb- 
ing of Lubeck, Goering supposedly ordered 
the Luftwaffe to destroy every historical build- 
ing in Great Britain marked in Baedeker with 
asterisks. The resulting bombings of cathe- 
drals and other monuments became known as 
"Baedeker raids." Then, on December 3, 

1943, a massive R.A.F. raid reduced Leipzig, 
including the Baedeker plant, to rubble. Irre- 
placeable printing plates, inventory, and ex- 
tensive files were destroyed, 

Baedekers after World War H 

The firm rose from the ashes under the 
direction of Karl Baedeker, grandson of the 
founder. In 1948 he issued a guidebook to 



Leipzig, which was in the Russian zone of 
divided Germany. But because — with charac- 
teristic family thoroughness — he showed the 
location of some sensitive facilities on the city 
plan, the occupying Soviets quickly censored 
the book. This repressive environment caused 
the firm to shift to West Germany where, with 
the infusion of a fourth generation of Baedeker 
family members, the firm finally found solid 
footing in Freiburg in 1956. 

The post- World War II Baedekers have 
been aimed at the automobile travelers and 
group tourists who prevail today. This manner 
of travel requires a different approach be- 
cause of the faster pace and special needs of 
the motorist. Some of today's titles convey less 
history and less detailed description of artistic 
works, but more on the mechanics of getting 
about. Some exceptions to their policy of not 
carrying advertising have been made, but com- 
mercial influence is not nearly as intrusive as 
it is in most guidebook series. If Baedekers are 
not what they were, they are in many ways 
more suitable for today's travelers. 

Their Enduring Value 

Old Baedekers have gained in utility as 
research sources — both for what is no longer 
there, and as social history. There is no better 
source for study of the evolution of tourism 
than a century and a half of Baedekers. They 
document how people traveled, what they 
saw, and what they thought about what they 
saw. From reading them we can determine 
national attitudes, measure our expanding 
knowledge of other countries and cultures, 
and mark the impact of technology on the 
development of globalization. 

What can be found in these old volumes? 
A plan of Budapest at the turn of the century 
before it was drastically altered by industrial- 
ization, wars, the automobile, and Sovietiza- 
tion. A description of the major cultural monu- 
ments of Berlin later destroyed in the wars. A 
plan of a Paris cemetery showing the graves of 
famous people. A floor plan of a museum in 



BAEDEKER GUIDEBOOKS 5 



Amsterdam including a listing of the artworks 
then displayed by location. A survey of the 
rigors of travel in Albania, including the kind 
of food one was likely to encounter and the 
general state of sanitation and public health. A 
scholarly outline of the history of Egypt. A 
geological description of the Alps actually 
written by a geologist. The price of a meal, a 
glass of the local wine, a night's lodging in a 
modest country inn, the schedule of the "Ori- 
ent Express," and the fair price of a taxi ride in 
Rome. Recommendations on health precau- 
tions and cures. Descriptions of the local 
economy. Comments on the differences of 
cultures, as then perceived. And more. 

Most major reference books are impres- 
sively large, but the old Baedekers measured 
a mere 6Va" x 4 l A" and never exceeded 1 1/3" in 
thickness; yet what they contained is astound- 
ing. Through the use of thin "bible paper," 
small but varied typefaces, and a compact 
style of writing that included many abbrevia- 
tions, some of these volumes contained over 
500 pages of dense description and up to 30 
pages of double-column index entries. 

The number of maps is also impressive. 
Great Britain (1910 ed.) had 28 maps, 65 
plans, and a panorama; Rhine (1906 ed.) had 
52 maps and 29 plans; and Switzerland (1911 
ed.) had 75 maps, 20 plans, and 12 panoramas. 
These were veritable atlases. The larger maps, 
some as much as 16 inches high and wide, 
were folded and were either tipped in or in- 
serted in back pockets. The city plans were 
particularly rich in detail and even showed 
such things as streetcar routes and individual 
trees along boulevards. By the turn of the 
century, most maps and plans were colored, 
highly readable and attractive, and rigorously 
updated with each new edition. There were 
also numerous black-and-white floor plans of 
cathedrals and museums. The Baedeker maps 
and plans are indexed in Index to Nineteenth 
Century City Plans Appearing in Guidebooks, 
and Index to Early Twentieth Century City 
Plans Appearing in Guidebooks, both pub- 
lished by the Western Association of Map 
Libraries. 



Most major public and academic libraries 
keep a reference set of the old Baedekers, 
often set aside in special collections because 
of their increasing market value. Thieves value 
their maps, which can, unfortunately, easily 
be cut out and sold separately. Baedekers are 
collected avidly. The titles which never en- 
joyed great sales, such as Russia (the first and 
only English edition appeared in the unhappy 
year of 1914); Indien (also published in 1914 
and never in English); and Maderia (issued in 
1934 in German and 1939 in English) now 
bring several hundred dollars apiece when 
they come on the market. Others, such as the 
1929 edition of Egypt with its excellent plans 
of monuments now underwater and often 
claimed to be the best guidebook ever written; 
Greece with its strong historical description; 
and the United States are also highly valued. 
The most common titles are those concerning 
Italy, France, Germany, and Great Britain. 
Several Baedekers have been reprinted and 
efforts are being made to translate some of the 
early German editions into English. Green- 
wood Press issued a collection of 266 English- 
language volumes up to World War II on 
1,898 microfiche, with printed index. This set 
is now available in microfiche from Univer- 
sity Publications of America for $3,545. 10 

Today's Baedekers have a decidedly more 
modern look with a larger format, two sizes 
(country guides being larger than city guides), 
glossy paper, and abundant color photographs. 
The flexible red covers remain (but of a differ- 
ent design and material) and they still fit in the 
pocket or camera bag. The practical informa- 
tion appears at the back on bright yellow 
pages. The city guides are arranged alphabeti- 
cally by attraction and no longer have compre- 
hensive indexes. Each volume has a large 
fold-out map in back. The recent publication 
history of the Baedekers is complex, and is 
best told by Alex Hinrichsen in "An Account 
of the History of the Firm of Baedeker." 11 
Cooperative ventures were first struck with 
the large German map publisher Mairs of 
Stuttgart in 1951, and the Autoguides were 



Ej^if/iiaarea -*s*jvii 



6 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 






done by this firm for many years. For a while 
there were actually two separate firms issuing 
Baedekers, one centered in Freiburg (Karl 
Baedeker Verlag, a part of the Langenscheidt 
publishing group), and one in Kemnat, near 
Stuttgart (Baedeker's Autoguides, a part of 
the Mairs publishing group). In 1987 the two 
ventures were merged under the name of Karl 
Baedeker GmbH, with headquarters at 
Kemnat, The ownership is split 50-50 be- 
tween Langenscheidt and Mairs. The series 
continues to evolve. Both Asia and the west- 
ern hemisphere are receiving more coverage, 
but western Europe and the Mediterranean 
continue to be the strength of the series. 

The revisions are more difficult to iden- 
tify today. The edition numbering has unfor- 
tunately been dropped and one must search the 
verso of the title page for a copyright date, but 
one is not always present. However the 
Baedeker tradition of rigorous revision ap- 
pears to be maintained. 

Today the Baedekers are unique refer- 
ence tools in that both the current editions and 
the older editions can be justified in a library's 
reference collection, a claim none of its many 
imitators can yet make. 

PUBLICATION HISTORY 



The Eastern Alps 
Egypt 

France: 

Paris and its Environs 
Northern France 
Southern France 

Germany: 

Berlin and its Environs 
Northern Germany 
The Rhine 
Southern Germany 

Great Britain: 

England, Wales, and Scotland 
London and its Environs 

Greece 
Italy: 

Central Italy and Rome 
Italy from the Alps to Naples 
Nothern Italy 
Southern Italy 

The Mediterranean 
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark 
Palestine and Syria 
Russia 

Spain and Portugal 
Switzerland 

The United States, with excursions to Mexico, 
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Alaska 



Over 200 distinct titles in German, French, 
and English havebeen issued with the Baedeker 
imprint over the last century and a half. There 
have been several German, British, French, 
and American publishers' imprints over the 
years, and some editions have been joint pub- 
lications with the (British) Automobile Asso- 
ciation, Lufthansa, Shell, and others. The de- 
finitive list of titles, along with a useful num- 
bering system for them, is Hinrichsen's 
Baedeker-Katalog. 

Pre-Wortd War / English-Language 
Guidebooks 

Austria-Hungary 
Belgium and Holland 



Modern Guidebooks 

Today's list of Baedeker offerings is com- 
parable. There has been some restructuring of 
the guidebook series and geographical areas 
are redefined from time to time. Some titles 
are not currently distributed in the United 
States. The following are recent titles offered 
through the American distributor Prentice- 
Hall: 

Country Guidebooks: 



Denmark 


Great Britain 


Egypt 


Greece 


France 


Ireland 


Germany 


Israel 



BAEDEKER GUIDEBOOKS 7 



Italy 

Japan 

Mexico 



Switzerland 
Yugoslavia 



Multi-Nation and Regional Guidebooks 



Caribbean 
Costa Brava 
Greek Islands 
Islands of the 

Mediterranean 
Loire 
Netherlands, Belgium, 

Luxembourg 



Rhine 

Scandinavia 
Turkish Coast 
Tuscany 



City Guidebooks 

Amsterdam 

Athens 

Bangkok 

Berlin 

Brussels 

Copenhagen 

Florence 

Frankfurt 

Hamburg 

Hong Kong 

Jerusalem 

London 



Madrid 

Moscow 

Munich 

New York 

Paris 

Rome 

San Francisco 

Singapore 

Tokyo 

Venice 

Vienna 



Baedeker also offers a. Rail Guide to Europe/ 
and a series of maps under the Baedeker name 
is distributed in the United States by Gousha. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Germans are particularly keen enthu- 
siasts of Baekeders, and they have conducted 
seminars featuring papers by academics and 
collectors from several countries (a recent one 
included a cruise on the Rhine while reading 
aloud appropriate passages from an early 
guidebook). The Hinrichsens, in addition to 
their excellent history and bibliography, pub- 
lish "Reiseleben" (in German only, write for 
subscription information). In England Michael 
Wild, a dealer in old Baedekers, publishes an 
informative newsletter "Baedekeriana" (write 
for current subscription information — 21 
Nursery Grove, Lincoln, LN2 IRS). Another 
Englishman, L. Lawrence Boyle, a professor 
of physics at the University of Kent, has 
written extensively on Baedekers and is work- 
ing on a book that promises to be a major 
contribution. 

In the United States, Herbert Warren 
Wind's article in the New Yorker is the best 
written and most carefully researched of the 
numerous magazine articles that have ap- 
peared over the years. 

This bibliography is not comprehensive, 
due to the vastness, and in some cases, super- 



ficial natureof the literature. Many slicktravel 
pieces have been based on the series, or other- 
wise make use of it, but these are often deriva- 
tive. Yet there are substantial writings, and 
there will be more as appreciation of the series 
continues to grow. Listed here are some of the 
best writings, and in some cases the represen- 
tative and more unusual writings, that have 
been published in English (with the exception 
of the Hinrichsen work). 

Ayrton, Michael. "The Traveler Incognito." Harp- 
ers Bazaar (June, 1959): 92+. 

"Baedeker and the Modern World." The Bookman 
XVII (July, 1903): 495-97. 

Constable, W. G. "Three Stars for Baedeker." Harp- 
ers 206 (April, 1953): 76-83. 

Dunbar, Gary S. "The Way It Was Done in Leipzig: 
ACommentonBaedeker'sFirst Century." Land- 
scape 19 (May, 1975): 11-13. 

"Enlisting Baedeker in the Army." Literary Digest 
58 (June, 1918): 31. 

Gebhard, Bruno. "The Doctor Travels with Karl 
Baedeker." Bulletin of the New York Academy 
of Medicine 46 (June, 1970): 469-78. 

Hinrichsen, Alex VS. An Account of the History of the 
Firm of Baedeker. Translated into English by 
Michael Wild (photocopied typescript, 1988). 

. Baedeker-Katalog; verzeiehnis aller 

Baedeker-Reisefuhrer von 1832-1987. 



HSSipK*^ 



8 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



! I 



Holzminden, West Germany; UrsulaHinrichsen 

Vertag, 1988. 
Holroyd, James Edward. "Baedeker and Baker 

Street." Cornhill Magazine 173 (Winter, 1962- 

63): 139-45. 
Knoles, George Harmon. "Baedeker's United States. " 

Pacific Historical Review XiII (March, 1 944): 

1-9. 
Mendelson, Edward. "Baedeker's Universe." Yale 

Review 74 (Spring, 1985); 386-403. 
Muirhead, James f .America, the Land of Contrasts; 

a Briton 's View of His American Kin, New 

York: JohnLane, 1911. Chapter XII, 2 19-7 2, is 

titled "Baedekeriana." 
— . "Baedeker in the Making." AtlanticMonthly 

91 (May, 1906): 648-60. 
. "The House of Baedeker." Outlook 83 

(May, 1906): 224-30. 
Otness, Harold M. "Baedeker's One-Star American 

Libraries." Journal of library History, Phi- 



losophy and Comparative Librarianship XXI 
(Summer, 1977): 222-34. 

. Index to Nineteenth Century City Plans 

Appearing in Guidebooks. Santa Cruz, CA: 
Western Association of Map Libraries, 1980. 

. Index to Twentieth Century City Plans Ap- 
pearing in Guidebooks, Santa Cruz, CA: West- 
ern Association of Map Libraries, 1978. 

Smiles, Samuel. Memoirs and Correspondence of 
the Late John Murray, With an Account of the 
Origin and Progress of the House, 1 768-1843. 
London: John Murray, 1891. Chapter V, 459- 
83, is titled "Murray's Handbooks." 

Wallace, Irving. TheSaturday Gentleman. New York: 
Simon & Schuster, 1965. Chapters, l83-200,is 
titled "Tourist Bible." 

Wind, Herbert Warren. "The House of Baedeker." 
New Yorker 51 (September 22, 1975): 42+. 



NOTES 

' These kinds of anecdotes appear in many sources. The 
most reliable source for this one, and several others 
which follow, is Herbert Warren Wind, "The House 
of Baedeker," New Yorker 51 (22 September 1975): 
42+. 

1 Ibid., 49. 

3 Samuel Smiles, Memoirs and Correspondence of the 

Late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin 
and Progress of the House, 1768-1843 (London: 
John Murray, 1891). 

4 Wind, 49. 

5 Evelyn Waugh.Xaie/i-, aMediterraneanJournalQjon.- 

don: Duckworth, 1930), 56. 

6 Theodore Dreiser, A Traveler at Forty (New York: 

Century, 1914), 307. 



7 Wind, 49. 

8 Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate; Notes and Essays of a 

Tourist (New York: Duran, 1926), 37. 

9 Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (New York: Gabriel 

Wells, 1923), 127. 

10 Baedeker 'sHandbook(s) for Travelers: The Complete 

Collection of 266 Editions Published in English 
Prior to World War II: (Bethesda, MD: University 
Publications of America, 1975.) 

11 Alex W. Hinrichsen, An Account of the History of the 

Firm of Baedeker. Translated into English by 
Michael Wild (processed, 1988). 



''fltilifclil 



"The Most Fam 
Bartlett's Ft 



is Book of Its Kind": 
amiliar Quotations 



Kerry L. Cochrane 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

John Bartlett, editor, publisher, and lexicogra- 
pher, was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 
June 1 4, 1 820. He gave early evidence of a love 
for reading: he was able to read a Bible verse 
to his mother at the age of three; by nine he had 
read the entire Bible aloud. He left the Ply- 
mouth public school at 1 6 to become a clerk in 
the University Book Store in Cambridge. This 
bookstore, where the early works of Longfellow 
and Lowell had been published, faced the 
campus of Harvard College. Although em- 
ployment signaled the end of his formal educa- 
tion, the acquaintance with books and Harvard 
professors which the bookstore made possible 
was the equivalent of a university education for 
Bartlett. His self-acquired erudition earned 
him the respect of the literary community, and 
Bartlett made the University Book Store a 
cultural meeting place for faculty and students 
who loved books. By 1849, at the age of 29, 
Bartlett had become the proprietor of the Uni- 
versity Book Store, which he managed for ten 
more years. In 1851 he married Hannah 
Staniford Willard, daughter of the Harvard 
professor of Hebrew and granddaughter of 
Harvard's thirteenth president. 

Bartlett became a publisher of scholarly 
works, including Harvard textbooks of classi- 
cal languages and authors such as Thoreau and 
Emerson. His regular customers were allowed 
access to the back room, where they could 
discuss their reading, and Bartlett indulgently 
permitted college students to take books away 



and pay when they could, His voracious read- 
ing and near-total recall so impressed his liter- 
ary friends that it was soon standard practice to 
"ask John Bartlett 1 ' when the provenance of a 
quotation was in doubt. Such requests became 
so frequent that Bartlett began noting in a 
commonplace book memorable passages and 
literary quotations from his wide reading. The 
references in this notebook, arranged chrono- 
logically and listing the sources, would be- 
come the basis for the first Collection of Famil- 
iar Quotations. 

The Early Editions 

With the help of Harvard student Henry 
W. Haynes, Bartlett compiled and published 
the Collection of Familiar Quotations in 1855 
as a service to his friends . Bartlett published the 
first three editions of his work himself from the 
University Book Store, and then in 1863 he 
joined the Boston publishing firm of Little, 
Brown & Co., which published the fourth 
edition of Familiar Quotations that same year. 
He edited his book through six more editions, 
all of which bear the imprint of Little, Brown & 
Co., and eventually became senior partner of 
the firm. In recognition of his work, Harvard in 
1 871 awarded Bartlett an honorary Master of 
Arts degree. He was made a fellow of the 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held hon- 
orary membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Bartlett 
retired from Little, Brown in 1889 to write his 
Complete Concordance to Shakespeare 's Dra- 
matic Works and Plays, which appeared in 



ytsss* 



10 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



1894. He died 1 1 years later at the age of 85. 
According to Nathan Haskell Dole, editor of 
the tenth edition ( 1 9 1 4), the first nine editions 
of Familiar Quotations had sold 300,000 cop- 
ies before Bartlett's death. 

In the preface to the first edition, Bartlett 
modestly mentioned that although the work 
was not originally intended for publication, if 
it were to be favorably received "endeavors 
will be made to make it more worthy of the 
approbation of the public in a future edition." 1 
The public's approbation was immediate. The 
1 ,000 copies of the first edition sold out within 
three months, Harvard Magazine described 
Bartlett' s work this way: 

The book, like a good rule, works both ways; 
it not only gives every facility for the detec- 
tion of careless copyists, but it also enables 
one to sprinkle his conversation, his writing, 
and his public speaking, with the choicest 
selections from the best authors, — the very 
nutmeg of the English language. ... It is a 
boon, an absolute boon, to lawyers, newspa- 
per editors, politicians, literary people, draw- 
ing-room belles, young gentlemen of limited 
conversational powers, and, above all, for 
students. 2 

The second edition, appearing in 1856, 
and 63 pages longer, was just as popular. 
Familiar Quotations increased in size with 
each subsequent edition: the third edition 
(1858) was 446 pages long, almost twice the 
size of the first; the fourth edition (1863) was 
480 pages long, the fifth (1868) and sixth 
(1874) each had 778 pages. The ninth edition 
(1891), the final one compiled by Bartlett, 
contained 1,158 pages. 

The work has continued to attract praise 
over the years and is considered a basic refer- 
ence source. Eugene Sheehy calls Familiar 
Quotations "one of the best books of quota- 
tions with a long history"; it has also been 
called "the most famous American book of its 
kind, and in many respects the best." 3 Ameri- 
can Reference Books Annual said of Familiar 
Quotations', "A fairly common definition of a 
'reference book' is a book that is 'consulted, 
but not read,' But one always has to hasten to 
add that many kinds of reference books are 



read, at least by certain kinds of people. Dic- 
tionaries of quotations are perhaps the best 
example, and Bartlett continues to be the best 
of such dictionaries." 4 In a review of the 
eleventh edition the Christian Science Moni- 
tor called Familiar Quotations an institution, 
saying, "What the Cambridge History of Lit- 
erature is to English and American letters, 
Webster to the American language, the 
Britannica to encyclopedias in English, Bartlett 

is to English quotations This is, of course, 

primarily a reference book, but it is also a 
fascinating anthology of memorabilia. It is an 
ideal book for the bedside table, the waiting 
room, for random moments when you haven't 
time to settle down to a real read. It's an 
admirable book in which to browse." 5 

Significant Features 

Two features contribute to the "readabil- 
ity" of Familiar Quotations: its chronological 
arrangement, and its thorough cross-referenc- 
ing. The chronological arrangement provides 
a sense of historical context and of the pro- 
gression of an author's thought over time 
which is not present in works arranged the- 
matically or alphabetically. Authors are ar- 
ranged in birth date order; quotations within 
each author are chronological by date of pub- 
lication. The author index at the beginning 
provides birth and death dates as well as the 
page number of each author's first citation. 
The extensive footnotes allow the reader to 
follow the evolution of an idea through the 
writings of several authors, or trace how dif- 
ferent ages and cultures have employed simi- 
lar sayings. Footnotes can also give informa- 
tion about a quote such as identifying its 
translator and the version in the original lan- 
guage, if appropriate, and any cross-refer- 
ences. The exhaustive keyword index lists 
short forms of each phrase being indexed, 
with page references. 

The purpose of Familiar Quotations was, 
according to Bartlett's preface, "to show, to 
some extent, the obligations our language 



BAKLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS 1 1 



owes to various authors for numerous phrases 
and familiar quotations which have become 
'household words.'" 6 More than just a refer- 
ence source, Familiar Quotations is a living 
document which records the development of 
American literary taste over more than 125 
years. In the first edition, more than one third 
of the quotations were drawn from the Bible 
and Shakespeare, with the balance of the book 
comprised mainly of citations to English poets 
such as Byron, Milton, and Wordsworth. In 
1855 these were the primary cultural refer- 
ences of the educated American. This stock of 
common culture — what Americans consid- 
ered "familiar" — has widened with every edi- 
tion of Familiar Quotations. Through the first 
ten editions the guiding principle for selection 
remained the same: the book included only 
those words which the general reader could 
recognize as familiar. With the eleventh edi- 
tion, under the editorship of Christopher 
Morley, Familiar Quotations departed from 
this principle. Morley was the first editor to 
make a conscious effort to include what he 
thought was worthy of becoming familiar: 
references to contemporary literature and, in 
the twelfth edition, to contemporary politics. 
This is the model that has been followed to the 
present day. 

Bartlett edited the first nine editions of 
Familiar Quotations essentially by adding to 
his original work new quotations he consid- 
ered worthy of inclusion. One reviewer re- 
marked, "The well-known taste which has 
from the first presided over the formation of 
this incomparable collection, and the genu- 
inely familiar character of the quotations that 
have found admission to its pages, make this 
book the surest of guides, if not to the popular- 
ity, at least to the comparative quotability, of 
the great authors of our language." 7 Refer- 
ences to XheBible, theBookofCommonPrayer, 
and Shakespeare accounted for only one-fifth 
of the ninth edition, because so many new 
sources had been added. Authors quoted for 
the first time included Matthew Arnold, 
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and both the El- 



der and the Younger Pliny. Not yet repre- 
sented, however, were Rossetti, Swinburne, 
Mark Twain, Hawthorne, Melville, Emily 
Dickinson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. One 
of the most significant enhancements intro- 
duced in the ninth edition was the systematic 
inclusion of translated quotations both from 
ancient authors and from early modern writers 
such as Rabelais, Montaigne, and Cervantes. 
The translations had comprised only 8 pages 
of the eighth edition, but made up 120 of the 
ninth, Bartlett also greatly increased the amount 
of parallel references given in footnotes and in 
the appendix. 

Newer Editions, New Editors 

Bartlett seems to have intended the ninth 
edition to be the last, since he began the 
prefaceby saying, "The small thin volume, the 
first to bear the title of this collection, after 
passing through eight editions, each enlarged, 
now culminates in its ninth, — and with it, 
closes its tentative life." 8 But 1914 saw the 
publication of a tenth edition, edited by the 
poet and translator Nathan Haskell Dole, which 
was six times the size of the original. In all its 
years of publication, Familiar Quotations had 
been enlarged but never revised. Dole left the 
bulk of Bartlett's original work intact, stating 
as his purpose "to incorporate in the work 
quotations from those writers whose place in 
literature has been achieved since the issue of 
the ninth edition in 1891." 9 He attempted to 
apply Bartlett's requirement that a quotation 
be "distinctly worthy of perpetuation," claim- 
ing that "ephemeral quotations will not be 
found included in its pages." 10 Noteworthy 
among newly elected authors were Nietzsche, 
Shaw, George Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Hardy, 
Swinburne, and Kipling. Blake, Hawthorne, 
Melville, James, and Emily Dickinson were 
still not recognized. 

The eleventh edition, published in 1937, 
was edited by the writer and poet Christopher 
Morley in collaboration with associate editor 
Louella D. Everett, a quotation-finder for the 



?S& 



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12 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



"Queries and Answers" department of the 
New York Times Book Review. Under 
Morley's editorship Familiar Quotations en- 
tered a new era. In revising the tenth edition, 
Dole had simply brought the book up to date, 
while attempting to judge new quotations as 
its original compiler might have done. The 
new editors, however, not only added quota- 
tions from authors who had become famous 
since 1914, but examined the rest of the book 
as well, inserting quotations in every histori- 
cal period. Morley also was the first to delete 
entries which had proven less memorable than 
originally thought; this became standard prac- 
tice in subsequent editions. 

In the most important departure from pre- 
cedent, the editors no longer adhered to 
Bartlett's requirement that quotations "have 
the seal of popular approval." According to 
Morley, "We have tried to make literary power 
the criterion, rather than the width and vulgar- 
ity of fame." 1 ' This interpretation of his mis- 
sion as editor allowed Morley to add the 
broadest range of contemporary writers ever 
seen in Bartlett's. He included references to 
Auden, Pound, Langston Hughes, Bertrand 
Russell, Sinclair Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and Willa 
Cather, and finally cited Blake, Hawthorne, 
Melville, and Emily Dickinson, As the Chris- 
tian Science Monitor review of this edition 
stated, "They're all here: poets, novelists, 
essayists, college presidents, columnists and 
critics, kings and dictators, and all the editors 
of the Saturday Review. " n Morley was the 
first editor of Familiar Quotations to impose 
his own vision on the work. Under Morley 's 
editorship Bartlett's began to anticipate an 
author's fame rather than merely reaffirm it. 
As Morley said in the preface, one of the 
pleasures of this cooperative effort was that 
"one collaborator, by long experience with 
inquiries for the affable familiar ghosts of 
print, knows acutely what readers want; and 
the other believes himself to know what they 
ought to want." 1J The size of the book re- 
flected this new spirit of inclusiveness. Even 
after its pruning, the eleventh edition contains 



some 20,000 quotations, nearly double the 
number in the previous edition. 

Since the tenth and the eleventh editions 
had each appeared 23 years after their respec- 
tive predecessors, Morley predicted that his 
1937 revision should last until 1960. But the 
upheavals of the war years made him recon- 
sider this remark as early as 1 940. "Man in his 
Penultimate War was saying words that had to 
be recorded," 14 Morley wrote. He and Everett 
had been noting possible inclusions through- 
out the Second World War, and in 1948 they 
produced a twelfth edition which reflected the 
advent of the atomic age. Sir Winston 
Churchill, unrepresented in the 1937 edition, 
was given 60 entries. By comparison, Bartlett 
had not felt a similar inclination to add Lincoln 
to the fifth edition, published three years after 
his assassination. Again,Morley includedmuch 
of this new material because he considered it 
important, not because it was necessarily fa- 
miliar. This edition included words made fa- 
mous by recent events, such as Einstein's 
statement that the use of the atom bomb 
"brought into the world the most revolution- 
ary force since man's discovery of fire." It 
also contained passages which had become 
significant by hindsight, such as a prescient 
reference to atomic weapons from H. G. 
Wells's The World Set Free, written over 30 
years before Hiroshima: "The catastrophe of 
the atomic bombs which shook men out of 
cities and businesses and economic relations, 
shook them also out of their old-established 
habits of thought, and out of the lightly held 
beliefs and prejudices that came down to them 
from the past." 

The editors and publishers all agreed that 
this revision should have as its aim not the 
complete reworking of the book but simply the 
addition of new material. The twelfth edition 
is therefore identical with the eleventh through 
the entries on Kipling (page 787), after which 
it is entirely new. 

Little, Brown & Co . decided to reexamine 
the entire text of Familiar Quotations for a 
centennial edition, published in 1955. While 



BARLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS 1 3 



the previous two editions had bome the stamp 
of Morley 's personality and literary taste, this 
one was virtually edited by committee. Emily 
Morison Beck, who would become the editor 
of the fourteenth and fifteenth editions, was 
hired to organize the deletions andadditions to 
the centennial edition, and a former assistant 
in the Harvard English department, Jack 
Rackliffe, became copy editor. According to 
Beck, Rackliffe was able to rectify omissions 
from English literature from Shakespeare 
through Yeats. As she puts it, "the editing of 
the centennial edition was turned upside down, 
with the fellow on the bottom emerging as the 
true savant and arbiter, with me, the tyro who 
was cutting her teeth on quotations, in the 
middle, and with the casual, uncritical editors 
at the top." 15 

The thirteenth edition contained a variety 
of songs, ballads, nursery rhymes, and prov- 
erbs, reflecting the taste for the folkloric preva- 
lent at the time. In addition, there were a 
number of stylistic changes. Pages were di- 
vided into two columns and running heads 
were added to the index pages. Ancient and 
non-English authors who had formerly been 
in a separate section in the back of the book 
were incorporated into the main body of the 
text, arranged chronologically and dated when- 
ever possible. The New York Times review of 
this edition noted an indication of significant 
change in American taste: "One thing is cer- 
tain: in the last hundred years our general fund 
of quotation has both changed direction (away 
from the stuffy toward the trivial, gay and 
light-hearted) and increased in size." 16 This 
edition increased the amount of space given to 
Shakespeare, and the section of Biblical refer- 
ences increased by 1 9 pages over the previous 
edition, although such references now com- 
prised only one-ninth of the book. 

At the request of Little, Brown & Co., 
Emily Morison Beck agreed to edit the four- 
teenth edition of Familiar Quotations, which 
was published in 1968. She accepted on con- 
dition that she be allowed to hire a staff of 
scholars and experts in various fields to help 



her select quotes. Beck saw the fourteenth 
edition as one informed by the social upheav- 
als of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which 
had given us new terms like the beat genera- 
tion, brinkmanship, the multiversity, and cy- 
bernetics. For this edition she also reexamined 
the classical quotations whose translations 
dated from the nineteenth century and were 
considered outdated. Homer appears in direct 
translation for the first time, rather than in 
Pope's verse. Zeph Stewart, professor of 
Greek and Latin at Harvard, produced new 
translations of classical authors for the four- 
teenth edition, and in passing corrected the 
omission of "Man is the measure of all things" 
from Protagoras. A broadening of interest in 
Eastern cultures was reflected in the insertion 
of quotes from Confucius, Gandhi, and Lao- 
tzu. 

This edition was also the first to be in- 
dexed by computer. Computerized cross-in- 
dexing greatly improved access to the 20,421 
quotes, and also cut production time dramati- 
cally. Indexes to early editions of Familiar 
Quotations had been alphabetized by hand, 
which took 20 people about six months; the 
computerized alphabetizing of the fourteenth 
edition took about three hours. 

Little, Brown & Co. published the fif- 
teenth and current edition, also editedby Beck, 
in 1980, Essentially an updating of the previ- 
ous edition, it includes over 400 new authors 
(both contemporary and historical), expands 
coverage of the Koran as well as ancient 
Buddhist texts, and carries fresh translations 
of non-English works. Beck again compiled 
the work with the help of a staff of subject 
specialists in various areas, and the experts 
acknowledged in the preface represent such 
timely fields as ecology, the environment, and 
Latin American literature. Beck includedmore 
quotations produced by women and minori- 
ties or inspired by social movements, and she 
also introduced more popular culture into 
Familiar Quotations than ithad ever seen, The 
fifteenth is the first edition to contain the 
words of rock musicians, and the only one to 



vySw&L «. -*— jl .A 



14 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



carry a quote from a cartoonist, the popular 
"Keep on truckin* " by Robert Crumb, creator 
of Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat. There are 
lines from songs by Bob Dylan ("For the times 
they are a-changin'"), Simon and Garfunkel 
("Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson"), Mick Jagger 
("Well s we all need someone we can lean on") , 
and Janis Joplin ("Lord, won't you buy me a 
Mercedes-Benz"), Theplay ii/airis quoted, as 
are My Fair Lady, Camelot, and West Side 
Story, Paddy Chaye vsky is represented by one 
line from the screenplay to Network* ("I'm 
mad as hell and I'm not going to take it 
anymore"). In the preface Beck says, "Time 
willjudge the validity ofthe fifteenth edition's 
choices from contemporary life and litera- 
ture." 17 Some critics have objected to this 
seeming bid for "relevance" at the expense of 
actual literary or cultural merit, questioning 
the enduring value of such quotes as Helen 
Reddy's "I am strong, I am invincible, I am 
woman." As one reviewer put it, "Reading the 
recent entries in this edition is like reading the 
10th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone , 18 Beck 
maintained that the best way to gather quota- 
tions is to list important people who are 
unrepresented or underrepresented in the work, 
and then to cull their works for good lines. 
Others have criticized Beck's editions of Fa- 
miliar Quotations for avoiding topics which 
seemharsh, cynical, or unpleasant. According 
to one critic, the book 

emerges as a one-sided chronicle, conspicu- 
ously void of We Dare Not Speak Its Names. 
The expanded coverage of the environment, 
for example, includes no mention of nuclear 
power, and the references to nuclear warfare 
have a certain A-bomb archaism. Cancer 
doesn'tappear evenas a metaphor in a volume 
that purports to represent modem science. .. . 
Bartlett's creates the impression, by quoting 
exclusively from The Colossus ofMaroussi, 
that Henry Miller is a travel writer. 1 * 



The Future 

Justin Kaplan, who is currently preparing 
the sixteenth edition of Familiar Quotations 
for publication in 1992, plans to rectify this 



impression. Kaplan's view of what Familiar 
Quotations should include is the most acces- 
sible yet: "Generally, it should be useful, 
timely and entertaining. Useful as a reference 
book, timely as a guide to a lot of current 
usage — even if ephemeral, but so is every- 
thing else — and it ought to be fun to read." 20 A 
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Whit- 
man, Twain, and Lincoln Steffens, Kaplan 
intends to remove what he considers its New 
England stuffiness. He sees evidence for this 
in the book's neglect of Shakespeare's com- 
edies in favor ofthe tragedies, and its focus on 
the more uplifting pronouncements of politi- 
cians. His revision will contain more refer- 
ences to the comedies, and remarks like 
Tammany Hall politician George Washington 
Plunkitt's, "I seen my opportunities and I took 
'em." In order to add some 3,000 new quotes 
while keeping the book approximately at its 
current size, Kaplan is deleting what he calls 
"Harvard-derived allusions, outworn senti- 
ments, and excerpts from commencement 
speeches." He is trimming the amount of 
space given to contemporary poetry in re- 
sponse to the criticism that it is overrepresented 
in the fifteenth edition. His edition will reflect 
a broader cultural base by including more 
quotes from world literature and international 
figures. Kaplan also wants to include more 
phrases which have become part of our every- 
day speech, from Henny Youngman's "Take 
my wife . . . please" to the fast-food advertis- 
ing slogan "Where's the beef?" The new 
edition will contain more song lyrics and lines 
from movies, but Kaplan found that neither 
television nor contemporary politics has pro- 
duced much in the way of memorable quotes. 
For example, Ronald Reagan's entries in the 
new Fam iliar Quotations will not be due to his 
oratory but to his own quotations of movie 
lines such as "Win one for the Gipper" and 
"Make my day." 

On the university lecture circuit, Kaplan 
says, audiences typically do not recognize the 
occasional Biblical or Shakespearean quota- 
tion. The technology of mass communication 
provides a constant flow of ephemeral "famil- 



BARLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS 15 



iar" references, while the numbers of Ameri- 
cans for whom Shakespeare's words are truly 
familiar seems to be decreasing. One of the 
difficulties he faced was balancing quotes 
from the masterpieces of the English language 
with the popular references of the day. "For 
Bartlett 's to he useful," Kaplan says, "it has to 
reflect the fact that a great deal of current 
discourse is popular language — from movies, 
television, sports. Yet one of the essential 
elements of 'Bartlett 's is to act as a sort of home 
concordance andtoretain themajor sources of 
our language, such as the Romantic poets." 21 
According to Kaplan, quotations can rein- 
force a sense of community or; they can ex- 
clude; they enrich discourse; and they are 
powerful means of communicating. 

Now, Familiar Quotations continues to 
be a printed information source. However, 



future editions of this classic might be pro- 
duced in CD-ROM or hypermedia format, 
allowing for still more complete indexing and 
faster access to quotations. A hypertext Fa- 
miliar Quotations could include all editions of 
the work with their various prefaces, digitized 
graphics for images of persons who have been 
the sources of quotations, and even audible 
examples of the music that has provided quot- 
able references. From its private first printing 
to its present status as the standard American 
quotation source, Familiar Quotations has 
recorded the shared culture of our world 
throughout the upheavals of 135 years. We 
can only hope this "most famous book of its 
kind" will continue to be with us as long as a 
common heritage is valued. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Bartlett, John. A Collection of Familiar Quotations, 
with Complete Indices of Authors and Subjects. 
Cambridge, MA: John Bartlett, 1855. 295p. 

Bartlett, John. A Collection of Familiar Quotations, 
with Complete Indices of Authors and Subjects. 
New ed. Cambridge, MA: John Bartlett, 1856. 
358p. 

Bartlett, John. .,4 Collection of Familiar Quotations 
with Complete Indices of Authors and Subjects. 
3rded. with supplement. Cambridge, MA: John 
Bartlett, 1858. 446p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations; Being an At- 
tempt to Trace to their Source, Passages and 
Phrases in Common Use. 4th ed. Boston: Little, 
Brown & Co., 1863. 480p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations; Being an At- 
tempt to Trace to their Source Passages and 
Phrases in Common Use. 5th ed. Boston: Little, 
Brown and Company, 1868. 778p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations; Being an At- 
tempt to Trace to their Source, Passages and 
Phrases in Common Use. 6th ed. Boston: Little, 
Brown, 1872. 778p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations: Being an At- 
tempt to Trace to their Source, Passages and 
Phrases in Common Use. 7th ed. Boston: Little, 
Brown & Co., 1875. 864p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations; Being an At- 
tempt to Trace to their Sources Passages and 
Phrases in Common Use. 8th ed, Boston: Little, 
Brown and Company, 1882. 904p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations: A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 



their Sources in Ancient and Modern Litera- 
ture. 9th ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Com- 
pany, 1891. l,158p. 

Bartlett, John, Familiar Quotations: A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 
their Sources in Ancient and Modern Litera- 
ture. 10th ed. revised and enlarged by Nathan 
Haskell Dole. Boston: Little, Brown and Com- 
pany, 1914. l,454p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations; A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 
their Sources in Ancient and Modern Litera- 
ture. 1 1th ed., revised and enlarged, edited by 
Christopher Morley, and Louella D. Everett, 
associate editor. Boston: Little, Brown and Com- 
pany, 1937. l,578p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations: A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 
their Sources in Ancient and Modern Litera- 
ture. 12th ed., revised and enlarged, edited by 
Christopher Morley, and Louella D. Everett, 
associate editor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1948. 
l,831p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations: A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 
their Sources in Ancient and Modern Litera- 
ture. 13th and centennial ed., completely rev. 
Boston: Little, Brown, 1955. 1,6l4p. 

Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations: A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 
their Sources in Ancient and Modern Litera- 
ture. 14th ed., edited by Emily Morison Beck. 
Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1968. l,750p. 




16 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations: A Collection of 
Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to 
their Sources in Ancient and Modem Litera- 



ture. 15 th and 125th anniversary ed., edited 
by Emily Morison Beck. Boston: Little, 
Brown & Co., 1980. l,540p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Although Bartlett's work has received many- 
reviews over the years, most of them are brief and 
limited to comparison between new editions and 
their predecessors. The items listed below, have 
been chosen because they offer the reader more 
than the typical book review. Some of these are 
especially useful for historical or editorial back- 
ground. Both Marshall and Reynolds provide bio- 
graphical informationon JohnBartlett and discuss 
the history of his book. These two articles are 
invaluable sources of information on the develop- 
ment of Familiar Quotations. For contrasting be- 
hind-the-scenes views of the work, compare 
McWhorter' s irreverent analysis of Familiar Quo- 
tations editorial practices to the article by Beck, its 
former editor. 

Anderson, Melville B. "TheNew 'Bartlett's Quotations.'" 
Dial 12 (December, 1991): 268-78. 

Atlas, James. "A NewBartlett's Quotations, Familiar and 
Otherwise." New York Times Book Review (March 
29,1981): 9. 

Beck, Emily Morison. "The Long, Happy Life of 
'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.'" American Heri- 
tage 35 (August-September, 1984): 102-07. 

"The Booklist Interview: Justin Kaplan on Bartlett's 
Familiar Quotations," Booklists (February 1, 1991): 
1152-53. 



Goldberg, Isaac. "Who Said It?" Saturday 
Review 17 (December 4, 1937): 9-10. 

"Ideas." Newsweek (March 12, 1990): 75-76. 

Marshall, John David. "John Bartlett and His 
Quotation Book, 1855-1955." Wilson Li- 
brary Bulletin 30 (November, 1955): 250- 
52. 

McWhorter, Diane. "Bartlett's Hall of Fame." 
Harper's (May, 1981): 75-78. 

Mitgang, Herbert. "A Bartlett's of Henny 
Youngman as Well as Shakespeare and 
Frost." New York Times Book Review 
(November 21, 1988): 15. 

Review of Collection of Familiar Quotations, 
by John Bartlett. Harvard Magazine 6 
(1855): 293-94. 

Review of Familiar Quo tat ions \ 5th ed., by John 
Bartlett. North American Review 109 (July, 
1869): 293-98. 

Review of Familiar Quotations, 9th ed., by John 
Bartlett. Writer 7 (1894): 90-92. 

Review of Familiar Quotations, 1 1th ed., edited 
by Christopher Morley. Christian Science 
Monitor (January 5, 1938): 1 1. 

Review of Familiar Quotations, 15th ed., edited 
by Emily Morison Beck. Choice 1 8 (Janu- 
ary, 1981): 631. 

Reynolds, Horace. "A Name as Familiar as 
One's Own." New York Times Book Re- 
view (November 13, 1955): 1. 



NOTES 



'Facsimile of preface to first edition, Familiar Quotations, 
12th ed., rev. by Christopher Morley and Louella D. 
Everett (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1948), ix. 

2 Review of Collection of Familiar Quotations, by John 

Bartlett, 1855, Harvard Magazine 6 (1855): 294. 

3 Eugene P. Sheehy, Guide to Reference Booh, 10th ed. 

(Chicago and London: American Library Association 

1986), 417-18; Literary World 1 5 (29 November 1 884): 

418. 
4 D. Bernard Theall, review of Familiar Quotations, 15th ed., 

ed. by Emily Morison Beck, American Reference Books 

Annual 13 (1982): 69. 
5 Review of Familiar Quotations, \ 1 th ed., ed. by Christopher 

Morley and Louella D. Everett, 1 93 7, Christian Science 

Monitor (5 January 1938): 11. 
facsimile of preface to first edition, Familiar Quotations, 

12th ed., ix. 



7 Melville B. Anderson, "The New 'Bartlett's Famil- 
iar Quotations,'" Dial 12 (December 1991): 
269-70. 

8 "Preface to the Ninth Edition," in Familiar Quota- 

tions, 9th ed., by John Bartlett (Boston: Little, 
Brown & Co., 1891). 

9 "Preface to the Tenth Edition," in Familiar Quota- 

tions, 10th ed., ed. by Nathan Haskell Dole 
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1914). 

10 Ibid. 

11 "Preface to the Eleventh Edition," in Familiar 

Quotations, I lthed.,ed.byChristopherMorley 
and Louella D. Everett (Boston: Little, Brown 
& Co., 1937). 

12 Review of Familiar Quotations, 1 1th ed., Chris- 

tian Science Monitor (5 January 1938): 11. 

13 "Preface to the Eleventh Edition." 



jj^r 1 "*£H 



BARLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS 17 



""'Preface to the Twelfth Edition," in Familiar Quota- 
tions, 12th ed., ed. by Christopher Morley and 
Louella D. Everett (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 
1948). 

15 Emily Morison Beck, "The Long, Happy Life of 
'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations,"' American Heri- 
tage 35 (August-September 1984): 102. 

,6 Horace Reynolds, "A Name as Familiaras One's Own," 
New York Times BoolcMeview ( 1 3 November 1 95 5 ) : 
L 

""Preface to the Fifteenth Edition," in Familiar Quota- 
tions, 15thed.,ed. by Emily MorisonBeck(Boston: 
Little, Brown & Co., 1980). 



18 James Atlas, "A New Bartlett's Quotations, Familiar 
and Otherwise," New York Times Book Review (29 
March 1981): 9. 

I9 DianeMcWhorter, "Bartlett'sHall of Fame," Harper's 
262 (May 1981): 76, 78. 

20 HerbertMitgang, "A Bartlett's of Henny Youngmanas 
Well as Shakespeare and Frost," JVew York Times 
Book Review (21 November 1 988): 20. 

21 Ibid. 



Black's Law Dictionary: Ninety-Nine 
Years, 1891-1990 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

A brief history of the English and American 
predecessors to Black 's Law Dictionary pro- 
vides insight to some of the characteristics of 
early law dictionaries and the tradition from 
v/hichBlack's evolved. English law dictionar- 
ies date back to sixteenth-century England 
when John Rastell, brother-in-law of Sir Tho- 
mas More, authored the Expositiones 
terminarum legum Anglorum (1527). This 
compilation included only 208 entries chosen 
and designed to explain obscure terms to stu- 
dents of law. The entries were mostly in Latin 
and the text was almost exclusively French. 1 
An expanded version of Rastell's work, known 
as Terms de la ley, was later published in 
parallel French and English columns. 

Early English-Language 
Antecedents 

In 1607 John Cowell published the first 
edition of The Interpreter, Like Rastell's work, 
the title was designed for those learning about 
the law, but there the similarities ended. Rastell 
was a practicing lawyer, whereas Cowell was 
a former professor of civil law at Cambridge. 
Cowell wrote his dictionary in English and 
included not only "obscure" words but almost 
"all" law words thatneeded explanation. 2 The 
Znterprefer was a larger volume than Rastell's 
and a more scholarly one, and it included lay 
terms such as "fish," "spices," and "furres." 3 
According to Cowell, entries not related to the 



Pamela S. Bradigan 



art of the law were included so that lawyers 
would not be ignorant of such things as beasts 
or fowls. 

In 1670 Thomas Blount, the author of a 
general English dictionary, issued the one- 
volume Nomo-Lexikon. As an antiquarian, 
Blount enjoyed oddities of the English legal 
past and included them in the Nomo-Lexikon. 
An example of this was his inclusion of an 
entry on "doitkin," defined as a coin of small 
value prohibited since 1416, and the source of 
the phrase, "not worth a doitkin." 4 

Giles Jacob's New Law Dictionary, pub- 
lished in 1729, was an important representa- 
tive of its time. This huge tome was intended 
to serve as a substitute for a legal education. It 
included legal forms and reflected the decline 
of sophisticated schools for barristers, the 
expense of law books, and the increasing 
number of attorneys without formal educa- 
tion. Jacob's work, paralleling a phenomenon 
in general language dictionaries, copied from 
its predecessors by adding ordinary words to 
make a larger and more impressive volume for 
the consumers. 

English law dictionaries were used in the 
United States until 1839, when John Bouvier 
published a two-volume American law dictio- 
nary entitled^ Law Dictionary Adapted to the 
Constitution and Laws of the United States of 
America and of Several States of 'the American 
Union (Philadelphia: T. and J. W. Johnson). 
Bouvier was critical of the English law dictio- 
naries because they were outdated and con- 
tained entries copied from earlier titles with- 



BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 19 



out much alteration. In his preface Bouvier 
noted that most of the matter in English law 
dictionaries was written while the feudal law 
was in fiill vigor and was not appropriate for 
the nineteenth century. Based on these criti- 
cisms, Bouvier omitted much from his dictio- 
nary that English law dictionaries had in- 
cluded. 

Like Jacob, Bouvier wrote a work that 
also offered a legal education. There was need 
for such a work in the early United States; 
most lawyers learned about law through an 
apprenticeship rather than through formal edu- 
cation at a university. Some attorneys just 
studied the law on their own. Bouvier' s Law 
Dictionary was in use when Black wrote the 
first edition of his famous work. 

Henry Campbell Black 

Henry Campbell Black, a legal scholar, 
was born on October 17, 1860, in Ossining, 
New York. Black's parents were the Rever- 
end John Henry Black and Caroline Campbell 
Black. After studying the Greek and Latin 
classics, Black entered Trinity College, gradu- 
ating in 1880 with an A.B. A member of Phi 
Beta Kappa, Black received his A.M. in 1 887 
from Trinity College and an honorary degree 
of Doctor of Laws in 1916. 

In 1883 Black was admitted to the Bar of 
Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. He prac- 
ticed law in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and 
subsequently moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, 
where he continued his law practice. But 
Black's true interest was in legal theory, and 
that led him to publish his first important book, 
An Essay on the Constitutional Prohibitions 
Against Legislation Impairing the Obligation 
of Contracts, and Against Retroactive and Ex 
Post Facto Laws (Boston: Little, Brown, 1 887). 
It was accepted by the legal profession as an 
authoritative source on the subject. 

In 1888 Black moved to Washington, 
D.C., where he came in contact with some of 
the most prominent members of his profes- 
sion, as well as with many others with intellec- 



tual interests. In this stimulating environment 
Black devoted his time to authorship. He was 
most interested in studying the Constitution of 
the United States, and he wrote books about 
constitutional law as well as other legal topics. 
Black also authored articles for law journals 
and encyclopedias, and he served as the editor 
of The Constitutional Law Review from 1917 
until his death in 1927. 

In January 1891 Dr. Black published his 
first book with West Publishing Company, a 
major legal publisher in St. Paul, Minnesota. 
Black on Judgments was an immediate suc- 
cess, requiring reprints in April 1891, and 
again later in the year. 

Black's Dictionary 

Today, Henry Campbell Black is best 
known for his law dictionary, which was first 
published by West in 1891 under the title A 
Dictionary of Law. Black's one-volume dic- 
tionary still is a very important West publica- 
tion. The dictionary includes ancient and 
modern terms, phrases, and maxims used in 
Ameri can and English law. In the first edition's 
preface Black stated that for, "the terms ap- 
pertaining to old and middle English law and 
the feudal polity, recourse has been had freely 
to the older English law dictionaries, (such as 
those of Cowell, Spelman, Blount, Jacob, 
Cunningham, Whishaw, Skene, Tomlins, and 
the 'Terms de la Ley,") as also to the writings 
of Bracton, Littleton, Coke and other sages of 
the early law." s 

Black relied upon other dictionaries and 
writings of legal scholars for terms from Ro- 
man and modem civil law as well as for the 
terms and phrases from French, Spanish, and 
Scotch law. Modern American and English 
law terms were derived from codes, statutes, 
reports, legal textbooks, works by legal schol- 
ars, and recent English and American dictio- 
naries. Quoted material was indented in an 
entry and set in smaller type along with the 
source of the reference. Black didnotprovide 
an exhaustive list of sources consulted in 



20 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



compiling the Dictionary; however, he made 
acknowledgements in entries when aid was 
"directly levied from those sources." 6 Black 
also wrote many new definitions, for his stated 
aim was "to present a definition at once con- 
cise, comprehensive, accurate, and lucid." 7 

The first edition, which was intended for 
the student and the professional, had two 
supplementary sections. One was a list of 
older principal law dictionaries and the sec- 
ond was a list of British regnal years. The 
Dictionary contained no place or personal 
name entries, illustrations, or pronunciation 
aids, and usually gave no indication of the 
parts of speech for an entry. Abbreviations 
generally appeared at the beginning of each 
alphabetical section. Synonyms and antonyms 
were included under the word entries and 
important variations in meanings were noted. 
For example, the entry on "death" distin- 
guished between the meaning of a "natural" 
death and a "civil" death. 8 The entry on "debt" 
included a five-paragraph section on syn- 
onyms. 9 

An unsigned review of the first edition 
praised it as a "useful book" and criticized it 
for including too many words merely because 
they had been involved in a decision of a 
case. 10 Examples included "dead-head," "fa- 
ther," and "female." 11 The critic believed it 
superfluous to include words that laity and 
lawyers used in exactly the same manner. But 
the reviewer praised Black for confining him- 
self to definitions and not trying to offer a legal 
education by including essays, as Bouvier 
had. 

In the second edition, published in 1910, 
Black wrote about the changes to his work. In 
response to demands, Black added a number 
of references to cases in which terms or phrases 
of the law were judicially defined. Black re- 
wrote many definitions because he had re- 
ceived "helpful criticism" or because he oth- 
erwise saw a need for change. 12 The second 
edition also included terms new to the law 
which had come into use since the first edition 
was published. Black included medical termi- 
nology when appropriate and acknowledged 



the assistance of Dr. Fielding H. Garrison. A 
new supplementary section, a table of abbre- 
viations, appeared in the second edition. The 
70 page table primarily contained abbrevia- 
tions or reference sources cited in the 
Dictionary's entries. 

Another change in the second edition was 
a new system of arrangement which grouped 
all compound and descriptive terms under the 
respective headings from which they were 
derived. The placement of the entry on "straw 
bail" was an example of this new arrange- 
ment. In the first edition, the entry on "bail" 
did not include a description of "straw bail," 33 
which appeared instead in a separate entry in 
the "S" alphabetical section. 14 In the second 
edition, however, the term "straw bail" was 
defined within the entry on "bail," and a see 
reference under "straw bail" pointed to "bail." 15 
This new arrangement was praised by a re- 
viewer who also liked the book's physical 
appearance and stated that the title was "well 
worthy of being pronounced the best Ameri- 
can single volume dictionary of the law." 16 

The third edition of the Dictionary came 
out in 1933, six years after Black's death. In 
the preface the publisher briefly explained the 
changes in the work. New words were added 
and modernized definitions were included, 
along with references to updated authorities 
supporting new uses of a term. The third 
edition was the first to be titled Black's Law 
Dictionary. 

Criticism of the Dictionary 

The reviews of the third edition were 
generally very positive; however, Alexander 
Hamilton Frey wrote that a random look at 
Black's disclosed many lay terms that did not 
have any unique legal definition. 17 He listed 
"alehouse," "aristocracy," "chain," "double," 
"gentlewoman," and "monogram" as ex- 
amples." Frey even suggested that the "pad- 
ding" of the Dictionary may have been for a 
commercial reason. 18 

Typographical changes were made in the 
fourth edition in 1951 to accommodate the 



SLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 21 



enlarged contents. The type was completely 
reset and arranged in wider columns, making 
the text more attractive and readable. The 
publishers added a five-page guide to the 
pronunciation of primarily Latin words and 
phrases. As in earlier editions, the Dictionary 
included definitions found in the works of 
early legal scholars along with new and up- 
dated definitions. 

In 1968 West published a revised fourth 
edition, which included some changed and 
updated entries. Several new supplementary 
sections were added: the Code of Professional 
Responsibility, the Code of Judicial Conduct, 
and a table of the minimum requirements for 
admission to legal practice in the United States. 

The fifth edition, published by West in 
1979, was produced on an IBM computer 
composition system. 19 This edition's preface 
clearly summarized its improvements and 
changes, crediting two individuals and the 
West editorial staff for the major improve- 
ments. Joseph R. Nolan, Associate Justice of 
the Massachusetts Supreme Court, was pri- 
marily responsible for the 10,000 new or re- 
vised entries, and M. J. Connolly, Associate 
Professor of Linguistics and Eastern Lan- 
guages at Boston College, developed the pro- 
nunciation guides for all entries which posed 
pronunciation difficulties. The Code of Pro- 
fessional Conduct, the Code of Judicial Con- 
duct, the five-page guide to pronunciation, 
and the table listing the requirements for ad- 
mission to legal practice were removed. The 
Constitution of the United States, the United 
States government organization chart, and a 
listing of the U.S. Supreme Court justices and 
their terms were included in the appendices. 

An abridged fifth edition of Black's con- 
taining over 16,000 definitions was published 
in 1983. The publisher created this abridged 
edition in response to the need for a compact 
law dictionary that could be conveniently car- 
ried and used away from a library or office. 
Also in 1983, the fifth edition of Black's was 
first offered online through WESTLAW, a 
system of databases produced and made avail- 
able by West Publishing. 20 The WESTLAW 



Reference Manual explains the general data- 
base search techniques and provides search- 
ing tips for use with Black's. 

The reviews of the fifth edition in the 
printed format were generally positive. Rich- 
ard Sloane, Law Librarian and Professor of 
Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law 
School, pointed out the work's notable virtues 
and main short-comings, compared 16 spe- 
cific entries in Black's to another current law 
dictionary, and provided several proposals for 
improvement. 21 These proposals included de- 
leting a large proportion of Black's ancient 
terms and its general or specialized nonlegal 
terms. Sloane felt the references to cases were 
helpful; however, the date the case was de- 
cided needed to be included. He stated that 
references made to some cases and treatises 
were outdated, and more timely references 
could be made. Finally, Sloane suggested 
emphasizing new terms and concepts emerg- 
ing in expanding branches of the law. 

Sloane recognized that a publisher would 
hesitate to tamper with success; however, he 
felt that a future edition of Black's would 
benefit from his ideas. Sloane' s comparative 
review identified the Dictionary 's strengths 
and weaknesses and, importantly, reaffirmed 
its preeminence among American law dictio- 
naries. 

The Current Edition 

In mid- 1990 the sixth edition of Black's 
was published. In this new edition the pub- 
lisher addressed points raised in Professor 
Sloane 's review of the fifth edition. Many 
nonlegal terms were deleted and new terms 
were added. The work contains more than 
5,000 new, revised, or updated words and 
terms. The publisher has expanded examples 
of word usages, added cross-references to 
related terms, and added updated citations. 22 
The preface explains that new tax, finance, 
and accounting terms have been added due to 
the expanding importance of financial termi- 
nology. A certified public accountant served 



f££C3S ^ 



22 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



as a contributing author and reviewed the tax 
and accounting terms. 

The appendices include an expanded table 
of abbreviations, the Constitution of the United 
States, a time chart of the United States Su- 
preme Court, a United States government 
organization chart, andatable of British regnal 
years. Thepronunciation guides were updated 
by the linguistics professor who also contrib- 
uted to the fifth edition. 



The importance of Black's among law 
dictionaries is evident when reviewing cur- 
rent bibliographies of legal reference works. 
Although there are many specialized and for- 
eign-language legal dictionaries, Black's is 
the one most often cited as the most desirable 
general law dictionary. Legal scholars, prac- 
titioners, and students will benefit from the 
updated edition of this well known and re- 
spected title. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

A Dictionary of Law, Containing Definitions of the 
Terms and Phrases of American and English 
Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern; Including 
the Principal Terms oflnternational, Constitu- 
tional, and Commercial Law; With a Collection 
of Legal Maxims and Numerous Select Titles 
from the Civil Law and Other Foreign Systems, 
by Henry Campbell Black. St. Paul, MN: West 
Publishing Co., 1891. l,253p. 

A Law Dictionary Containing Definitions of the 
Terms and Phrases of American and English 
Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern; And In- 
cluding the Principal Terms of International, 
Constitutional, Ecclesiastical, and Commer- 
cial Law, and Medical Jurisprudence, with a 
Collection of Legal Maxims, Numerous Select 
Titles from the Roman, Modern Civil, Scotch, 
French, Spanish, and Mexican Law, and other 
Foreign Systems, and a Table of Abbreviations , 
by Henry Campbell Black. 2nd ed, St. Paul, 
MN; West Publishing Co., 1910. 1,3 14p. Spine 
title: Black's Law Dictionary. 

Black's Law Dictionary Containing Definitions of 
the Terms and Phrases of American and En- 
glish Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern, and 
Including the Principal Terms oflnternational, 
Constitutional, Ecclesiastical and Commercial 
Law, and Medical Jurisprudence, with a Col- 
lection of Legal Maxims, Numerous Select Titles 
from the Roman, Modern Civil, Scotch, French, 
Spanish, and Mexican Law, and Other Foreign 
Systems, and a Table of Abbreviations, by the 



publisher's editorial staff. 3rd ed. St. Paul, MN: 
West Publishing Co., 1933. l,944p. 

Black's Law Dictionary; Definitions of the Terms 
and Phrases of American and English Jurispru- 
dence, Ancient and Modern, with Guide to 
Pronunciation, by the publisher's editorial staff. 
4th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 
1951. l,882p. 

Black's Law Dictionary; Definitions of the Terms 
and Phrases of American and English Jurispru- 
dence, Ancient and Modern, by the publisher's 
editorial staff. Rev. 4th ed. St. Paul, MN: West 
Publishing Co., 1968. l,882p. 

Black's Law Dictionary; Definitions of the Terms 
and Phrases of American and English Jurispru- 
dence, Ancient and Modern, by the publisher's 
editorial staff, contributing authors Joseph R. 
Nolan andM. J. Connolly. 5th ed. St. Paul, MN: 
West Publishing Co., 1979. 1,5 lip. 

Black's Law Dictionary; Definitions of the Terms 
and Phrases of American and English Jurispru- 
dence, Ancient and Modern, by the publisher's 
editorial staff, contributing authors Joseph R. 
Nolan and M.J. Connolly. Abridged 5th ed. St. 
Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1983. 855p. 

Black's Law Dictionary; Definitions of the Terms 
and Phrases of American and English Jurispru- 
dence, Ancient and Modern, by the publisher's 
editorial staff, coauthors Joseph R. Nolan and 
Jacqueline M. Nolan-Haley, contributing au- 
thors M. J. Connolly, Stephen C. Hicks, and 
Martina N. Alibrandi. 6th ed. St. Paul, MN: 
West Publishing Co., 1990. 1,657. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Reviews of Black 's Law Dictionary have 
generally been short and most biographical 
data on Henry Campbell Black are brief. Two 
notable exceptions are Richard Sloane's re- 
view of the fifth edition in the University of 
Toledo Law Review and David Hill's sum- 



mary of Dr. Black's life in The Constitutional 

Review, 

Adams, Oscar Fay. A Dictionary of American Au- 
thors. 5th ed., rev. and enl. Boston: Houghton, 
Mifflin and Co., 1904. 

Alexand er, Arthur A. Review of Black 's Law Dictio- 
nary, 3rd ed., by the publisher's editorial staff. 



BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 23 



Georgetown Law Journal 22 (March, 1934): 
657-58. 

Anderson, William C. "Law Dictionaries." Ameri- 
can Law Review 28 (July-August 1894): 531- 
46. 

Dick, Terry S. WESTLAW Reference Manual Srded. 
St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1989. 

Frey, Alexander Hamilton. Review of Black's Law 
Dictionary, 3rd ed., by the publisher's editorial 
staff. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 
82 (June 1934): 886-87. 

Hill, David Jayne. "In Memoriam Doctor Henry 
Campbell Black." The Constitutional Review 
11 (April, 1927): 67-76. 

Mellinkoff, David. "The Myth of Precision and the 
Law Dictionary." UCLA Law Review 3 1 (De- 
cember, 1983): 423-42. 

Review of A Dictionary of Law, Containing Defini- 
tions of the Terms and Phrases of American and 
English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern; 
Including the Principal Terms oflntemational, 
Constitutional, and Commercial Law; With a 
Collection of Legal Maxims and Numerous Se- 
lect Titles from the Civil Law and Other Foreign 



Systems, by Henry Campbell Black. The Nation 
53 (December 17, 1891): 469-70. 

Review of A Law Dictionary Containing Definitions 
of the Terms and Phrases of American and 
English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modem; 
And Including the Principal Terms oflntema- 
tional, Constitutional, Ecclesiastical, andCom- 
mercialLaw, and Medical Jurisprudence, With 
a Collection of Legal Maxims, Numerous Select 
Titles from the Roman, Modern Civil, Scotch, 
French, Spanish, and Mexican Law, and Other 
Foreign Systems, and a Table of Abbreviations, 
2nd ed., by Henry Campbell Black. The Ameri- 
can Political Science Review 5 (May, 1911): 
284. 

Sloane, Richard. Review of Black's Law Dictionary, 
5th ed., by the publisher's editorial staff. Uni- 
versity of Toledo Law Review 1 1 (Winter, 1980): 
322-30. 

"A Symposium of Law Publishers." American Law 
Review23 (May- June, 1889): 396-44. 

Who Was Who in America. Vol. 1, 1897-1942. Chi- 
cago: Marquis Who's Who, 1943. 



NOTES 



1 David Mellinkoff, "The Myth of Precision and the Law 

Dictionary," UCLA Law Review 3 1 (December 
1983): 426. 

2 Ibid., 427. 
3 Ibid., 428. 
•'Ibid. 

5 Henry Campbell Black, "Preface," in .4 Dictionary of 
Law Containing Definitions of the Terms and 
Phrases of American and English Jurisprudence, 
Ancient and Modern (St. Paul, MN: West Publish- 
ing Co., 1891), iv. 

'Ibid. 

7 Ibid. 

'Black, Dictionary of Law, 335. 

9 Md., 337. 

'"Review of A Dictionary of Law Containing Definitions 
of the Terms and Phrases of American and English 
Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern, by Henry 
Campbell Black, The Nation 53 (17 December 
1891): 470. 

"Ibid. 

!2 Henry Campbell Black, "Preface," in^ Law Dictionary 
Containing Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of 
American and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and 
Modern; And Including the Principal Terms of 
International, Constitutional, Ecclesiastical, and 
Commercial Law, and Medical Jurisprudence, with 
a Collection of Legal Maxims, Numerous Select 
Titles from the Roman, Modern Civil, Scotch, French, 
Spanish, and Mexican Law, and Other Foreign 
Systems, and a Table of Abbreviations, 2nded. (St. 
Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1 9 10), iii. 



13 Black, Dictionary of Law, 113. 

'Hbid., 1127. 

"Black, A Law Dictionary, 113,1113. 

16 Review of A Law Dictionary, 2nd ed., by Henry 

Campbell Black, The American Political Science 
Review 5(May 1911): 284. 

17 Arthur A. Alexander, review of Black's Law Dictio- 

nary, 3rd ed., by the publisher's editorial staff, 
Georgetown Law Journal 22 (March 1934): 657- 
58; Alexander Hamilton Frey, review of Black's 
Law Dictionary, 3rded.,bythepublisher'seditorial 
staff, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 82 
(June 1934): 886-87; Review of Black's Law Dic- 
tionary, 3rd ed., by the publisher's editorial staff, 
Harvard Law Review 47 (November 1933): 170. 

18 Frey, review of Black's, 886. 

19 Kenneth G. Heimbach, Managing Editor, West Pub- 

lishing Co., letter to the author, March 30, 1990. 

M Ibid. 

21 Richard Sloane, review oi Black's Law Dictionary, 5th 
ed., by the publisher's editorial staff, University of 
Toledo Law Review 1 1 {Winter 1980): 322-30; Dan 
Henke, review of Black's Law Dictionary, 5th ed., 
by the publisher's editorial staff, American Bar 
Association Journal 65 (September 1979): 1378- 
80; Leonard Schulte, "AboutDictionaries/'F/orWa 
Bar Journal 56 (February 1982): 153, 

n Kenneth G. Heimbach, Managing Editor, West Pub- 
lishing Co., letter to the author, 22 May 1990. 



An "Alms-Basket" of "Bric-A-Brac": 

Brewer's Dictionary of 

Phrase and Fable 



Charles Bunge 



DEVELOPMENT AMD HISTORY 

The first edition, of Brewer's Dictionary of 
Phrase and Fable was published in the year 
that Charles Dickens died. It was as firmly 
rooted in and reflective of the literary, intel- 
lectual, and social concerns of Victorian En- 
gland as were the novels of Dickens, and, like 
them, Brewer's Dictionary has entertained 
and informed successive generations to the 
present day. Both Dickens and Brewer ad- 
dressed social problems — in Brewer's case 
the need to make the fruits of nineteenth- 
century scholarship accessible to aneverwid- 
enirtg range of readers — but they were also 
willing to respond to the Victorian hunger for 
diversion and entertainment, a formula that 
has stood them both in good stead for over a 
century. 

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer was born in 
1810 into the family of a Norwich schoolmas- 
ter. He worked his way through college at 
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating with first- 
class honors in 1836. In 1848 he was awarded 
the LL.D. He entered the priesthood in 1838, 
probably hoping this would be an entree into 
a university or scholarly career. However, 
after graduating from college, he assisted his 
father at the family's boardingschool, becom- 
ing its headmaster when his father retired. He 
traveled extensively on the Continent and 
lived for a while in Paris. He read very widely 
and had excellent facility with languages. 1 



Around 1840, Brewer's Guide to Science 
(London: Jerrold) launched a successful ca- 
reer of writing informational and instructional 
materials for a popular audience. The Guide 
sold several hundred thousand copies and was 
translated into numerous languages. In the 
early 1860s Brewer started what would be a 
long and fruitful association with the publish- 
ing house of John Cassell. By then, Cassell, 
social reformer and former temperance lec- 
turer, had firmly established his publishing 
company and its policy of publishing good 
educational and recreational reading for the 
working man. 2 

Undoubtedly, Brewer's experience as a 
schoolmaster and his proven ability as an 
educationa 1 writer were particularly attractive 
to the publisher. Brewer had an office at 
Cassell's La Bell Sauvage quarters, where he 
wrote and edited many of the firm's popular 
works for adults and children. 3 He was the 
compiler of such reference books as the 
Reader 's Handbook of Famous Names inFic- 
tion (London: Chatto & Windus) and the His- 
toric Notebook (London: Smith, Elder), which 
were considered standard sources for many 
years. 

The Dictionary's Antecedents 

Brewer's grandson, P.M.C. Hayman, 
writes that Brewer himself attributed the gen- 
esis of the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable to 



J3REWER 'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE 25 



"his boyhood habit of notetaking, which he 
continued all his life." 4 This habit of making 
and saving notes from one's reading, along 
with correspondence between authors and their 
readers, seems to have been common in 
Brewer ' s day. Brewer wrote that the popular- 
ity of his Guide to Science "brought me a large 
number of questions on all imaginary mat- 
ters." He accumulated the answers to these 
questions, along with other notes and refer- 
ences, in A-Z pigeonholes, and they became 
the nucleus of the Dictionary, 5 

The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable also 
had roots in antiquarianism and the miscella- 
nies of folk custom, beliefs, and curiosities it 
produced, including Hone's Every-Day Book 
(London: Hunt & Clarke, 1825-26), John 
Timbs' Things Not Generally Known (Lon- 
don; David Borgue, 1856) and other works, 
and Robert Chambers' Book of Days 
(Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1862-64). 
Brewer called his miscellany "bric-a-brac" 
and said that his entries drew in the "curious 
. . ., historical trifles . . ., and references to 
Scandinavian and other mythology," 6 If the 
Dictionary had a tap root, it surely fed on the 
nineteenth-century philology that produced 
many etymological dictionaries in Brewer's 
day, culminating in the Oxford English Dictio- 
nary. He wrote that etymology "forms a staple 
of the book," especially etymologies and ex- 
planations of familiar phrases, allusions that 
wouldpuzzle the common reader, and "words 
that have a tale to tell." 7 And there was the 
Victorian impulse toward self-improvement 
and Brewer's concern for making knowledge 
and literature accessible to the increasingly 
literate working class. He called his work an 
"alms-basket," alms being gifts for the less 
fortunate, and said that he selected from his 
mass of notes those items that he thought were 
"best suited for popular purposes." 8 The sec- 
ond ("New") edition was published in 13 
installments (hence, the frequent references to 
it as the 1894-95 edition), a common nine- 
teenth-century strategy for making books af- 
fordable to working-class people. 



John Buchanan-Brown, former manager 
of Cassell ' s Reference Department, points out 
that a more immediate inspiration for Brewer 
was William Adolphus Wheeler's Noted 
Names inFiction (Boston: Ticknor and Fields). 9 
Buchanan-Brown believes that Wheeler was 
not only the source for some of Brewer's 
entries, but that he challenged Brewer to pro- 
vide information on such things as "celebrated 
customs and phrases" that represented what 
Wheeler called "too vast a field of enquiry" 
for him to have undertaken. Indeed, Brewer's 
first edition does contain entries for phrases 
that Wheeler used as examples of his exclu- 
sions, such as "flap-dragon" and "to carry 
coals to Newcastle." 10 

Brewer's, in turn, has influenced other 
reference works, especially literary handbooks. 
For example, Henrietta Gerwig, in the preface 
to Crowell 's Handbook for Readers and Writ- 
ers, acknowledged her debt to the Dictionary, 
and a number of her entries were taken di- 
rectly from it. 11 William Rose Benet, in his 
preface to the Handbook's successor, The 
Reader's Encyclopedia, expressed his plea- 
sure with this association, noting thsABrewer 's 
was among the reference books in his father' s 
library. 12 

Critical Reception 

Reference book reviewers have treated 
Brewer's well over the years. Early printings 
contained a page of "Selections from Notices 
of the Press" that quoted complimentary notes 
from newspapers and periodicals of the day. 
These notes pointed out features that would be 
mentioned again and again for the next 120 
years. The writer in The Daily Telegraph 
noted that the Dictionary offered "the rare 
attraction in a book of reference of being 
thoroughly readable," and others noted that it 
would provide much pleasure and amuse- 
ment. The West Sussex Gazette and The 
Manch ester Examiner recommended the work 
to students, speakers, writers, and general 
readers who needed explanations of allusions 



26 niKTTNQUISHBP CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



or "who are in want of pertinent illustrations;' 
while another reviewer characterized the 
knowledge in the volume as "one of the very 
best means of effecting a pleasant diversion 
from the dull level of commonplace small-talk 
in ordinary company." From the firstprinting 
onward, reviewers agreed that Brewer 's should 
"find a place in every library, whether public 
or private," 11 

Reviewers greeted each successive major 
revision with notes of from one to several 
paragraphs. The London Quarterly review of 
the 1894-95 edition is typical among these. It 
notes Brewer's "enormous popularity," its 
improvement through updating and correc- 
tion of old entries and the addition of new 
ones., its delights for lovers of the curious, and 
its general usefulness to other readers. 14 The 
Reference Books Bulletin note on the 1989 
edition strikes a similar tone. 15 In between 
these, reviewers took special note of the 1970 
centenary edition. For example, B. Hunter 
Smeaton, writing inLibrary Journal, reflected 
on Brewer's particular usefulness for items 
that are likely to be absent from other refer- 
ence books, 1 * and the reviewer in The Times 
Literary Supplement wished that the new edi- 
tion had concentrated on such items, leaving 
"all the other terms to works which cover them 
more fully andknowledgeably.,.."' 1 

Such reviews both reflected and con- 
firmed Brewer 's early- won status as a stan- 
dard reference book. The same is true of its 
treatment in lists of recommended reference 
works. As early as 1877, Justin Winsor in- 
cluded it on a list of reference books for small 
libraries, albeit with note of its borrowings 
from Wheeler mentioned above. 18 Alice B. 
Kroeger included it in her 1902 Guide to the 
Study and Use of Reference Books, (Boston: 
American Library Association) as has every 
edition of "Mudge" (or "WincheU" or 
"Sheeny," depending on one's generation). 
Likewise, Bessie Graham included it in the 
first edition of her Bookman 's Manual (New 
York: Bowker, I921) 1 anditisstill listedinthe 
latest edition of The Reader's Adviser (New 



York: Bowker, 1986-88). British guides have 
been equally consistent in listing it. 

Not surprisingly, Brewer's is included 
among the tools that are taught in courses on 
reference materials in library schools, and is 
among the tools considered "vital" for all 
types and sizes of libraries in a study con- 
ducted by Wallace Bonk to see what sources 
all library school students should be taught. 19 
And John C. Larsen found that most library 
schools included Brewer's among the "tried- 
and-true" titles in their humanities literature 
or bibliography courses. 20 Various reference 
course textbooks, from Shores to Katz, have 
also included Brewer 's. 

Evofution and Editions 

No sooner was the first printing of the 
Dictionary off the press than Brewer was 
noting needed corrections and addenda. While 
the pagination and most of the entries re- 
mained constant through the 1870 version's 
numerous printings (called "editions" through 
at least 26), some corrections and additions 
were made on the pages, and many printings 
had one or more pages of "addenda et 
corrigenda." Many of these had been sug- 
gested in letters from readers of the volume, 
whom Brewer acknowledged in additions to 
the preface. After several printings, the pub- 
lisher added a "Bibliographic Appendix," 
which was a listing of English authors and 
their works, based on W. Davenport Adams' 
Dictionary of English Literature (2nd ed., 
London: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, 1878). 
This appendix was discontinued with the 1 923 
edition. 

By 1 894, the needed correction and addi- 
tions were beyond what could be done "with 
such clipping and verbal changes as can be 
made in stereotyped plates," and a completely 
reset "New Edition" was published. 21 By this 
time, the publishers claimed that 100,000 cop- 
ies of the volume had been produced, and the 
title page of printings of the new edition indi- 
cated increases in this number (e.g., "110th 



BREWER'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE 27 



Thousand" in 1899, "129th Thousand" in 
1905). 

Brewer expanded the size of his dictio- 
nary hy a third in the second edition. He also 
corrected many entries and substituted new 
items for less useful ones. His preface to the 
new edition credits two sources for these 
corrections and expansions. First, there were 
"many hundreds of correspondents," some of 
whom seem to have gone through the first 
edition painstakingly, suggesting corrections, 
quotations, and other changes. The other source 
was the wealth of material coming out of what 
Brewer dubbed "The Era of English Philol- 
ogy." He wrote that he took advantage of "this 
great literary movement from every available 
source," very probably including the early 
installments of the New English Dictionary? 1 

The 1894-95 edition was reprinted nu- 
merous times up through World War I. An- 
other "New Edition" was published in 1923. 
Buchanan-Brown says that Lawrence H, 
Dawson edited this version, though he is not 
mentioned on the title page or elsewhere in the 
volume. 23 Revisions consisted mainly of drop- 
ping numerous terms and allusions that had 
fallen out of use since the 1890s, and the 
addition of new terms and phrases. 

By the end of World War II, Brewer 's was 
much in need of revision again, and it was the 
first of the Cassell reference books to receive 
attention after the turmoil of the war period 
subsided. 24 Cassell' s chairman, Desmond 
Flower, took personal interest in the revision, 
and a "Revised & Enlarged" edition came out 
in 1952. 25 The unnamed editor wrote in the 
volume's "Editor's Note" thatthenew edition 
had been "brought up to date by the inclusion 
of many forms of expression that have arisen 
during the past years," including phrases that 
came into use during the war, such as "blood, 
toil, tears, and sweat" and the V-for-victory 
symbol. 

With the 1952 edition, the publishers again 
adopted the practice of referring to printings 
as editions. The "fifth edition" of 1959 con- 
tained minor revisions within the same page 
set-up, and in 1963 a "Revised Edition" (also 



referred to as the eighth edition) was pub- 
lished "in order to keep pace with the coinage 
of new phrases." 2 * 

In 1963 Desmond Flower appointed Ivor 
H. Evans editor of what was to be the 1970 
"Centenary Edition." Evans was recom- 
mended by S. H. Steinberg, Cassell's editor in 
charge of dictionaries, with whom Evans had 
worked on the Dictionary of British History 
(New York: StMartin's). 27 Evans, like Brewer, 
was a school teacher. He was educated at 
King's College, London, and the University of 
London Institute of Education. 

Evans completely revised the Dictionary. 
He discarded many entries that seemed inap- 
propriate to Brewer's original conception, es- 
pecially technical expressions and other terms 
for which one would be likely to consult a 
general dictionary or encyclopedia. 28 Many 
remaining entries were rewritten for accu- 
racy, clarity, and conciseness. Some 2,000 
new entries for recent and current phrases 
were added, and an improved system of cross- 
referencing was used. 

Ivor Evans has remained editor through 
two subsequent editions, the 1981 "Revised 
Edition" and the 1989 "Fourteenth Edition." 
His methods of collecting materials for the 
Dictionary are strikingly similar to those used 
by Brewer himself. "I have always read exten- 
sively and have been blessed with a good 
memory and always register anything that 
might be worth space in Brewer 's, either as an 
entry or a worthwhile quotation. I work on the 
principle of Captain Cuttle in Dickens's 
Dombey and Son, 'When found make a note 
of . . .'" He also picks up expressions from 
conversation, newspapers, periodicals, and 
correspondence. Each potential new entry is 
carefully checked in several sources and 
weighed as to its appropriateness for Brewer's, 
Entries that pass the test are placed in Evans' 
equivalent of Brewer's pigeonholes to await 
the next revision. 29 

American publishers have published edi- 
tions and printings of Brewer's parallel to 
those of Cassell Except for the title pages, 
these versions have been exactly the same as 




28 nTSTfNGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Cassell's. The firm of Claxton, Remsen and 
Heffelfinger was the American publisher into 
the 1880s, and Lippincott published the vol- 
ume through the 1923 edition. In 1952 George 
W. Jones added the Dictionary to Harper & 
Row's list of "staples," where it has more than 
met the criteria of being practical and infor- 
mative and having long-term sales potential. 30 
Various publishers have also found Brewer 's 
an attractive title to reprint. The 1894-95 edi- 
tion appeared as one of Henry Altemus* cheap 
reprint editions in 1898, and Avenel Books 
published a reprint of the same edition in 1978 
(both with a curious extraneous quotation 
mark in their printed transcriptions of Brewer' s 
handwritten preface that was in early printings 
of the 1894-95 edition as a facsimile). 

The Current Edition 

The 1989 edition of Brewer's is quite 
similar to that of 1870. Several small sections 
of the alphabet (100 entries) in the 1989 edi- 
tion were examined by this author, as were the 
same sections of the 1870 edition (97 entries). 
Fifty-six entries are in both editions, 37 of 
them largely the same in content and wording. 
Reflections of successive generations of schol- 
arship and changes in usage can be found by 
tracing such entries as "Stonehenge," "Barbe- 
cue," and those under "Oil" through various 
editions. The first edition contains 41 entries 
that have not survived into the "fourteenth" 
edition, e.g., "Hegemony," "New-fangled," 
"Papa," and "Swiss Family Robinson." The 
latest edition contains 44 entries not found in 
the first edition, e.g., "Blurb," "Heidelberg 
Man," "In the Swim," and "Switched on." 
The 1989 edition adds a 20-page index that 
will supplement the volume's cross-refer- 
ences. 



Its Enduring Value 

Why has a work that was so much a 
product of its age survived to serve eras that 
have been so different in characteristics and 



needs? The answer lies in its combination of 
two features that were pointed out by review- 
ers of the first edition. First, Brewer empha- 
sized practical reference usefulness. Through 
the years, the volume has helped a broad range 
of readers and writers, from the student or the 
self-educated reader who wished to under- 
stand literary allusions and to share the culture 
they represent, to the scholar or the well- 
educated writer who needed to verify a half- 
remembered phrase or its source. The Dictio- 
nary has been especially useful for phrases 
and adages that often get left out of general 
dictionaries and for lists of such phenomena as 
patron saints, national anthems, or dogs of 
note. Certainly, a key to the volume' s contin- 
ued usefulness has been Cassell's willingness 
to support revisions, so that users could find 
recently coined phrases, along with now ob- 
scure allusions found in literature from the 
past. 

The second feature that has accounted for 
Brewer 's remarkable success over the years is 
its delights for the browser. It is a disciplined 
user, indeed, who can look up one phrase in the 
Dictionary and put the book down immedi- 
ately. Curiosity is a timeless human trait, 
whether in the Victorian antiquarian or in the 
trivia buff of the 1990s, and Brewer's has 
always spoken to it. Librarians who have 
bought the book for reference collections, 
readers who have perused it in libraries, and 
those who have it on their shelves at home will 
admit, with only a little hesitation, that the 
book may have been bought for its reference 
value but that it is loved for its hours (or 
moments, however fleeting) of browsing en- 
joyment. 

To keep "Brewer's" from the fate of 
"Webster's"and"Roget's,"Cassell'shasreg- 
is tered the name as a British trademark. On the 
other hand, the publisher would like to take 
advantage of the widespread familiarity with 
"Brewer's" as a name, perhaps using it to 
enhance the acceptance of a similar reference 
tool for young people and another with a 
political emphasis. 11 Since the latest edition of 



BREWER 'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE 29 



the Dictionary has come out very recently, it 
is too early for the publisher to have formu- 
lated definite plans for yet another revision. 
However, allusions to fables of the past and 
the coinage of phrases will surely continue 



apace. Just as surely, Brewer '$ Dictionary of 
Phrase and Fable will continue to offer alms 
to readers (and listeners and viewers) of the 
twenty-first century who need help in sorting 
out the bric-a-brac of their past and present. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Giving the Deriva- 
tion, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, 
Allusions, and Words that have a Tale to Tell, by 
E. Cobham Brewer. London: Cassell, Petter, & 
Galpin, 1870. 976p. 

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Giving the Deriva- 
tion, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, 
Allusions, and Words that have a Tale to Tell, by 
E. CobhamBrewer. New Edition, Revised, Cor- 
rected, and Enlarged, to which is added A 
Concise Bibliography of English Literature. 
London: Cassell, 1895. l,440p. 

A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, by E. Cobham 
Brewer. New Edition. London: Cassell, 1923. 
l,157p. 



Brewer 's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Revised & 
Enlarged, London: Cassell, 1952. 97 7p. 

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Revised 
Edition. London: Cassell, 1963. 970p. 

Brewer 's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Centenary 
Edition, revised by Ivor H. Evans. London; 
Cassell, 1970. 1,1 75p. 

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Revised 
Edition, by Ivor H. Evans. London: Cassell, 
1981. l,213p. 

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Four- 
teenth edition, by Ivor H. Evans. London: Cassell, 
1989. l,220p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Neither primary nor secondary sources 
regarding E. Cobham Brewer and his Dictio- 
nary are plentiful. Most of the relevant Cassell 
archives were destroyed in the air raid that 
destroyed La Belle Sauvage in 1 94 1 . The only 
easily accessible biography is the "brief mem- 
oir" by his grandson, P. M. C. Hayman, that is 
part of the introductory material in the 1970 
Centenary Edition of the Dictionary. John 
Buchanan-Brown, former manager of 
Cassell' s Reference Department, has provided 
a useful introduction to the 1981 and 1989 
editions that places the work in its cultural 
context. Ivor H. Evans' editor's preface to the 
1970, 1981, and 1989 editions provides brief 
information on the history of Brewer 's and on 
his revisions. An understanding of John 
CasselPs background and activities in pub- 
lishing informational and educational materi- 
als for working-class people is important to 
understanding the cultural context of Brewer 's t 
and Nowell- Smith's book on CasselPs pub- 
lishing house will provide useful and interest- 



ing insights in this regard. Likewise, good 
treatments of education and reading in the 
Victorian era, such as those by Richard Altick, 
will provide context very helpful to under- 
standing Brewer and his works, 

Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A 
Social Histoiy of the Mass Reading Public 
1800-1900. Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1957, 

Buchanan-Brown, John. "Introduction." InBrewer 's 
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by Ivor 
H. Evans, ix-xvi, 14th ed. London: Cassell, 
1989. 

Collison, Robert, Encyclopedias: Their History 
Throughout the Ages. New York: Hafner, 1966. 

Hayman, P. M. C. "E. Cobham Brewer LL.D.: A 
Brief Memoir by His Grandson." In Brewer's 
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by Ivor 
H. Evans, v Li-xii. Centenary ed. London: Cassell, 
1970. 

McArthur, Tom. Worlds of Reference: Lexicogra- 
phy, Learning and Language from the Clay 
Tablet to the Computer. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1986. 

Nowell-Smith, Simon. The House of Cassell, 1848- 
1958. London: Cassell, 1958. 



30 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



NOTES 



I P.M.C. Hayman, "E. Cobham Brewer LL.D.: A 

Brief Memoir by His Grandson," in Brewer's 
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Centenary ed., 
ed. by Ivor H. Evans (London: Cassell, 1970), 
vii-xii. 

5 Simon Nowell-Smith, TheHouse of Cassell, 1848- 

1958 (London: Cassell, 1958), 36-49. 

'John Buchanan-Brown, "Introduction," in Brewer's 
Dictionary of Phrase andFable,14thp<i., ed. by 
IvorH. Evans (London: Cassell, 1989), xii. 

* Hayman, ix-x. 

s Ibid. 

6 E. Cobham Brewer, "Preface," in Dictionary of 

Phrase andFabk (London: Cassell, Petter, & 
Galpin, 1870), v-viii. 
7 Ibid. 

8 Ibid. 

9 Buchanan-Brown, xi-xii. 

10 Wi)liam A. Wheeler, An Explanatory and Pro- 
nouncing Dictionary of the Noted Names of 
Fiction (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), v- 
vi. 

II Henrietta Gerwig, CrowdVs Handbook for Read- 

ers and Writers (New York: Crowd 1, 1925), v. 

See, for example, entries for "Abigail" and 

"Abracadabra." 
"WillianiRose Benft, "Preface to the FirstBdition,'* 

in The Reader's Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (New 

York: Crowd 1, 1965), unpaged. 
""Selections from Notices of the Press," in Dictio- 
nary of Phrase andFabk, 3rd ed,by E. Cobham 

Brewer (London: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, 

1872), unpaged, 
"Review of D/cr/ofldry of Phrase andFable,London 

Quarterly andHotborn Review 86 (July 1896); 

389-90. 



15 Review of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and 

Fable, Booklist 86 (1 March 1990); 1380-81. 

16 B. Hunter Smeaton, Review of Brewer's Dictio- 

nary of Phrase and Fable, Library Journal 97 
(15 March 1972): 1002. 

17 "As They Brew . . . ," The Times Literary Supple- 

ment no. 3581 (16 October 1970): 7. 

18 Justin. Winsor, "Reference Books in English," 

Library Journal 1 (31 March 1877): 247-49. 

19 Wallace J. Bonk, Use of Basic Reference Sources 

in Libraries (Ann Arbor: University of Michi- 
gan, 1963), 116-28. 

20 John C. Larsen, "Titles Currently Studied in Hu- 

manities Courses," Journal of Education for 

Librarianship 10 (Ba\\ 1969): 120-28. 
21 E. Cobham Brewer, "Preface," in Dictionary of 

Phrase andFabk, New ed. (London: Cassell, 

1895), unpaged. 
a Ibid. 

M Buchanan-Brown, xv. 
24 Nowell-Srniih,243. 

25 Buchanan-Brown, xv. 

26 "Preface," in Rev. ed. (London: Cassell, 1963), v. 
11 Ivor H. Evans, letter to the author, 17 February, 

1990. 
28 Ivor H. Evans, "Editor's Preface," in Brewer's 

Dictionary of Phrase andFable, Centenary ed. 

(London: Cassell, 1970), v-vi. 
w Evans, letter to author, 17 February 1990. 
M Eugene Exman, The House of Harper (New York: 

Harper & Row, 1967), 240, 283. 
J1 Steven Cook, Assistant Editor, Reference, Cassell 

Publishers, Ltd., telephone conversation with 

author, 2 February, 1990. 



"The Indispensable Guide": The 
Chicago Manual of Style 



Richard D. DeBacher 



HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT 

"It is often thought of as "The Bible" in 
terms of editorial style; I don 't know an 
experienced editor who does not know it. " 
— Nancy N. Clemente, Managing Editor, 
Harvard University Press 

"We like it. It is well organized, well 
thought out. What else can I say after I've 
said, 'I love you'?" — Sophie Sorkin, 
Vice President and Director of Copy 
Editing, Simon & Schuster 1 

Editors and writers commonly make affec- 
tionate reference to The Chicago Manual of 
Style and often regard it with gospel-like rev- 
erence. In fact one review of the most recent 
edition bore the title, "Look-it-up heaven for 
the writer." 2 While the principal authors of 
that edition, Bruce Young and Catharine 
Seybold, find such remarks hyperbolic and 
somewhat embarrassing, few of their profes- 
sional colleagues would argue with Naomi 
Pascal, editor-in-chief of the University of 
Washington Press, who called it, "the indis- 
pensable guide for us scholarly publishers," 3 
or with Laurence Urdang, whose review in 
Verbatim concluded, "it must be conceded to 
be the most useful editorial tool available." 4 
The Chicago Manual quickly rose to its 
definitive status in North America shortly 
after publication of the first edition in 1906. 
Like the thirteenth edition, the first appeared 
as a revolution in printing technology was 
unfolding. Then as now, changes in the ways 



books were produced created a demand for 
new standards in the preparation of manu- 
scripts, the editing of text, and the setting of 
type. The Chicago Manual met this need and 
subsequent editions changed over the years as 
printing technology evolved further. Thus, as 
Mark Carroll observed in his review of the 
thirteenth edition, "This grand tool is, as it 
always has been since its first edition in 1906, 
reflective of change and adaptation of the 
publication and printing process." 5 

These same trends shaped the market for 
the Manual, and, over the years, the primary 
focus has shifted from the needs of typesetters 
and their proofreaders to those of authors and 
their editors. Whereas the first line under the 
title of the original edition read, "Being a 
Compilation of the Typographical Rules . . .," 
the line had evolved by the eleventh edition 
(1949) to read, "containing typographical and 
other rules for authors, printers, and publish- 
ers." The twelfth (1969) and the thirteenth 
(1 982) editions claim to serve, "Authors, Edi- 
tors, and Copywriters," and all reference to 
typesetting has vanished from the title page. 
In John Howell's words, the various edi- 
tions of the Chicago Manual reflect "the pro- 
cess by which the printer's manual evolved 
into the editor's and author's manual," 6 The 
Chicago Manual was not written to cover 
matters of style that are the province of other 
well known works such as The Elements of 
Style, 3rd ed., by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. 
White (New York: Macmillan, 1979) or the 






32 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



various prescriptive guides to grammatical 
usage. Rather, The Chicago Manual of Style 
covers "typographical style. . . < it tells you not 
how to say or write something, but how it 
should appear on the page." 7 According to 
Catharine Seybold, the Manual aims to serve 
editors and authors who need a reference tool 
that will 

help them decide what to capitalize, italicize, 
put in quotation marks; how to abbreviate all 
kinds of terms, to quote from other sources, to 
punctuate, to form plurals of numbers, names, 
etc., to compile and edit tables and indexes, to 
deal with footnotes and bibliographies and 
reference lists. . , . The accepted, and accept- 
able, ways of coping with these matters in 
good writing and good bookmaking, together 
with the University of Chicago Press prefer- 
ence where there w as an aUernati ve, had really 
always been chiefly what was meant by the 
word style in the title of the Manual. 8 

Today, most manuscripts are prepared 
with word processing software, and the 
author's "output" on magnetic floppy disks is 
frequently used in the copy editing process 
and to drive typesetting equipment. With desk- 
top publishing software, the same machine 
used to write a document can be used edit it 
and set it in type. Technology has blurred the 
line that once clearly separated the writing, 
editing, and typesetting functions. The next 
edition of The Chicago Manual of Style is sure 
to reflect the changes brought about by this 
continuing technological evolution. 

Early History of the Chicago 
Manual 

The history of The Chicago Manual of 
Style is intimately tied to the history of the 
University of Chicago Press, which, in turn, 
traces its origins to those of the University 
itself in 1892. 9 The founding President of the 
University of Chicago, WilliamRainey Harper, 
believed that the basic mission of his new 
university should include not only teaching 
and a strong emphasis on research, but the 
dissemination of the fruits of scholarship as 
well Thus, "From the time the University of 



Chicago opened its doors in 1 892, its press has 
been a department of the university. ... to 
carry the wisdom of the university beyond its 
own student body." 10 

The new university press was assigned a 
variety of tasks, including the publication of 
scholarly books and journals containing the 
research results of the university's faculty as 
well as that of other researchers. To accom- 
plish the challenging printing assignments, 
Newman Miller, who served as the director of 
the Press from 1 900 to 1 9 19, aimed to employ 
the new technology that was effecting a revo- 
lution in typesetting at the end of the nine- 
teenth century. Miller persuaded the Univer- 
sity Board of Trustees of the economic advan- 
tage of the Mergenthaler Linotype and the 
Lanston Monotype composing machines. 

Faced not only with mastering these new 
machines but with using them to publish schol- 
arly works in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, 
and Ethiopic, as well as technical and scien- 
tific research, the printing department of the 
Press established a copy editing and proof- 
reading section under the direction of Louis 
Warming. As Seybold recounts it: 

Professors brought their handwritten manu- 
scripts directly to the compositors, who did 
their best to decipher them and set them in an 
acceptable form. Rough proofs from this op- 
eration were turned over to a growing band of 
proofreaders, referred to as the 'brainery' by 
the typesetters because they endeavored to 
correct not only typographical errors but sty- 
listic inconsistencies and even the grammati- 
cal lapses of the distinguished authors. To 
these hard-working souls, it inevitably be- 
came apparent that some guidelines were 
needed in their business. So, true to the pio- 
neer spirit of the new university growing 
around them, they drew up their own 'style 
sheet' with a little help from interested mem- 
bers of the English department and others. 
This was printed in a small pamphlet and 
distributed to the professorial journal editors 
and others in the university community." 11 

This small pamphlet, first produced in 
1901, became the seed from which the first 
edition of The Chicago Manual of 'Style would 
grow. Newman Miller perceived both the edi- 



THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE 33 



torial and economic potential of the style sheet 
and urged the governing board of the Press to 
approve its issuance as a regular Press publi- 
cation: 

It is recommended by the Publication Com- 
mittee that this pamphlet be issued as a regular 

publication of the Press It is believed . . . 

that the work will be valuable to many persons 
not connected with the University, and in 
order to take it out of the class of documents 
which are usually given away it has been 
thought wise to put a price upon it and en- 
deavor to sell it through general trade chan- 
nels, without special promotional efforts be- 
ing put upon it." 12 



The First Edition of the Manual 

Accordingly, in 1906, the Press issued a 
200-page book with a two-color title page 
which read, "MANUAL OF STYLE. Being a 
compilation of the typographical rules in force 
at the University of Chicago Press, to which 
are appended SPECIMENS OF TYPES IN 
USE." Some 80 pages of this first Manual 
cover type specimens and elaborate orna- 
ments. Seventy-five pages are devoted to Rules 
of Composition; 12 pages to technical terms; 
and 10 pages to an appendix offering what are 
called "Hints." The latter begin assertively, 
"Manuscripts should be either typewritten or 
in a perfectly clear handwriting. The former is 
preferable." To proofreaders it advises, "The 
Manual of Style is primarily meant for you. 
Learn its rules by heart." To copyholders 
(those who read aloud to proofreaders the 
material being checked) it counsels, "culti- 
vate a low, soft, clear, reading voice." 

The following passage from the first 
Manual, which Seybold ascribes to Louis 
Warming, is quoted in full in the preface to the 
thirteenth edition: 

"Rules and regulations such as these . . . 
cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock- 
ribbed law. They . . . must be applied with a 
certain degree of elasticity. . . . Throughout 
this book it is assumed that no regulation 
contained therein is absolutely inviolable. 
Wherever the peculiar nature of the subject- 



matter, the desirability of throwing into relief 
a certain part of the argument, the reasonable 
preference of a writer or a typographical con- 
tingency suggests a deviation, such deviation 
may legitimately be made. Each case of this 
character must largely be decided upon its 
own merits. Generally it may be stated that, 
where no question of good taste or good logic 
is involved, deference should be shown to the 
expressed wishes of the author." 13 



Later Editions 

The Manual's early success was noted by 
the preface to the second edition (191 0): "The 
merit of the Manual is best evidenced by its 
very general adoption and use in editorial 
offices and proofrooms throughout the United 
States and Canada." 1 ' 1 A third edition was 
published a year later, and its preface by 
Newman Miller attributed the need for still 
further revision of the manual in part to "the 
recent development of the profession of li- 
brarian, with the attendant uniformity of prac- 
tice recommended by the national association 
of librarians, and the added experience result- 
ing from a daily application of these rules to a 
very varied list of publications." 15 

The second, third, and fourth (1914) edi- 
tions of the Manual were produced under the 
guidance of John A. Powell, successor to 
Warming as chief proofreader. The stature of 
this position is suggested by Powell's back- 
ground. A world traveler, he held a degree 
from the University of London and a Ph.D. 
from the University of Berlin, 

The fifth (1917), sixth (1919), and sev- 
enth (1920) editions of the Manual were pro- 
duced under the editorial guidance of Powell's 
successors including Lilian E. Bridgen. 
Seybold notes "this frequency of new editions 
in the early days of the Press was due largely 
to additions of new typefaces by the printing 
department." 16 The seventh edition, says 
Seybold, "shows no vast difference from the 
third. Somewhere, however the article "A" 
was added before the title: 'A MANUAL OF 
STYLE."" 7 



34 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Commercial Viability 

Press memoranda and correspondence 
now stored in the Special Collections of 
Regenstein Library at the University of Chi- 
cago shed light on the commercial viability of 
the early editions of the Manual. For instance, 
before the fourth edition was issued in 1 9 14, 
Newman Miller exchanged a series of memos 
with Gordon Laing, for many years general 
editor of the Press, about whether to publish 
the Manual in cloth, paperback, or both, 

On November 6, 1913, Miller wrote to 
Laing, "I believe that we ought to work toward 
a single edition of the Manual of Style to be put 

out in cloth I am disposed to think it will 

sell just as well in cloth although the paper 
edition has sold rather better in the past." 
Laing responded in pencil on Miller's typed 
memo, "The figures show that the demand is 
for the paper edition. On the face of it, it seems 
tomethatitwouldbe wise to abandon the cloth 
edition." Miller prevailed, and in a directive 
to Laing datedNovember 19, 1913, heordered 
the new revision to be issued in a single 
clothbound edition. Miller then directedLaing 
to revise the text "carefully ... so that we can 
now look upon it as final for the next few 
years, at least." 18 

Miller* s concerns about the cost of updat- 
ing the Manual are explained in other Press 
documents that detail the several purposes for 
which the book was being used. Figure 1 
reproduces the data presented on a document 
dated April 26, 1917, relating to the proposed 
fifth edition. 

Despite its widespread acceptance, sales 
revenue for the Manual (called "returns" in 
Figure 1) failed to cover production costs for 
any edition but the fourth. Still, the Manual 
served an important commercial and public 
relations purpose for the Press, a function 
Miller felt compelled to explain to T.E. 
Donnelly, chair of the subcommittee of the 
University of Chicago's Board of Trustees 
that oversaw Press operations, as he sought 
that body's approval for a new edition: 



This title has been an evolution, at first a 
convenience to the office and later developing 
into a publicity asset of considerable impor- 
tance. It has finally come to have a steady sale 
through our trade channels, and it is only 
justice to those who have contributed to the 
compilation of the book to say that in many 
quarters it is looked upon as an authority in 
matters of style. . . . 

Donnelly urged Miller to increase the 
price to $2. Miller resisted, thinking $1 .50 to 
be the price ceiling. Donnelly gave in and 
approved the publication of 1,000 copies of 
the fifth edition with a list price of $1.50, 
Miller hoped the book could be made self- 
sustaining and that "future corrections will not 
be heavy," but these hopes seemed lost when 
he wrote to the Board on September 8, 1920: 

It has always been considered as more or less 
of a promotion scheme, andmany copies have 
been and still are given away to authors and 
editors of our books and journals. The nature 
of the book of course requires a constant 
revision, and the manufacturing cost of each 
impression is therefore considerably above 
that of an average book. For both of these 
reasons it has never been a paying book. 



The Eighth and Ninth Editions 

The birth of the eighth edition of 1925 , the 
most complete revision of the Manual to date 
was notto be an easy one. Laing's memo to the 
file summarizes a conference held in January 
1 924 at which it was decided that David H. 
Stevens of the English department would be 
' 'asked to revise the Manual of Style from the 
academic point of view, andthatMr. Kittredge 
of the Donnelley Company should be requested 
to make suggestions on the typographic part of 
the book." From the new edition, an abridg- 
ment was to be produced, "to consist of a small 
pamphlet of from 32-64 pages which we can 
send to authors whose books we are publish- 
ing." 

Stevens finished his work on August 26, 
1 924, and asked for $400 for his services, 
Laing and Donald P. Bean, manager of the 
Publication Department, had expected to pay 



THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE 35 











April 26, 1917 






Manualof Style 








First 


Second 


Third 


Fourth 


Published 


Edition 


Edition 


.Edition 


Edition 


Nov. 1906 


Mar. 1910 


Dec. 1911 


Feb. 1914 


No. Produced 










Paper 


1002 


999 


1026 


- 


Cloth 


- 


- 


460 


1024 


Sales 


579 


742 


1144 


955 


Free 


423 


257 


223 


32 


On hand 


- 


- 


119 


37 


Cost 


$583.50 


$848.50 


$1159.20 


$563.01 


Est. Returns 


415.30 


519.40 


800.00 


694.40 


Total cost--$3, 154.21 








" Est. Ret. 


-$2,429.10 












Proposed Fifth Edition 




Number of Copies-1000 








Estimated cost- 


-Corrections-- 
Printing- 


$350.00 

360.00 

$710.00 






Estimated returns- 


600.00 







Figure 1 . 
Replication of 1917 Internal Document Regarding Sales Figures And Projections for the Manual 



from $50 to $100, and Bean's memo to Laing 
of August 29, 1924, calls the invoice "prepos- 
terous." Worse, Stevens' work was not ac- 
ceptable and had to be rewritten, largely by 
Jessie D. Whittern, head of the proofroom. 
Ultimately, Laing offered Stevens $100 and a 
$.20 per copy royalty on the first 2,000 copies 
sold. Stevens accepted. 

According to Seybold, the design of the 
eighth edition was the joint effort of designer 
Robert O. Ballou and A.C. McFarland, man- 
ager of the Printing Department. It is not clear 
whether the renowned Mr. Kittredge of the 
Donnelley Company contributed to the effort. 
Seybold states that the design was "noticed 
with approval by Publishers ' Weekly, which 
. . . mistakenly credited R.R. Donnelley 's 
typographer for the improvement." 19 

The preface to the eighth edition specified 
the intended users as "authors, editors, adver- 
tising men, printers, proofreaders, and pub- 
lishers." 20 The new Manual contained a sec- 
tion on selecting typography and relating the 



parts (preliminaries, text, back matter, run- 
ning heads, page numbers, etc.) which to- 
gether create ''the personality of a book." The 
rules for composition offered instructions on 
dealing with legends and captions, mathemati- 
cal formulas, and complex indexes. The 
"Hints" moved from the appendix to the text, 
comprising 18 pages, 

Seybold detects and laments "a new, self- 
assured air about the instructions addressed to 
authors and other ignorant readers." For in- 
stance, the author is admonished that in sub- 
mitting copy, "he may ordinarily rely on the 
judgment of his publisher with regard to typo- 
graphical style. Vexation and delay are the 
usual results of interference with one who is a 
specialist in book-making " 2I Manuscripts sub- 
mitted "in a perfectly clear hand" are still 
acceptable, although typewritten manuscripts 
are "preferable for many reasons." Handwrit- 
ten manuscripts were not forbidden altogether 
until the eleventh edition. 



36 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



The ninth edition (1927) was unchanged 
save for the addition of ten pages of type 
specimens. Discussion of a tenth edition ap- 
peared in Press documents as early as 1 935. A 
Professor David Gustafson of the Carnegie 
Institute of Technology Department of Print- 
ing hoped to adopt an updated Manual for his 
classes, By April of that year, however, Laing 
wrote regretfully, that "financial conditions 
prevent our revising the book at present." The 
next year, Professor Gregory Paine of the 
English departmentof the University of North 
Carolina wrote to the Press on the letterhead of 
the Modern Language Association, offering a 
number of suggestions for the next edition. 
Hisletterwas addressed to Mary D. Alexander, 
since 1925 head of the proofroom and the 
principal force behind both the tenth and the 
eleventh editions. 

Paine recommended (1) an expanded 
chapter on footnotes; (2) a separate chapter on 
bibliographies; (3) a revised list of foreign 
words recognizing the "change from italics to 
roman and the omission of accents"; and (4) a 
less "confusing" general index, eliminating 
"the double references to page and paragraph 
numbers." Finally, he added, "I wish that you 
could publish a book that could sell for about 
two dollars so that I could use in [it] freely as 
a textbook. Why not omit Specimens of Type, 
pages 221-361? These pages are of use only 
to printers. . . . The Manual will not be pur- 
chased by students or writers at three-fifty a 
copy." 

The Tenth and Eleventh Editions 

Alexander, whose forceful style and strong 
personality contributed significantly to the 
corporate culture of the Press for 50 years, 
chose not to incorporate all of Paine 's sugges- 
tions. Thetenthedition(1937) included greatly 
expanded "Rules for Preparation of Copy," a 
new chapter on bibliography, and a list of 
proper forms for addressing prominent per- 
sons. By the eleventh edition (1949), a largely 
revised "Hints" section reflected Alexander's 



touch and, according to Seybold, "the no- 
nonsense tone has become a bit sharper," 
Authors were told: 

No amount of careful preparation of a dull 
manuscript will disguise its basic shortcom- 
ings. But even a brilliant piece of writing will 
have difficulty finding a publisher if the au- 
thor has neglected to dress his manuscript 
decently. On the assumption that the author 
has produced something worth printing, the 
suggestions offered here might well be en- 
titled "How to Win a Publisher." 22 

Authors are also admonished to keep their 
footnotes to a minimum because "footnotes 
add nothing to the appearance of the printed 
page." Furthermore, they were told to avoid 
changes in their proofs "as such changes are 
expensive. Remember, to make a change in 
manuscript requires only a few strokes of the 
pen; to make a change in proofs, a skilled 
operator must be employed." 23 

In her summary remarks on the eighth 
through the eleventh editions, Seybold ob- 
serves and regrets a growing tendency to 
regard the rules for composition promulgated 
by the University of Chicago Press as irrevo- 
cable, as the only sensible way, and, contrary 
to the disclaimer still in the preface, as now 
indeed "endowed with the fixity of unchang- 
ing law." To be sure, this attitude was un- 
doubtedly encouraged by users of tho Manual 
who followed its every dictate and over the 
years turned to the Press for answers to ques- 
tions not covered in its pages. Its sometimes 
schoolmarmish tone aside, however, this elev- 
enth Manual was a most useful reference tool, 
and it served the Press and its wider audience 
for a longer period than had any of its prede- 
cessors. 



"24 



The Modern Manual 

The next major revision of the Manual 
was undertaken after important changes in the 
organization and structure of the Press had 
been made in the 1950s, a period of rapid 
expansion under then director Roger Shugg. 
At the outset of this period, the Printing De- 



THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE 37 



partment of the University, which was no 
longer a part of the Press, was still copy 
editing, designing, and producing most of the 
books and journals published by the Press. 
Shugg created a new manuscript editing de- 
partment within the Press in 1956 and added a 
design and production department two years 
later. 

The new organizational scheme was not 
implemented without resistance or difficulty. 
Seybold witnessed the transition, having been 
hired in 1956 as the first "chief manuscript 
editor" within the Press: 

The new manuscript editors, in Shugg's plan, 
were to go beyond the traditional "mechani- 
cal" kind of editing — such as regularizing 
spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and the 
like — to perform "substantive editing where 
desirable and to work with authors to improve 
the quality and clarity of the Press books." 
They also were not to be rigidly bound by the 
strictures of the printing department's widely 
used Manual of Style ... To the proofreaders 
on the fourth floor such a lax approach would 
be nothing short of blasphemous." 25 

Understandably, "a new edition of the 
Manual more suitable to the current state of 
affairs was a subject frequently discussed by 
the staff ,26 during this period. Finally, in 1968, 
the new director of the Press, Morris Philipson, 
suggested that Seybold, then senior manu- 
script editor, and Bruce Young, the managing 
editor, take time off to produce a new edition 
of the Manual, three months being thought 
sufficient for the task. "Some eight grueling 
months later," notes Seybold, "we produced a 
manuscript." 27 

John Grossman, another Press manuscript 
editor, revised the chapter on punctuation; 
another staff editor wrote a new chapter on 
citing public documents. Young and Seybold 
divided the rest of the work between them, 
aiming to make the twelfth edition "more 
relevant to the needs of authors and editors 
than to those of typographers and printers." 28 
The new edition was designed by Cameron 
Poulter, head of the design and production 
department. 



The heart of the old Manual, what had 
been called Rules for Composition in the first 
ten editions and Rules for Preparation of Copy 
in the eleventh, was now simply called "Style," 
by which was meant "the accepted and accept- 
able ways of coping with these [editorial] 
matters in good writing and good bookmak- 
ing, together with the University of Chicago 
Press preference where there was an alterna- 
tive^ 29 

Other parts were completely revised or 
omitted altogether, including, at last, the type 
specimens, which had occupied nearly half 
the pages of the preceding edition. With some 
regret Young and Seybold abolished the 
"Hints" section and incorporated these tips 
into an expanded section called "Bookmak- 
ing." It explained what went into the various 
parts of a book and how to assemble them, the 
preparation of copy for the printer, and au- 
thors' and publishers' responsibilities regard- 
ing copyright. 

Now truly a success both critically and 
commercially, the first printing of 20,000 cop- 
ies of the twelfth edition sold out before pub- 
lication. From its appearance in January 1969 
through August 1982, thisedition sold 153,501 
copies, a sum nearly equal to the combined 
sales of the first eleven editions. 30 

Work on the thirteenth edition began in 
1975 when Young and Seybold sent a ques- 
tionnaire to some 75 professional colleagues, 
inviting their suggestions for the new work. 
To their surprise, 129 questionnaires were 
returned, a number of recipients having cop- 
ied the documentto permit eager colleagues to 
contribute to the effort. 

Challenges for the Editors 

A variety of important developments, le- 
gal, cultural, and technological, came to bear 
on this edition. First, changes in the federal 
copyright regulations had been adopted in 
1 978 and needed to be interpreted in language 
understandable to authors and editors. 



^SB2i-£rJi J "T 



38 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Second, the women's movement had called 
attention to the deleterious effects of sexist 
language. Young and Seybold were inclined 
to be cautious in responding to the emerging 
trend, and, more than a year before the new 
edition appeared, they stated in a published 
article that they would be "only giving a nod 
to the continuing controversy over sexist lan- 
guage: A footnote will explain that the pro- 
noun 'he' will be used in the generic sense 
throughout the guide." 31 Once word of their 
decision spread, the outcry convinced Seybold 
to make a more radical change: "The tradi- 
tional single generic pronoun in the English 
language could no longer safely be used to 
refer to an author or an editor of either sex. 
And the twelfth edition of the Manual suddently 
was perceived to be filled with this pronoun. I 
persuaded my male colleague that we must 
' desex' our new text altogether or risk the dire 
consequences of offending more than half our 
readers. How? Well, we used a lot of plu- 
rals." 32 

Finally, typesetting and printing methods 
were once again changing rapidly, and the 
new Manual had to take these developments 
into account. The old "hot lead" typesetters 
were being replaced by phototypesetting and 
computer-driven alternatives. Authors were 
beginning to use stand-alone word processors 
or campus computers to produce machine- 
readable manuscripts on magnetic tape or 
floppy disks. While fhepersonal computer did 
not yet play an important role in the revolu- 
tion, its impact soon was to explode upon the 
scene. These still emerging trends held pro- 
found implications for writers, editors, and 
publishers. 

It was, perhaps, impossible in the late 
1970s and early 1980s to anticipate the needs 
of the microcomputer age. Still, at least one 
otherwise admiring reviewer of the thirteenth 
edition, Laurence Urdang, criticized the new 
editior for its lean coverage of the new tech- 
nology: 

There is a great deal more to be said about 
automatic typesetting than is even suggested 
in the Chicago Manual .... It is not my 



intention to write that segment of the Style 
Manual here, only to point out that the cover- 
age given is niggardly, especially when one 
considers that many of those functions for- 
merly the provine of the compositor are now 
becoming the responsibility of the editor and 
often of the author." 33 

The thirteenth edition, greatly expanded 
and completely revised in nearly every area, 
now included a new chapter by Bruce Young 
on the history and current methods of compo- 
sition, printing, and binding. Seybold's efforts 
focused on revising and amplifying the mate- 
rial on documentation of scholarly works. The 
new edition was published in August 1982 in 
a volume of 748 pages, 102 more than its 
predecessor. It has broken all previous sales 
records, having sold 203,000 copies to date, 
and it continues to sell more copies each year. 

Not long thereafter, work began on an 
altogether new guide to set standards for au- 
thors who employed microcomputers and other 
electronic systems in preparing manuscripts 
for publication. The Chicago Guide to Pre- 
paring Electronic Manuscripts was prepared 
under the direction of Jennie Lightner, senior 
manuscript editor, andPamely Pokorney, then 
senior production controller. The Guide was 
published in 1987, addressing the need Urdang 
had cited in his review of the thirteenth edition 
of the Manual In their preface, Lightner and 
Pokorney proclaim: "Our focus is on manu- 
script preparation — how it should be done 
when computers are used — and on the proce- 
dures that should be followed by author and 
publisher so that the author's electronic me- 
dium can be used for typesetting." 34 Like the 
Manual, the new Guide evolved from "guide- 
lines for authors of electronic manuscripts that 
were distributed to Press authors," which were 
subsequently expanded for publication. 15 

Present and Future 

Later, the Manual was selected to be one 
of the reference books published on CD-ROM 
as an element in Microsoft's revolutionary 
Bookshelf product. Used in conjunction witha 



THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE 39 



word processing program, Bookshelf 'permits 
its users to conduct onscreen look-ups in the 
text of the Manual as they write. It does not 
automatically proofread, edit, or stylize a 
manuscript, but hints of such capabilities are 
on the horizon, and some programs now on the 
market exhibit extraordinary powers. 

For instance, Oberson Resources' "Note- 
book II Plus" textual data and bibliographic 
reference system can, among other things, 
"generate bibliographies and reference lists, 
automatically, in any of over 650 publishing 
styles." The Modern Language Association 
now offers Editor which it calls a program for 
"checking usage, mechanics, vocabulary, and 
structure." As such powerful writing tools 
emerge to serve scholarly writers, the author- 
editor relationship is sure to continue evolv- 
ing. 

Still, suitable organizations need to re- 
view, revise, and devise appropriate standards 
for the preparation of manuscripts, electronic 
or otherwise, if research results and other 



scholarly work are to be communicated clearly 
and effectively. The Chicago Manual of Style 
will likely retain its place as "indespensable 
guide" to such standards for the forseeable 
future. 

As this essay is written, work has begun 
on a fourteenth edition of the Manual. It will 
be prepared by John Grossman, now manag- 
ing editor of the Press. He has compressed the 
three chapters on documentation to two, The 
chapter on rights and permissions will be 
updated to cover new rulings of the past de- 
cade. The chapter on indexing will make more 
reference to computer tools. More detailed 
coverage of electronic manuscripts will be 
offered in the next edition of the Chicago 
Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts. 
A publication date for the fourteenth edition of 
The Chicago Manual of Style has not yet been 
announced, but its appearance is sure to be 
greeted with gratitude by thousands of loyal 
users. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Manual of Style. Chicago: University of Chicago 

Press, 1906. 20 lp. 
Manual of Style. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1910. 115p. 
Manual of Style. 3rd ed, Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1911. 11 8p. 
Manual of Style. 4th ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1914. 141p. 
Manual of Style. 5th ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1917. 300p. 
Manual of Style. 6th ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1919. 292p. 
Manual of Style. 7th ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1920. 300p. 



Manual of Style. 8th ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1925. 39 lp. 
Manual of Style. 9th ed. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1927. 400p. 
A Manual of Style. 1 Oth ed. Chicago: The University 

of Chicago Press, 1937. 394p. 
A Manual of Style. 1 1 th ed. Chicago: The University 

of Chicago Press, 1949. 498p. 
A Manual of Style. 12th ed., rev. Chicago: The 

University of Chicago Press, 1969. 546p. 
The Chicago Manual of Style. 13th ed., rev. and 

expanded. Chicago: The University of Chicago 

Press, 1982. 738p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Aside from reviews, the secondary litera- 
ture on the Manual is not extensive. Catharine 
Seybold, coauthor of the twelfth and thir- 
teenth editions, has published one invaluable 
article, cited below. She subsequently up- 
dated and revised that work for an unpub- 
lished speech, a copy of which she provided to 



this chapter's author. Additional valuable in- 
formation on the history of the Manual can be 
found in her unpublished history of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press to 1956, a copy of 
which is available in the Special Collections 
Department of Regenstein Library. Stacy 
Michelle's "The Book of Style," published in 



40 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



a Chicago weekly newspaper, the Reader, is 
well worth reading, however back issues of 
that paper are not readily available outside 
Chicago. 

Pascal, Naomi B. "Chicago's Thirteenth." Scholarly 

Publishing 13 (October, 1982): 87-95. 
Seybold, Catharine. "A Brief History of TheChicago 

Manual of Style" Scholarly Publishing 14 

(February, 1983): 163-77. 
•. "History of the Manual of Style through its 

13th Edition," Unpublished speech (1984). 

Courtesy of the author. 



-. "The University of Chicago Press: A Brief 

History, 1891-1965." Unpublished manuscript 
available in Special Collections, Regenstein 
Library, University of Chicago, 1983. 

Stacy, Michelle. "The Book of Style." Reader 12 
(November 12, 1982): 1-10. 

Trett, GaraLd. "Two Stylebooks: An Editor's View; 
or, The Outlook in the Trenches." Review 6 
(1984): 202-34. 



NOTES 



I Larry Green, " 'Bible' of Editorial Style—Now 77 

Years Old — Is Last Word on Words," Los Angeles 
Times, 18 February 1983. 
3 Henry Kisor, "Look-It-Up Heaven for the Writer," 
Chicago Sun Times Book Week, 3 April 1988. 

3 Naomi B. Pascal, "Chicago's Thirteenth," Scholarly 

Publishing 14 (October 1982): 87. 

4 Laurence Urdang, review of The Chicago Manual of 

Style, 13th ed., Verbatim 9 (Autumn 1982). 

s Mark Carroll, Letter of the Society for Scholarly Pub- 
lishing 5 (1983). 

* John Bruce Howell, Style Manuals of the English- 
Speaking World: A Guide (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 
1983), xi. 

7 Catharine Seybold, "A Brief History of The Chicago 

Manual of Style, " Scholarly Publishing 14 (Febru- 
ary 1983): 172. 

8 Catharine Seybold, "History of the Manual of Style 

through its 13th Edition," unpublished speech, 
1984, courtesy of the author, 1 1, 

9 Catharine Seybold, "The University of Chicago Press: 

A Brief History, 1891-1965," unpublished paper, 
Special Collections, Regenstein Library, Univer- 
sity of Chicago, 

10 Seybold, "History of the Manual of Style through its 

13th Edition," 1. 

II Ibid., 3. 

12 Ibid., 4-5. 

13 The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. rev. and 

expanded (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
1982}, viii. 

14 Manual of Style, 2nd ed, (Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1910). 

15 Manual of Style, 3rd ed. (Chicago; University of 

Chicago Press, 1911). 



16 Seybold, "The University of Chicago Press: A Brief 

History, 1891-1965," 57. 

17 Seybold, "A Brief History of The Chicago Manual of 

Style," 166. 

18 Memoranda and correspondence cited from this period 

of the Press are available in the Special Collections 
of Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. 
" Seybold, "The University of Chicago Press: A Brief 
History, 1891-1965," 80. 

20 Seybold, "History of the Manual of Style through its 

13th Edition," 7. 

21 Ibid., 7. 

22 Ibid., 8. 

23 A Manual of Style, 10th ed. (Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1937). 

24 Seybold, "History of the Manual of Style through its 

13th Edition," 9. 

25 Seybold, "The University of Chicago Press: A Brief 

History, 1891-1965," 146-47, 
" Seybold, "History of the Manual of Style through its 

13th Edition," 10. 
71 Ibid. 

28 Ibid,, 10-11. 

29 Ibid., 1 1 
3(5 Ibid., 13. 

31 Rosalynne Harty, "Setting the Style for Publishers," 

Chicago Tribune Book World, 4 May 1980. 

32 Seybold, "History of the Manual of Style through the 

13th Edition," 14. 

33 Urdang. 

34 Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts 

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), x. 

35 Ibid., x. 



E3S39! 



The "Instinctive Grammatical 

Moralizer": H. W. Fowler and His 

Dictionary of Modern English Usage 



William A. McHugh 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

H.W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English 
Usage has long been regarded as the final 
authority for writers seeking guidance on the 
questions they inevitably face in their work, 
from the proper use of a particular word to the 
way out of an awkward construction. Often 
cited as MEU, or simply as Fowler, the book 
has had its legion of admirers. Harold Ross, 
founder and long-time editor of the New Yorker, 
held it in high regard. ' Evelyn Waugh admon- 
ished young writers to keep the book at their 
elbow. 2 Winston Churchill, irritated at the 
misuse of a particular word by his director of 
military operations, asked him "Why must 
you write 'intensive' here? 'Intense' is the 
right word. You should read Fowler's Modern 
English Usage on the use of the two words." 1 
And T.S. Eliot, reviewing the book in 1927, 
mirrored the sentiments of many later devo- 
tees when he wrote: "As for Mr. Fowler's 
Dictionary of Modern English Usage, every 
person who wishes to write ought to read in it 
(for it is inexhaustible) for a quarter of an hour 
every night before going to bed." 4 

Few reference books so much reflect the 
character of their creator as does the Dictio- 
nary of Modern English Usage. Fowler has 
been described as "one of those eccentrics 
who seem to be a special product of En- 
gland — not the wild surrealist eccentrics, but 



the logical eccentrics, who decide exactly 
what to do in a large number of situations, 
[and] do it with relentless consistency." 5 
Fowler had a strong sense of duty, and much 
of the authority of the book derives from his 
sense of morality and propriety , which quickly 
becomes evident to the reader. Critic Marie 
Borroff has noted that 

to read Fowler is to be made vividly, indeed 
uncomfortably, aware of the morality of us- 
age. . . . For Fowler, the writing of clear, 
expressive English is a battle, and the inner 
strength and courage of the good soldier are 
signified by the ungrudging acceptance of 
discipline in matters of external appearance. 
Fowler zeros in on the 'slipshod,' the 'slov- 
enly,' the 'untidy' in language; he takes us to 
task for being lazy, childishly vain, or weak. 6 



Fowler's Early Life 

On the surface, though, there is little in 
Fowler's early life to suggest that he would 
become, as he has been called, the "arbiter of 
the entire English language," 7 Henry W. 
Fowler 8 was born in 1 858, the son of a school- 
master and the eldest of eight children. He was 
educated at Rugby and at Balliol College, 
Oxford, though his record at Balliol showed 
no great distinction. The first part of his adult 
life was spent as a schoolmaster in British 
public schools, for 17 years at Sedbergh in 
Yorkshire. At Sedbergh Fowler was known as 



42 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



"Joey Stinker" because he always smelled of 
tobacco. Fowler was a reserved man, a quality 
thatdoesnotalwaysmakeforapopular teacher. 
One of his students wrote of him: 

I don't think I or any one else in the form ever 
got through his shell to know him as a human 
being. I for one respected him immensely, but 
in those days I should have said he lacked 
humanity, ... On the whole, I think his defects 
as a schoolmaster all arose from shyness, 
coupled with his great fastidiousness (moral 
andinteLlectual)andsomethingintheSedbergh 
atmosphere that kept a barrier between boys 
and masters. I used to think thatFowler lacked 
humanity, and it was only ... in later years that 
I learned that this was not so, 9 

Fowler's moral fastidiousness led him to 
leave Sedbergh in 1899. He had been in line 
for a position as house master, but the position 
included, preparing boys for confirmation in 
the Church of England. Fowler was an agnos- 
tic and did not feel he could fulfill this duty in 
good conscience; the headmaster, H.G. Hart, 
did not feel he could remove this duty from the 
position. Though the two remained friends, 
neither would modify his position. Fowler left 
behind "a name for Spartan discipline and 
omniscience." 10 

Fowler then moved to London to begin a 
literary career, relying on the modest income 
of 1 20 pounds a year from an inheritance. "I'm 
not going to do anything useful again," he 
wrote to a friend. 11 He published a few ar- 
ticles, as well as three books of essays at his 
own expense, but these won him little success. 
After a few years he moved to the island of 
Guernsey, to a small cottage near that of his 
brother Frank G, Fowler, who raised tomatoes 
there. The two then began their productive 
literary partnership with a translation of the 
Greek poet Lucian. This translation in turn 
began the authors' long association with the 
Oxford University Press, publisher of the vol- 
ume. 



The King's English 

The brothers next began work on a manual 
for writers which would emphasize the com- 



mon blunders and infelicities found in writing, 
particularly journalistic writing; the book was 
to be copiously illustrated with examples of 
bad writing. The King's English (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1906) is often seen merely as 
a precursor to the Dictionary of Modern En- 
glish Usage, but it is an important book in its 
own right, and has continued in print to this 
day. Its arrangement as a handbook, with 
chapters on various aspects of writing, often 
makes it the easier book in which to find an 
extended discussion of a topic. The book's 
appeal was very much beyond the "sixth form 
boys and journalists" its authors supposed it 
would appeal to; "mature writers found parts 
of it difficult, and parts perverse, but for 
anybody who had ever tried to putpen to paper 
it was either an indispensable guide or a threat 
to mental health. . . . The only reassuring 
aspect of the book was the abundant evidence 
it provided that everybody made mistakes." 12 
And as the Times noted in its obituary of H.W. 
Fowler, it "took the world by storm." 13 

Lexicographic Projects 

The brothers' next project was the Con- 
cise Oxford Dictionary of Current English 
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), a one vol- 
ume dictionary drawn insofar as possible from 
the Oxford English Dictionary, since only the 
A-S volumes were then published. The last 
part of the COD was based on other sources, 
for the brothers were working in seclusion in 
Guernsey, and had no contact with the OED 
staff in Oxford. This was the first of their 
lexicographical projects, and the writing of 
dictionaries was a very congenial and suc- 
cessful enterprise for the brothers. The writing 
of brief and precise definitions is not a com- 
mon skill, and is one that the COD reveals in 
abundance. This dictionary was published in 
1 9 1 1 ; the brothers then began working on an 
even briefer dictionary, which was to become 
the Pocket Oxford Dictionary}* 

In 1908, at the age of 50, Henry married 
a nurse a few years his junior. The marriage 



FOWLER'S DICTIONARY OF MODEEN ENGLISH USAGE 43 



was an unusually happy one, though his wife 
was as outgoing and unscholarly as he was 
scholarly and reclusive. Fowler characteristi- 
cally chose to abandon this increasingly suc- 
cessful and contented life when he felt duty 
obliged him to do so. Henry had been some- 
thing of a pacifist, and the outbreak of World 
War I took him by surprise. Nonetheless, 
shocked by the invasion of Belgium, he began 
first to preach recruitment, and then to feel that 
it was not fair for him to urge others to a 
sacrifice he was not willing to make himself. 
He was 57 at the time, but physically the equal 
of a much younger man. Since his days at 
Sedbergh he had begun his day with a run of 
several miles, followed by a swim in any kind 
of weather, breaking the ice if necessary. 
Once, in London on Christmas Day, a friend 
encountered him with his chest bleeding from 
this effort. Giving his age as 44, he enlisted as 
a private, then persuaded his brother to follow 
him. Neither was allowed on the front lines 
once their true ages were discovered, and they 
spent the war washing dishes and hauling coal, 
Henry was eventually discharged due to gout. 
Frank contracted tuberculosis during his ser- 
vice and died shortly after the war. 

Advent of the Dictionary 

Henry continued work on the Pocket Ox- 
ford Dictionary of Current English (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1 924); it was the last book to 
list both brothers as authors. He also continued 
work on a project the brothers had planned 
earlier, originally described as a "Dictionary 
of Idioms." Henry had proposed the book to 
R.W. Chapman of the Oxford University Press 
in 1909. The book would treat the more diffi- 
cult or problematic words from the Concise 
Oxford Dictionary, and "give in detail the 
information about constructions, synonyms, 
&c, that in The King's English can only be 
hinted at with a scanty selection of examples. 
We should assume a cheerful attitude of infal- 
libility." Chapman had written back that "a 
Utopian Dictionary would sell very well — in 



Utopia," a reply that discouraged the brothers. 
However, Chapman had not intended the re- 
mark to be taken so seriously, for two years 
later he asked what had become of the project, 
much to the brothers' surprise. 15 

By the mid- 1920s the wotk was nearing 
completion, and a new title needed to be 
found, because the scope of the work had 
expanded beyond idioms to cover a variety of 
points of composition and grammar. Fowler, 
stung by a newspaper reference to "the pedan- 
tic brothers Fowler," at one point suggested 
Oxford Pedantics, but the title Dictionary of 
English Usage was finally chosen. Fowler 
added the word "modem" at the last moment, 
lest the book seem to promise coverage of 
historical usage. 16 Though the book bore only 
the name of H. W. Fowler as author, its preface 
contained a dedication to the younger brother 
that noted "The present book accordingly 
contains none of his actual writing; but, hav- 
ing been designed in consultation with him, it 
is the last fruit of a partnership that began in 
1903 with our translation of Lucian." 17 

Critical Reception 

The book was an immediate success, 
though critics often were puzzled by its idio- 
syncrasies. "It is difficult to describe this 
book" began one reviewer, 18 a sentiment many 
have surely shared. Its originality was not so 
much in doing an entirely new thing, but in 
doing it with much greater thoroughness and 
exactitude than had earlier usage dictionaries 
and style manuals. "Most treatises written to 
correct the evil [of poor writing] have been 
either dusty little compilations of errors, or 
rather florid school-boy discourses based on 
Latin grammar, "noted another reviewer. "Mr. 
Fowler's book, thank heaven, is neither of 
these." 19 The expertise gained in writing dic- 
tionaries certainly helped the author; Joseph 
Epstein has noted that this is "clearly the book 
that all Fowler's previous experience led him 
to write." 20 Fowler also had the entire OED, 
then newly completed, to draw upon for ety- 






44 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS QF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



mologies and for evidence in the use of par- 
ticular words. The impression of thorough- 
ness is enhanced by Fowler's copious use of 
examples of the proper or (more often) im- 
proper use of a word, or of certain problematic 
constructions; as many as 10 or 20 examples 
may be used in a single article. 

More puzzling was the arrangement of 
material. George Krapp was perhaps the first 
to note that "though it is called a dictionary, it 
is so mainly in the respect that the materials in 
it are arranged in alphabetic dictionary or- 
der." 21 Many entries do simply treat a single 
word or a group of related words. These 
entries range from several pages for such 
troublesome words as "only"(onepage, double 
column) or "that" (nine pages), to a line or two 
to note the pronunciation or spelling of a 
particular word, or distinguish among various 
words liable to confusion. We can, for ex- 
ample, go to Fowler to find out that a toy-shop 
is a store where toys are sold, while a toy shop 
is a "child's mock shop"; or to find 
"unsubstantial" recommended over "insub- 
stantial" 22 

Intermingled with these are a series of 
topical entries. At the front of the book is a list 
of 455 "General Articles," which includes 
both the topical entries and the longer entries 
for troublesome words . The 1 ist is presumably 
to aid the reader in finding a particular discus- 
sion, and there are indeed some entries a 
reader would readily recognize, such as "Par- 
allel-Sentence Dangers," "Hyphens," or "Se- 
quence of Tenses." Many entries are much 
less clear, however, with names like "Swap- 
ping Horses," "Out of the Fry ing-Pan," "Pairs 
& Snares," and "Cannibalism." "Swapping 
Horses" covers such problems as changing the 
sense in which a word is used in mid-sentence, 
and "Cannibalism" discusses instances where 
a common word such as "that" is needed twice 
in a sentence, but used only once. "Out of the 
Frying-Pan" treats instances where a writer, 
attempting to avoid some questionable con- 
struction, winds up with something worse; this 
is one of Fowler's favorite themes. A long 



article called "French Words" gives the pro- 
nunciation for many French words andphrases 
that have found their way into English, and an 
article called "Technical Terms" gives defini- 
tions for many rhetorical and literary terms. 
Liberal cross references are given to these 
general articles, though this does not always 
make it easy to find the discussion of a particu- 
lar problem or construction. 

The Author's imprint 

The true originality of the book comes not 
from its arrangement, however, but from the 
author's personality, which forcefully im- 
presses itself upon the reader in article after 
article. The dictionary article form finally 
gave Fowler his voice, 23 and what an unmis- 
takable voice it is, as the passages below 
demonstrate: 

From the article "Salad Days ": Whether the 
point [of this phrase] is that youth, like salad, 
is raw, or that salad is highly flavoured & 
youth loves high flavours, or that innocent 
herbs are youth's food as milk is babes' & 
meat is men's, few of those who use the phrase 
could perhaps tell us; if so, it is fitter for 
parrots' than for human speech. 24 

From "Love of the Long Word": "A few lines 
of the long-word style we know so well are 
added: Vigorous condemnation is passed on 
theforeignpolicyofthePrimeMinister, 'whose 
temperamental inaptitude for diplomacy & 
preoccupation with domestic issues have ren- 
dered his participation in external negotia- 
tions gravely detrimental to the public wel- 
fare '. Vigorous indeed; a charging hippopota- 
mus hardly more so. 25 

From "Italics": The practiced writer is aware 
that his business is to secure prominence for 
what he regards as the essence of his commu- 
nication by so marshalling his sentences that 
they shall lead up to a climax, or group them- 
selves round a centre, or be worded with 
different degrees of impressiveness as the 
need of emphasis varies; he knows too that it 
is an insult to the reader's intelligence to 
admonish him periodically by a change of 
type, like a bad teacher imploring his boys to 
attend for a moment, that he cannot safely go 



w* 



FOWLER'S DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE 45 



to sleep just now. ... To italicize whole 
sentences or large parts of them as a guarantee 
that some portion of what one has written is 
really worth attending to is a miserable con- 
fession that the rest is negligible, 26 

Small wonder many reacted as did Henry 
Fuller, the reviewer for the New York Times: 
"After a few hours' browsing through these 
many hundreds of pages, one reaches the state 
where he hardly dares attempt to write En- 
glish." 27 Fowler's liberal use of negative 
examples certainly reinforced the impression 
of him as an astringent critic. Eric Partridge, 
who would later write his own book on En- 
glish usage, was a junior lecturer at the Uni- 
versity of Manchester when Fowler's book 
appeared, and has noted the "stir made by this 
austere work. Students and other irreverent 
persons delighted in Fowler's pillorying, both 
of the Times and other important periodicals 
and of celebrated writers." 28 Partridge added, 
however, that Fowler was motivated not "to 
puncture this reputation or that, nor yet to 
show how clever he was, ... but simply in 
order to perform a public service," 29 Fowler in 
reality remained the schoolmaster, carefully 
and thoroughly explaining to the reader how a 
particular word is to be used, or why a particu- 
lar construction should be preferred to an- 
other. 30 He could be sensitive to criticism at 
times, but tried to view it with equanimity, as 
he demonstrated when he republished one of 
his early volumes of essays after he had be- 
come a famous man. Fowler introduced the 
book with excerpts from both the positive and 
negative reviews of the earlier edition, includ- 
ing such notices as "This group of self-con- 
scious, verbose essays." 31 

A Prescriptivist Grammarian? 

Fowler has been criticized as a narrow 
prescriptivis*: grammarian, attempting to leg- 
islate language usage, and also praised as a 
great liberal, freeing English usage from the 
petty and arbitrary rules of Victorian school- 
masters and grammarians. The truth is some- 
where in between. One perhaps looks in vain 



for absolutely consistentprinciples in Fowler' s 
work; as one critic noted "he often took away 
with one hand the principle he had offered 
with the other . " 3 2 He certainly enj oyed demol- 
ishing the many traditional rules that did more 
harm than good. The fear of ending a sentence 
with a preposition is a "superstition .... The 
fact is that the remarkable freedom enjoyed by 
English inputting its prepositions late & omit- 
ting its relatives is an important element in the 
flexibility of the language." 33 Split infinitives 
also are permissible; those who split infini- 
tives unawares "are a happy folk ... 'to really 
understand' comes readier to their lips & pens 
than 'really to understand* , they see no reason 
why they should not say it (small blame to 
them, seeing that reasons are not their critics' 
strong point.)" What Fowler really wanted, 
however, was for his reader to be able to 
discriminate when to splitthem: "We will split 
infinitives sooner than be ambiguous or artifi- 
cial; more than that, we will freely admit that 
sufficient recasting will get rid of any s. i. 
without involving either of those faults, & yet 
reserve to ourselves the right of deciding in 
each case whether recasting is worth while." 34 
Fowler even defended the placement of the 
word "only" in such sentences as "He only 
died yesterday," rather than the more strictly 
logical "He died only yesterday," because 
there is no danger of confusion and it is more 
natural English. 35 Certainly in these and in 
many other opinions he defied the strict con- 
ventions of most Victorian style manuals, and 
for that matter of many editors and English 
teachers to this day. Sir Ernest Gowers re- 
called that when the book appeared it was 
hailed "as a gust of common sense that swept 
away the cobwebs of grammarians' fetishes." 36 

A Deference to Latin 

Yet Fowler certainly was a prescriptivist 
who felt that there were correct and incorrect 
ways of using English, and there were times 
when he defended causes it would perhaps 
have been wiser to abandon. He particularly 



46 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



could be led astray when English usage began 
to offend against Latin grammaticalprinciples 
and etymologies. 37 An oft-cited example is 
Fowler's treatment of the word "meticulous," 
Fowler objected to the use of the word "me- 
ticulous" unless accompanied by the meaning 
of "timid" or "fearful." He objected partly 
because the word was otherwise simply an 
unnecessary replacement for "scrupulous" and 
"punctilious," but also because the word de- 
rived from the Latin root "metus," meaning 
fearful. 38 On the first ground Fowler was at 
least generally consistent: he often objected to 
words he considered superfluous, particularly 
when longer or more pretentious words had 
taken the places of simpler ones, as "faience" 
for "porcelain," or "habitude" for "habit." 39 
He also tended to argue for preserving fine 
distinctions between words; he carefully ex- 
plained the distinctions between "accessary" 
and "accessory," or advised when "individual" 
may properly be used as a noun, and even 
attempted to differentiate "slush" and "slosh," 
or "slaver" and "slobber." 40 But on the second 
ground he was less consistent. He often con- 
demned as pedantic the too strict construction 
of a word's meaning when it flies in the face 
of common usage; for example, of the use of 
"America" to mean the United States, we 
read, "It will continue to be protested against 
by purists & patriots, & will doubtless survive 
the protests," 41 

Fowler's deference to Latin is perhaps 
even more striking in his treatment of gram- 
mar, which many have found the weakest 
aspect of his work. One of the first to take 
Fowler to task in this regard was the noted 
Danish grammarian and scholar of English 
Otto Jespersen, who attacked Fowler's treat- 
ment of the fused participle. The King's En- 
glish gave this name to such constructions as 
"without the man telling us" (rather than "with- 
out the man's telling us," which the Fowlers 
regarded as correct). 42 H.W. Fowler pub- 
lished these views in an expanded form as a 
tract of the Society for Pure English in 1925, 
discussion reappeared in the Dictio- 



nary of Modern English Usage," Fowler had 
two basic objections to the construction: that 
it tended to produce ambiguous and cumber- 
some sentences, and that it was ungram- 
matical — by which he essentially meant that it 
could not be analyzed by the rules of tradi- 
tional Latin grammar. Jespersen argued that 
the construction had been long (and idiomati- 
cally) used in English, and could be explained 
grammatically, if not by traditional Latin- 
based grammar. 44 The significance of this 
somewhat esoteric debate is that Jespersen, 
whose case is certainly the more convincing, 
identified one of Fowler's most significant 
weaknesses: "If [certain constructions in En- 
glish] cannot be analyzed according to Latin 
grammar, the reply is obviously that there are 
many things in English as well as in other 
languages that cannot be understood from the 
Latin grammar we were taught in our youth." 45 
Jespersen called Fowler an "instinctive gram- 
matical moralizer," 46 and this title has stayed 
with Fowler. Fowler seems to have been en- 
tirely unaware of and unsympathetic toward 
the work of scholars such as Jespersen, who 
were attempting to replace traditional Latin- 
based English grammar with a more purely 
descriptive grammar. In his reply to Jespersen, 
he defended the application of Latin grammar 
to English; "our [English] grammatical con- 
science has by this time a Latin element inex- 
tricably compounded in it." 47 Jespersen was 
not the only writer of the time to fault Fowler 
on this point. The Dutch scholar Kruisinga 
authored a devastating review on this part of 
Fowler's work, using the occasion to attack 
the neglect of linguistic studies in English 
academic circles. "To expect Mr. Fowler to 
consult a book of a real grammarian ... is 
misunderstanding his state of mind com- 
pletely." 48 Another review from the Conti- 
nent, in a morebalanced appraisal, complained 
that the "grammar part is altogether unsatis- 
factory, because Mr. Fowler has not the slight- 
est notion of what English and continental 
scholars have written on the subjects treated 
by him." 49 More recently, linguist Randolph 



FOWLER'S DICTIONARY OFMODFJiN FNOLTMN mAGK 47 



Quirk has noted that in his "fused particle" 
argument, Fowler defended views that had 
been discredited as many as 50 years earlier. 50 

Other Issues 

Fowler certainly canbe criticized for other 
excesses. His article "Genteelisms" sensibly 
condemned the use of "domestic" for "ser- 
vant," or "save" for "except," but also en- 
dorsed "belly" for "stomach," and "corn-cut- 
ter" for "chiropodist." 51 And Fowler some- 
times seems too much a man of his time. 
Kenneth Stiles was perhaps the first to note 
that "from these pages emerges an admirable 
portrait of an English gentleman. Conserva- 
tive; respectful of tradition, yet an individual- 
ist .. . polite to inferiors, while perfectly 
conscious of their inferiority; distrustful of 
display; insular."" This may help explain 
Fowler' s frequent distrust of new usages until 
they were established, as well as his condem- 
nation of the "pedantry" of sticking too much 
to outworn rules. He distrusted displays of 
learning, as with the scholar who prefers the 
form "Mohammed" to the good English 
"Mahomet," but he also seemed to distrust 
those ignorant of the Latin derivation of such 
words as "meticulous." More modern sensi- 
bilities may not be comfortable with his fre- 
quent condemnation of a given word or usage 
as "illiterate," or his characterization of the 
use of the word "aggravate" to mean "annoy" 
as "a feminine or childish colloquialism." 53 
Fowler himself was not entirely unaware of 
his insularity; the discussion of "shall" and 
"will" in The King's English begins "It is 
unfortunate that the idiomatic use, while it 
comesby nature to southern Englishman (who 
will find most of this section superfluous), is 
so complicated that those who are not to the 
manner born can hardly acquire it; and for 
them the section is in danger of being use- 
less." 54 

One can also criticize Fowler's own style. 
W. Somerset Maugham greatly admired the 
book, but complained that "Fowler had no ear. 



He did not see that simplicity may sometimes 
make concessions to euphony." 55 AndFowler 
was not always the master of simplicity ; some- 
times his desire to drive home a point, and to 
express a complexnotion withprecision, makes 
for very difficultprose. C.T. Onions, who read 
the proofs of the book for the Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, complained that "Fowler's ingenu- 
ity has surpassed itself, with the not infrequent 
result of mere obscurity." 56 And one can 
complain that the book, even, when it came 
out, was slightly out of date, or that it reflected 
written rather than oral speech. 

Yet Fowler cannot be so easily dismissed. 
Kemp Malone's review is often quoted by the 
linguistic critics of Fowler: "At bottom his 
book is unsound. It gives us the conclusions of 
a learned and charming dilettante rather than 
those of a man of science. It is a collection of 
linguistic prejudices persuasively presented 
by a clever advocate; it is not an objective, 
scientific presentation of the facts of English 
usage." ButMalone'sreview concluded: "Mr. 
Fowler's volume belongs rather with books 
like Mr. Mencken's American Language than 
with works of exact scholarship. But when I 
say this, 1 am not condemning the book. One 
the contrary, I am praising it. Grammarian and 
layman alike ought to have it on their shelves, 
and if they fail to find it highly enjoyable and 
highly stimulating, there is something wrong 
with them." 57 

Fowler's Contribution and Influence 

So where does Fowler's contribution lie? 
Much of it certainly lies in his consistent 
unmasking of pretentious, empty, and thought- 
less writing for what it is. He is at his best in 
articles such as "Love of the Long Word" or 
"Polysyllabic Humor," or in revealing preten- 
sions and humbugs of all kinds. The use of 
antiquated words such as "anent" or "well- 
nigh" is treated in the article " Wardour Street," 
named after a street in London occupied prin- 
cipally by antique dealers. Literary critics are 
castigated for the use of words such as "actu- 



48 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



& 



ality" and "inevitable," shorn of their meaning 
by thoughtless over-use; "vogue-words," such 
as "feasible," "mentality" or "acid test " are 
condemned for the same reason. 58 Fowler 
drives home his point with ruthless analysis 
and numerous examples; three columns of 
type are used to condemn the vogue-word 
"unthinkable," a word loved by "all who like 
to combine the most forcible sound with the 
haziest meaning." 59 To these contributions 
must also be added his remarkably sure sense 
of English idiom, and his relentless analysis of 
the many pitfalls the writer faces. Who else 
could advise us so well (and so thoroughly) on 
the proper use of the problematic word "as," or 
distinguish whether to use "bloom" or "blos- 
som?" Even Jespersen found that there was 
more in the book to admire than to condemn, 50 
and W. Somerset Maugham wrote "I do not 
think anyone writes so well that he cannot 
learn much from [Fowler]." 61 

And, of course, there is the force of the 
author's personality. Fowler takes the task of 
writing seriously, and invites the reader to do 
so too, Jespersen was certainly correct in 
calling him a "moralizer," but he is more than 
simply that. Marshall McLuhan has noted that 
"Fowler approached language in the spirit of 
gamesmanship (and even of one-upmanship) 
and his instruments varied from the precision 
rifle to the butterfly net and the X-ray. . . 
Fowler never fails in his most censorious 
moments to direct a very perceptible wink at 
his readers." 62 It is not a book that yields its 
wealth to the hurried reader who needs to find 
a quick answer to some question of language 
or style, but rather to the reader willing to learn 
what the author has to offer, and to share his 
passion for the English language. 

What influence has Fowler had? The 
claim, originating in the Times Literary Supple- 
ment, that "probably Henry Fowler has more 
powerfully affected the development of En- 
glish prose style since 1926 than Bridges, 
Kipling, Shaw or any of his contemporary 
masters" 63 is of course impossible to prove or 
disprove. His advocacy of a plain, direct, and 



unadorned style had obvious appeal to many 
writers of the twentieth century. Randolph 
Quirk has distinguished between Fowler's 
influence over details, which has perhaps been 
slight — words such as "meticulous" flourish, 
and no one today says "corn-cutter" for "chi- 
ropodist" — and his influence in principle, 
which "is perhaps quite extensive. We are 
probably more self-critical in the use of hack- 
neyed phrases, hyphens, gallicisms, and even 
Unequal Yokefellows and Cannibalisms than 
the first readers of The King's English and 
Modem English Usage. The Fowler brothers 
. . . heightened the sense of style and personal 
responsibility for expression among writers in 
the English-speaking world." 64 

Revision 

"To tamper with Fowler has taken both 
humility and courage — or perhaps foolhardi- 
ness." 65 These words were writtenby Fowler's 
firstreviser, MargaretNicholson, and pointup 
the difficulty of revising a work so much the 
product of one man's personality. Nicholson 
was an editor for the American branch of the 
Oxford University Press, and her book, pub- 
lished in 1957, is actually an adaptation for the 
American reader, called A Dictionary of 
American-English Usage. The work was also 
intended as a simplification of Fowler; indeed, 
the publisherpromoted it as a "Faster Fowler." 
It was shorter by about a third. Nicholson did 
try to "retain as much of the original as space 
allowed," but cut many of Fowler's numerous 
examples and lengthy explanations, 

A basic problem with this revision was 
that it tried to make the book into something it 
was never intended to be. Fowler certainly 
was fundamentally British; as one critic noted, 
"you cannot hope to retain 'as much of the 
original as space allowed' and expect to pro- 
duce a meaningful description of something 
else." 66 Mixed in with Nicholson's advice on 
American usage are portions retained from 
Fowler's original, with their British examples 
and tone. Nor is it easy to make a book like 



1 ^»*— 



FOWLER'S DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE 49 



Fowler's into a model of quick reference; "it 
is Fowler for people whom H.W. Fowler did 
not choose to take into account — the hasty, the 
arbitrary and the half-educated who wantrules 
rather than reason." 67 And many reviewers 
found that Nicholson did not command a 
sufficiently good sense of American idiom, 
and had not identified many of the places 
where usage had changed since Fowler' s day. 
She retained, for example, his strictures that "a 
Chinaman" is common and preferred usage, 
and that "on the carpet" means "under discus- 
sion." 68 Some found her more arbitrary and 
prescriptive than Fowler had ever been. 69 

Gowers' Revision 

The very mixed success of Nicholson's 
work did not dampen the desire of the Oxford 
University Press to publish an entirely new 
edition of the work. This revision, the second 
edition of Modem English Usage, fell to Sir 
Ernest Gowers and was published in 1965. 
Gowers was a career civil servant who pro- 
duced a guide to good English for use by 
British civil servants. This guide was pub- 
lished as Plain Words (London: H.M, Statio- 
nery Officer, 1948), and attained a far wider 
audience than its original purpose suggested. 
Gowers seemed the perfect candidate to re- 
vise Fowler. Like Fowler, he approached 
Modern English Usage late in life, revising it 
during his retirement at his Hampshire estate. 
He added much new material, making space 
by eliminating many short entries that merely 
established spelling or pronunciation of a word, 
since this information could be found in ordi- 
nary dictionaries. The long articles on "Tech- 
nical Terms" and "French Words" were omit- 
ted, though some of the material was retained 
in short entries under the various terms. 

Many of Fowler's judgments were, of 
course, modified; Gowers gave up the battle 
against using "aggravate" to mean "annoy," 
and noted that it is useless to force "meticu- 
lous" into "an etymological strait-jacket." 70 
We are no longer enjoined to avoid "stomach" 
and "chiropodist" as genteelisms, nor are lo- 



cutions condemned as "illiterate" or "femi- 
nine," Gowers rewrote a few of Fowler's 
more convoluted explanations, and eliminated 
some of the excessive examples, though not to 
the drastic degree Nicholson had. A classified 
guide to the general articles was provided to 
aid the user in finding the discussion of a 
particular point. However, the book is still not 
always easy to use for reference, a fact made 
evident by the publication four years later of a 
thorough index called Find It in Fowler 
(Princeton, NJ: Wolfhart Book Co., 1969). 

Gowers, however, took care to insure that 
the revision would retain the stamp of the 
original. As much of Fowler* s text as possible 
was kept; "rewrite him and he ceases to be 
Fowler," Gowers noted. 7 ' Gowers' s revision 
is remarkable for catching the tone of the 
original while bringing it up to date. It is 
difficult at times to tell where the original 
leaves off and the revision begins, and many 
ofthenewarticleshaveanalmostFowleresque 
tone, if not quite with the bite or the playful- 
ness of Fowler's style. 

This revision was quite well received, 
though some reviewers worried about the 
wisdom of trying to patch Fowler in this way, 
skillfully as it had been done. The Times noted 
that Fowler's old-fashioned language was "not 
a language in which it seems aesthetically 
fitting to discuss the modern English usage of 
1965." 72 Another critic complained that 
"Fowler's attitude is not a possible one for a 
good mind in the 1960's, and the attempt at 
modernization leads Gowers into irreconcil- 
able conflicts." 73 Gowers reprinted in full 
Fowler's article on the fused participle, for 
example, but added comments of his own to 
modify Fowler's strictures and to summarize 
the famous dispute with Jespersen. Some crit- 
ics still found the work lacking in its aware- 
ness of current work in grammar and linguis- 
tics. 74 

Fowler's Relevance Today 

What relevance does Fowler' s book have 
today? R.W. Burchfield, who is now at work 



50 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



on a third edition, observed a few years ago 
that — despite criticism of the work by gram- 
marians — scholars and writers of all kinds 
continue to rely on Fowler for guidance. 75 
Demand for the book justified a paperback 
edition in 1983. The need for a thorough 
revision, however, certainly becomes appar- 
ent as the language changes. Marie Borroff 
recently observed that "Fowler remains a clas- 
sic, indispensable, yet of little practical help in 
the day-to-day scuffle." 76 Burchfield, though 
appreciative of Gowers's revision" realizes 
that a new edition cannot be approached in the 
same way. The "verdicts and evidence of 
[Fowler] now needed to be replaced, not just 
modified here and there." He promises that 
the book, to be published in 1992, will be 
"mildly prescriptive, dogmatic in my own 



manner, and thoroughly up to date." As with 
Gowers's revision, American usage will be 
given some prominence, but, as with the ear- 
lier editions (omitting of course Nicholson's 
adaptation), British usage will remain the chief 
focus. 78 There will be some who question 
whether such a thoroughly rewritten Fowler 
should bear the name of this idiosyncratic 
author, perhaps making his name an eponym 
on the order of Webster's or Roget's. But 
certainly there is a need to replicate in the late 
twentieth century Fowler's achievement three- 
quarters of a century earlier. Burchfield, as 
editor of the four-volume supplement to the 
Oxford English Dictionary, revives the con- 
nection between pure lexicography and the 
MEU that Fowler himself began, and one can 
only wish him the same success. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

Fowler, H.W. A Dictionary of Modern English Us- 
age. Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: H. 
Milford, 1926. 742p. 

Nicholson, Margaret. A Dictionary of American- 
English Usage, Based on Fowler's Modern 



English Usage. New York: Oxford University 
Press, 1957. 67 lp. 
Fowler, H.W. A Dictionary of Modern English Us- 
age. 2nd ed., rev. by Sir Ernest Gowers. New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1965. 725p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The standard treatment of Fowler's life 
was written by his close friend, G.G. Coulton. 
Accounts of the publication of the Dictionary 
of Modern English Usage can be found in 
Peter Sutcliffe's history of the Oxford Univer- 
sity Press and in the article "Fowler and His 
'Modern English Usage'" from the Times 
Literary Supplement. The articles by Otto 
Jespersen and E. Kruisinga represent the two 
most famous contemporary attacks on 
Fowler's weaknesses. A great many laudatory 
articles appeared in decades following the 
publication of the first edition; notable are 
those by Eric Partridge, Gilbert Highet, and 
Jacques Barzun, and the article "Auspice 
Aucupe" from the TLS. The article by Barzun, 
however, is primarily an attack upon 
Nicholson's revision. Randolph Quirk offers 
an appreciative but critical evaluation from 
the point of view of a modern linguist and 
grammarian. 



The two primary revisers of Fowler's 
work — Gowers and Burchfield — each served 
as president of the English Association and 
devoted their presidential addresses to evalu- 
ations of Fowler's work. An interview with 
Gowers concerning his revision can be found 
under the title "Our Man in Trotton" in the 
New Yorker. The publication of Gowers's 
revision prompted reviews by a number of 
prominent writers; those of Marshall McLuhan, 
David Daiches, and Anthony Burgess are of 
particular interest The review from the TLS^ 
"How Modern is Your English Usage," pre- 
sents an interesting and rather negative view 
of the revision. More recent articles by Marie 
Borroff and Joseph Epstein assess the con- 
tinuing value of various dictionaries of En- 
glish usage, with particular attention to 
Fowler's. 



FOWLER'S DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE 51 



"Auspice Aucupe." Times Literary Supplement no. 
2892 (August 2, 1957): 471. 

Barzun, Jacques. "Fowler's Generation." American 
Scholar 26 (Summer, 1957): 315-23. 

Borroff, Marie. "'Fowler and the Rest."' Yale Re- 
view 1 A (Spring, 1985): 353-67. 

Burchfield, Robert W. The Fowlers: Their Achieve- 
ments in Lexicography and Grammar. English 
Association Presidential Address. London: En- 
glish Association, 1979. 

Burgess, Anthony. "Switched-OnFowler." Observer 
no. 9071 (May 9, 1965): 27. 

Coulton, G.G. H. W. Fowler. S. P. E. Tract no.43. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. 

Daiches, David. "Speaking of Books: H.W. Fowler." 
New York Times Book Review 70 (August 15, 
1965): 2. 

Dangerfield, George. "The Brothers Fowler." 
Bookman 75 (June/July, 1932): 209-17. 

Epstein, Joseph. "What's the Usage?" New Crite- 
rion 6 (June, 1988): 9-20. 

"Fowler and His 'Modern English Usage.'" Times 
Literary Supplement no. 2935 (May 30, 1958): 
302. 

Gowers, Sir Ernest. H. W, Fowler: The Man and His 
Teaching. English Association Presidential 
Address. London: English Association, 1957. 

Greenwood, J. Arthur. Find It in Fowler: An Alpha- 
betical Index to the Second Edition (1965) ofB. 
W. Fowler's Modern English Usage. Princeton, 
NJ: WolfhartBookCo., 1969. 

Highet, Gilbert. "Henry Fowler: Modern English 
Usage." In People Places and Books, 3-12. 
New York: Oxford University Press, 1953. 

"How Modern is Your English Usage." Times Liter- 
ary Supplement no. 3299 (May 20, 1965): 395. 

Jespersen, Otto. "On Some Disputed Points in En- 
glish Grammar." S. P. E. Tract no. 25. Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1926. 



John, V.V. "Fowler: Forty Years After." Literary 
Criterion! (1966): 11-20. 

Kronenberger, Louis. "How Not to Write, What Not 
to Say." Atlantic Monthly 216 (September, 
1965): 97-100. 

Kruisinga, E. "English Grammar as She is Taught at 
Oxford." English Studies 8 (December, 1926): 
181-85. 

McLuhan, Marshall. "Wordfowling inBlunderland." 
Saturday Night 80 (August, 1965): 23-27. 

Nicholson, Harold. "Two Acute Linguists." Listener 
59 (April 10, 1958): 619, 622. 

"Our Man in Trotton." New Yorker 41 (August 14, 
1965): 20-23. 

Partridge, Eric. "Henry Watson Fowler." In A Charm 
of Words: Essays and Papers on Language, 63- 
67. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960. Origi- 
nally published in slightly shorter form as "To 
the English-Using World He Counseled Perfec- 
tion," New York Times Book Review 63 (March 
9, 1958): 5. 

Pyles, Thomas. "The New Fowler." SewaneeReview 
74 (Spring, 1966): 540-44. 

Quirk, Randolph. "The Toils of Fowler and Moral 
Gowers." Chapter 9 in The English Language 
and Images of Matter. London: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1972. Portions originally published 
as "Fowler's Toils," Listener 59 (March 13, 
1958): 449-51, and as "Fowler's Net," New 
Statesman 69 (May 21, 1965): 812-13. 

Stiles, Kenneth. "H. W. Fowler'sEnglishman." Spec- 
tator 159 (July2, 1937):12-13. 

Sutcliffe, Peter. The Oxford University Press: An 
Informal History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1978. 



NOTES 



1 Gilbert Highet, "Henry Fowler: Modern English Us- 
age," in People Places and Books (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1953), 4. 

1 Quoted in "Fowler's English," Commonweal 67 (21 
March 1958): 630. 

3 George Frazier, "Fowler's Love Affair with the Lan- 

guage," Life 59 (20 August 1965): 8. 

4 T. S. Eliot, "Books of the Quarter," New Criterion 5 

(January 1927): 124. Italics in original. 
J Highet, 4. 

6 Marie Borroff, '"Fowler and the Rest,'" Yale Review 74 

(Spring 1985): 361. 

7 Joseph Epstein, "What's the Usage?" New Criterion 6 

(June 1988): 12. 
"Except where otherwise indicated, details about Fowler's 
life are taken from G. G. Coulton, H. W. Fowler, S. 
P. E. Tract no. 43 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). 



9 Sir Alexander Lawrence, quoted in Coulton, 104-05, 

10 "Henry Watson Fowler," Sedberghian (March 1934): 

4. 

11 Coulton, 117. Italics in original. 

12 Peter Sutcliffe, The Oxford University Press: An Infor- 

mal History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 152. 

13 "Mr. H. W. Fowler: A Lexicographical Genius," Times, 

28 December 1933, 12. 

14 Robert W. Burchfield, The Fowlers: Their Achieve- 

ments in Lexicography and Grammar, English As- 
sociation Presidential Address (London: English 
Association: 1979), 11-14. 

15 "Fowler and his 'Modern English Usage,'" Times 

Literary Supplement no. 2935 (30 May 1958): 302. 

16 Ibid. 

17 H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage 

(Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Humphrey 
Milford, 1926), Hi. 




52 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



18 F. Sidgwick, review of Dictionary of Modern English 

Usage, by H. W. Fowler, Review of English Studies 
2 (October 1926): 490. 

19 George N. Shuster, review of Dictionary of Modern 

English Usage, by H. W. Fowler, Commonweal 5 
(23 February 1927): 443. 

20 Epstein, 14. 

21 George Philip Krapp, "P's and Q V Saturday Review 

of Literature 2 (17 July 1926): 933, 

22 H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 

see "Toy" and "Insubstantial." 

23 Epstein, 14. 

24 Fowler, Modern English Usage, see "Salad Days." 
"Ibid., see "Love of the Long Word." Italics in original, 
26 Ibid., see "Italics." 

n "Henry B. Fuller, "Even Syntax Provides Comic Re- 
lief," New York Times Book Review 76 (2 January 
1927): 2. 

28 Eric Partridge, "Henry Watson Fowler," in^ Charm of 

Words: Essays and Papers on Language (London: 
Hamish Hamilton, 1960), 65-66. 

29 Ibid., 66. 

30 David Daiches, "Speaking of Books: H. W. Fowler," 

New YorkTimes BookReview 70 (15 August 1965): 
2;Sutcliffe, 153. 

31 Review of "Si Mini—!" by H. W. Fowler, Yorkshire 

Observer, quoted in H. W. Fowler, If Wishes Were 
Horses (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1929), 4. 

32 F.G. Cassidy, review of Dictionary of American- 

English Usage, by Margaret Nicholson, Archivum 
Linguisticum 10(1958): 144. 

33 }l.Vf.Vavt\<:r,Modern English Usage,se& "Preposition 

at End." 

34 Ibid., see "Split Infinitive." 

35 Ibid,, see "Only." 

36 Sir Ernest Gowers, H. W. Fowler: The Man and His 

Teaching, English Association, Presidential Ad- 
dress (London: English Association, 1957), 10. 

"Kenneth Stiles, "H. W. Fowler's Englishman," Specta- 
tor 159 (2 July 1937): 12; Randolph Quirk, "The 
Toils of Fowler and Moral Gowers," in The English 
Language and Images of Matter (London.; Oxford 
University Press, 1972), 91. 

38 Fowler, Modern English Usage, see "Meticulous," 

3 ' Ibid., see "Superfluous Words." 

'"'Ibid,, see "Accessary, Accessory," "Individual," "S lush, 
Sludge, Slosh," and "Slaver, Slobber, Slubber." 

41 Ibid,, see "America(n)," 

42 H.W. Fowlerand F.G, Fowler, The King's English, 2nd 

ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), 116-25. 

43 H. W. Fowler, "Fused Participle," 5. P, E. Tract no. 22 

(1925): 43-47; Fowler, Modern English Usage, see 
"Fused Participle," 

44 Otto Jespersen, On Some Disputed Points in English 

Grammar,S. P. E. Tract no. 25 (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1926). 
4i Ibid., 170. 

46 Ibid., 148. 

47 H.W. Fowler, "On -ing: Professor Jespersen and 'The 

Instinctive Grammatical Moralizer, '" S. P. E. Tract 
no. 26 (1927): 195. 

48 E. Kruisinga, "English Grammar as She is Taught at 

Oxford," English Studies 8 (December 1 926): 181- 
85. 



49 P. Fijn van Draat, review of Dictionary of Modern 

English [/sage, by H. W. Fowler, EnglischeStudien 
63 (September 1 928): 85 . Also of interest is G. van 
Langenhove, review at Dictionary of Modern En- 
glish Usage, by H. W. Fowler, Revue beige de 
philologie et d'histoire 6 (1927), 841-44. 

50 Quirk, 93. 

51 Fowler, Modern English Usage, see "Genteelism." 
"Stiles, 12. 

SJ Fowler, Modern English Usage, see "Aggravate." 

54 Fowler and Fowler, King's English, 133. 

ss W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (London: 
William Heinemann, 1938), 42. 

ss "Fowler and his 'Modern English Usage,'" 302. 

57 Kemp Malone, review of Dictionary of Modern En- 
glish Usage, by H. W. Fowler, Modern Language 
Notes 42 (March 1927): 201-02. 

ss Fowler, Modern English Usage, see "Literary Critics* 
words" and "Vogue-words " 

59 Ibid., see "Unthinkable." 

60 Jespersen, 142. 

61 Maugham, 41. 

62 Marshall McLuhan, "Wordfowling in Blunderland," 

Saturday Night 80 (August 1965): 23. 

63 "Auspice Aucupe," Times Literary Supplement no. 

2892 (2 August 1957): 471. 

64 Quirk, 94-95. 

65 Margaret Nicholson, A Dictionary of American-En- 

glish Usage, Based on Fowler 's "Modern English 
Usage "(New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 
v, 

66 C, K. Thomas, review of Dictionary of American- 

English Usage, by Margaret Nicholson, Quarterly 
Journal of Speech 44 (April 1958): 200. 

67 Robertson Davies, "The Stream and the Creek," Satur- 

day Night 72 (26 October 1957): 26. 

68 Nicholson, see "Chinaman" and "Carpet." For criti- 

cisms of this aspect ofNicholson ' s work, see Jacques 
Barzun, "Fowler's Generation," /4mmc<JH Scholar 
26 (Summer 1957): 315-23; Dwight MacDonald, 
"Sweet Are the Uses of Usage," New Yorker 34 (17 
May 1958): 136-54; Cassidy, review, 143-47. 

69 Cassidy, 145. Also critical of prescriptive tendencies 

in Nicholson is R.W. Zandvoort, review of Dictio- 
nary of American-English Usage, by Margaret 
Nicholson, English Studies 41 (June 1960): 213- 
15. For a more positive view of Nicholson's work, 
see Harold Whitehall, "The Elusive Word" Kenyon 
Review 19 (Autumn 1957): 641-43. 

70 H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 

2nd ed., rev. by Sir Ernest Gowers (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1965), see "Meticulous." 

71 Sir Ernest Gowers, "Preface" to H. W. Fowler, Modern 

English Usage, 2nd ed., ix. 

72 "How Modern is Your English Usage?" Times Literary 

Supplement no. 3299 (20 May 1965): 395, 

73 Barbara M. H. Strang, review of Dictionary of Modern 

English Usage,by H.W. ¥owler,ModernLanguage 
Review 61 (April 1966): 264. 

74 Ewald Standop, "Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachpflege: 

zur Neubearbeitung von Fowlers Modern English 
Usage," Anglia 83 (1965): 390-410; L. F. 
Brosnahan, review of Dictionary of Modern En- 



FOWLER'S DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE 53 



glish Usage, by H.W. Fowler, AUMLA no. 26 7 « Borroff, 367. 

(November 1966): 343-45; YvanLebrun,, "Fowler 77 R. W. Burchfield, review of Dictionary of Modern 
revu par Gowers," Revue des langues vivantes 32 English Usage, by H. W. Fowler, Listener 73 (6 

(1966): 324-27. May 1965): 675. 

" Burchfield, The Fowlers, 19-20. 78 R..W. Burchfield, letter to the author, 24 April 1990. 






m 



"The Most Amusing Book in the 
Language": The Dictionary of National 

Biography 



Johannah Sherrer 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

In 1893 Leslie Stephen called the Dictionary 
of National Biography "the most amusing 
book in the language." 1 One might argue that 
as its first editor Stephen was too close to the 
DNB to make an objective judgment. The 
passage of time, however, has tested his words 
and proven them true. No other national biog- 
raphy possesses the color, quality > charm, 
clever turns of phrases, eccentricity, or out- 
right pizazz that characterize the Dictionary 
of National Biography. Begun in 1885 and 
current to date, the DNB is remarkable on 
many levels, not the least of which are its 
conception, origin, aims, and intent. 

Precursors 

The genre of biography and specifically 
that of collective biography can be traced 
back many hundreds of years. British at- 
tempts at producing biographical dictionaries 
included the Biographia Briiannica pub- 
lished in seven folios between 1747 and 1766. 
The first important English work came out in 
eleven volumes in 1761 and was titled The 
New and General Biographical Dictionary* 
Several editions followed, but the edition 
published between 1812— 1817with Alexander 
Chalmers as editor, marked that title's pin- 



nacle of achievement. 3 Between 1839 and 
1847 Rose's New General Biographical Dic- 
tionary appeared in twelve volumes. More 
than half of the twelve volumes were con- 
sumed by the letters A, B, and C and the articles 
were mainly abridgements from other dictio- 
naries.' 4 None of the above efforts were consid- 
ered an appropriate reflection of British schol- 
arship nor were they deemed effective univer- 
sal biographies. 5 While these universal or gen- 
eral biographies were being published, smaller 
thematic collections were also appearing. 

Biographical dictionaries, both thematic 
and universal, were published in some abun- 
dance both in England and throughout the 
Continent. The first successful national biog- 
raphy appeared in Sweden between 1835 and 
1857 and accumulated to 23 volumes. The 
Dutch introduced a 24-volume set between 
1852 and 1 878, Austria completed 3 5 volumes 
between 1856 and 1891, and Germany 45 
volumes between 1875 and 1900. 6 In France, 
the Biographie universelle comprised 40 vol- 
umes completed between 1843 and 1863. A 
British national biographical dictionary was 
not even contemplated until the early 1850s. 
John Murray ' sprestigious publishing firm con- 
sidered such a publication, but investigation 
into the feasibility of the project soon indicated 
that such a venture could not recover costs let 
alone provide a profit. The successful attempts 



DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY 55 



on the Continent were either heavily or com- 
pletely funded through government subsidy, 
and Murray's firm abandoned the project. In 
an 1 884 article, the Quarterly Review bemoan- 
ed Great Britain's failure to produce a suc- 
cessful, reliable, collective biography and 
questioned the ultimate feasibility of such an 
attempt. 7 It was into this scenario that circum- 
stances placed three singularly talented indi- 
viduals. 

George Smith 

George Smith, Leslie Stephen, and Sidney 
Lee are the men responsible for what has been 
called "the most important reference work for 
English biography." 8 The series of circum- 
stances that made such a venture possible, as 
well as the ability of all three individuals to 
share a common vision and work toward it in 
harmony are indeed remarkable. All three 
men would have secured places in the literary 
annals of Victorian Britain without the DNB> 
but the monumental DNS might not have 
come into being without the unique collabora- 
tion of this triumvirate. 

George M. Smith (1824-1901) had been 
head of Smith, Elder and Company since 
1845, when, in his early twenties, he suc- 
ceeded his father as head of the firm. The 
company was a diversified one that dealt 
primarily in the India trade; publishing was 
only a small facet of the company. Hard work 
and solid business acumen escalated Smith's 
establishment into the ranks of prosperous 
firms. Under his leadership, Smith, Elder pub- 
lished the works ofWilliam Thackeray, Harriett 
Martineau, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, 
Charlotte Bronte, and Bronte's biographer, 
Mrs. Gaskell. The firm is credited with dis- 
covering Charlotte Bronte who, up to that 
point, had been rejected by several other 
houses. 9 

In 1857, with his company on secure 
financial footing, Smith to focused his per- 
sonal efforts on the publishing division. He 
founded the Cornhill Magazine in 1860 and 



appointed William Thackeray editor. In 1865 
he founded the Pall Mali Gazette, 10 through 
which he first met Leslie Stephen. 

Leslie Stephen 

Leslie Stephen (1834-1904), one of the 
eminent Victorians and a man of letters, was 
regarded by his contemporaries as both bril- 
liant and versatile. He was well known to the 
Victorian intelligentsia for his scholarly pur- 
suits in eighteenth-century literature and phi- 
losophy. Outside of literary circles, his feats as 
a mountain climber and as an ardent (some 
might say fanatical) walker made him a well 
known figure in his day both in England and on 
the Continent. Twentieth-century students of 
the Victorian era know him as the father of 
Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. 

Leslie Stephen had been a tutor and fel- 
low at Cambridge. His gradual disinclination 
to accept Christianity made his Cambridge 
appointmenttenuous and in 1 862 he was asked 
to resign. ' ' He decided to pursue a living as a 
journalist and arrived in London in 1865. 
Stephen soon became a regular contributor to 
the Pall Mall Gazette, and it was in this capac- 
ity that he and Smith met and soon formed a 
relationship that would continue for the rest of 
their lives. In March 1871 Stephen was of- 
fered the editorship of Fraser 's Magazine, He 
sought the advice of George Smith, who coun- 
tered with an offer to edit Cornhill Magazine. 

Smith, while keeping his hand in other 
business ventures, relished his position and 
friendships in the literary world. His concern 
and respect for men and women of letters 
became a source of personal reward and sat- 
isfaction, and accounted for his desire to see 
good literature published even at minimal 
monetary returns for the firm. His success in 
other ventures allowed him the freedom, for 
instance, to operate the Cornhill Magazine at 
a loss under Stephen's editorship. The reader- 
ship of the Cornhill Magazine had been de- 
clining for some time. Stephen believed that 
the quality of the magazine was still constant 



v 



56 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



but that public taste was changing. Since he 
was not inclined to compromise his standards 
or alter his current editorial practices to ac- 
commodate a changing public, both he and 
Smith agreed that a new editor was needed. It 
was at this time that Smith proposed his idea 
concerning a universal biography and the role 
he wanted Stephen to take in the project. 12 

From the very beginning Smith intended 
the dictionary to be his legacy to the British 
people. 13 He understood the monetary com- 
mitment and was well aware of previous at- 
tempts and failures. 

Why did I undertake a scheme discredited by 
so many failures? For one thing these very 
failures tempted me. They challenged my 
pride. Then, too, I liked the idea of a private 
individual undertaking a work which was re- 
ally national, and which outside England is 
only possible by virtue of the resources of the 
State. There are national biographies in conti- 
nental literature, but they are never the result 
of private enterprise. The State undertakes 
them and pays for them. Or they are made 
possible by the aid of ancient and richly en- 
dowed, libraries. It was something that a pri- 
vate Englishman should undertake a work 
which, elsewhere, needed the authority and 
resources of the nation for its accomplish- 
ment.' " 

George Smith's fortune was the result of 
his keen overall business sense, which he 
displayed in 1 872 when he secured for his firm 
the British concession from a bottled water 
firm in Germany. The water, sold under the 
name of Appollinaris, became very popular 
and eventually earned a return in excess of one 
million pounds. 15 This financial security per- 
mitted Smith to consider the dictionary idea 
and to commit to its completion. Although his 
original idea was to produce a compendium of 
universal biography, he was persuaded by 
Stephen to limit the scope to a national biog- 
raphy. 

Smith's choice of Stephen as editor was 
not based as much on friendship as on Smith's 
unwavering belief that Stephen could define 
the parameters and produce an unequalled 
literary achievement. He believed that Stephen 
was "a master of clear and exact English" and 



he knew from the Cornhill experience that his 
standards would never waiver. 16 Stephen ac- 
cepted responsibility for the project in the fall 
of 1882. In March 1883 Sidney Lee was 
selected assistant editor. The choice of Lee 
proved to be pivotal to the project's success. 

Sidney Lee 

Sidney Lee (1859-1926), was born 
Solomon Lazarus Lee, the son of a London 
merchant. He studied at the City of London 
School under Dr. Edwin Abbot who nurtured 
his interest in Elizabethan literature. He en- 
tered Oxford in 1878 and graduated from 
Balliol College in 1 882. While an undergradu- 
ate, he published two articles on Shakespearean 
topics, both well received in scholarly circles. 
His Shakespearean scholarship brought him 
to the attention of Frederick James Fumivall 
who commissioned him to work on an assign- 
ment for the Early English Text Society. Lee 
was considering a lectureship in a German 
university when the DNB position became 
available, and gave him the opportunity to 
remain in England. Brought to Stephen's at- 
tention by Dr. Furnivall, Lee's selection as 
assistant editor was certainly one of Stephen's 
most astute and valuable contributions to the 
effort. 

The importance of the collaboration of 
these three men cannot be overstated. The 
Dictionary owes not only its existence but its 
very essence to these individuals. George 
Smith's willingness to fund the project at an 
estimated loss of 50,000-60,000 pounds was 
critical to the project's success. 17 Leslie 
Stephen's ability to define the parameters of 
the endeavor and to rigorously enforce high 
editorial standards set the tone for the entire 
run, while Lee, responsible for the day-to-day 
operations , the proofreading, and the manage- 
ment of the editorial staff, ultimately carried 
the project through to its successful comple- 
tion. 

Both Lee and Stephen had extraordinary 
scholarly expectations for the final entries. 
They stressed attention to detail, accuracy, 



DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY 57 



good writing, and strict adherence to sched- 
ules. Each man, while shouldering his edito- 
rial responsibilities, also contributed entries to 
thework. Stephen valuedLee, a Shakespearean 
scholar, for his expertise in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries while his own recogni- 
tion and acclaim rested in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries. Stephen contributed a 
total of 378 articles, 1 8 placing at least one in all 
but 3 of the 63 volumes. 19 Most noted among 
his entries are those on George Eliot, Joseph 
Addison, Charles Dickens, Thomas 
Babbington McCaulay, Thomas Carlyle, 
Alexander Pope, and William Wordsworth. 
Lee's knowledge of Elizabethan sources and 
bibliography were unequalled. He contrib- 
uted 820 articles, including his entries on 
William Shakespeare, Edward VII, and Queen 
Victoria. 

Stephen and Lee took two years to orga- 
nize and to set into motion the process that 
would accommodate the innumerable details 
needed to produce a successful effort. All 
three men were well aware of previous British 
and Continental efforts and all were driven by 
the desire to complete the Dictionary in a 
timely yet scholarly manner. The first volume 
appeared in January 1885. It had been delayed 
several months by Smith's concern over a 
myriad ofmisprints resulting frompoorproof- 
reading and the late detection of a plagiarized 
article. 20 The article in question was Alexander 
Balloch Grosart's biography of Richard 
Alleine, for which Grosart used material he 
had previously submitted to Encyclopaedia 
Britannica for an article on Alleine. The unde- 
tected error sent chills through George Smith. 
His Victorian ethical standards dictated de- 
laying the project until an honorable solution 
could be worked out with the publishing firm 
of the Encyclopaedia and until he was confi- 
dent that editorial procedures were in place to 
detect similar problems much earlier in the 
publishing process. Thereafter, the staff of the 
DNB punctually delivered a new volume for 
quarterly publication for the next 1 6 years! It 
became a hallmark of unparalleled dedica- 



tion, pride, and shared responsibility between 
publisher, editors, and contributors. 

The Dictionary's Purpose 

The aim of the Dictionary was to com- 
memorate the nation's past through biogra- 
phy. Both Lee and Stephen wrote and lectured 
widely on the significance of biography and 
on its relationship to history. 21 Neither wanted 
to continue in the tradition of the antiquaries or 
the "Dryasdusts" who had previously at- 
tempted to record British lives. The Dictio- 
nary was to serve as a compendium of lives 
that would reflect the nation's growth, devel- 
opment, and character. Stephen and Lee de- 
liberately set out to redefine biography in 
terms of methodology and to present a collec- 
tive national biography in a manner both uni- 
form and consistent with known facts . Stephen 
was concerned that the growth and documen- 
tation of raw historical sources were accumu- 
lating at a rate that was exceeding the schol- 
ars' ability to make them accessible. He viewed 
the Dictionary as a tool that would alleviate 
the problem for biographical research. 

The process for selecting entrants for the 
compendium was initiated by Stephen in an 
article published in the Anthenaeum in De- 
cember 1882. 22 The process continued to 
evolve as time went on, but the initial limits 
were set at this time. From the beginning 
Stephen excluded the names of livingpersons. 
He also excluded names that were only names, 
meaning those individuals whose main claim 
to fame was simply having appeared in a list or 
bibliography. It was also his intention to limit 
the entrants to real people rather than mythical 
personalities. The definition was designed, 
however, to leave the door open to individuals 
of lesser fame . Both Lee and Stephen believed 
that it was the chronicling of lesser individuals 
that would give their work the lasting depth 
and importance they intended it to achieve. 
According to Stephen: "It is the second-rate 
people; the people whose lives have to be 
reconstructed from obituary notices, or from 



&4 



58 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



1 



references in memoirs and collections of let- 
ters; or sought in prefaces to posthumous 
works; or sometimes painfully dug out of 
collections of manuscripts, and who really 
become generally accessible through the dic- 
tionary alone; that provide real ly useful read- 
ing." 23 The process of identifying these names 
progressed alphabetically. The first list of 
proposed candidates came from JohnMurray's 
publishing firm. Although he had declined to 
proceed with the venture for financial reasons, 
he graciously turned over the notes that had 
been started on the project, including a list of 
about 200 names. It was with this list that 
Stephen began his project, 

The Dictionary was to include English, 
Scotch, and Irish names from the earliest 
times. It was intended that Americans and 
natives of India who were British subjects 
would also be included, but eventually the 
editors decided that eighteenth-century Ameri- 
can colonists would have to wait for their own 
national biography. 

The Anthenaeum agreed to publish a list 
of proposed names twice a year and the public 
was invited to add to this list. Each list con- 
tained about 1 ,000 names that had been culled 
from some 200 reference works, all of the 
volumes of the Gentlemen's Quarterly, and, 
of course, the The Times obituary list, After 
each list appeared in the Anthenaeum it was 
published as a pamphlet by the Smith, Elder 
Company, This pamphlet was sent to con- 
tributors who then submitted forms for the 
contributions they wished to write. They were 
also invited to identify additional names that 
may have been omitted from the original 
screening. 24 

Writing assignments were handed out two 
years before actual publication. The contribu- 
tors, however, had up to six months to com- 
plete their work. The editorial work that fol- 
lowed the submitted articles was often exten- 
sive. The articles were checked for accuracy, 
especially for dates, and often factual material 
was supplied only at the editorial level. It was 
believed that as much time was spent editing 
the articles as was spent in writing them. 25 



Editorial Standards 

Both Lee and Stephen had developed the 
writing of biography into an art. They strove to 
attain both accuracy and abundance in the 
delivery of facts; stressed the importance of 
primary sources, including personal knowl- 
edge of the subject; and sought to discover the 
character of an individual without elaborate or 
critical analysis while valuing succinctness 
and readability. Stephen believed that "The 
epitaph should give in the smallest possible 
number of words the very essence of a man's 
character and of his claims upon the memory 
of posterity." 26 

The writers were instructed to be in sym- 
pathy with their subject but to keep eulogy 
within bounds. In the 1882 Anthenaeum ar- 
ticle Stephen concluded his remarks with the 
words : "The editor of such a work must, by the 
necessity of the case, be autocratic. He will do 
his best to be a considerate autocrat." 27 

Both Lee and Stephen kept in close con- 
tact with their contributors. The general un- 
derstanding at that time was that an editor 
could omit segments from a signed article 
without an author's consent but he could not 
add to the work. The editorial policy at the 
DNB was quite different. The editors felt free 
to add details, especially factual information, 
and to supplement biographical detail and 
physical descriptions of the entrants. Over the 
years the editorial staff became noted for their 
proficiency in tracking genealogical informa- 
tion and for their files of personal contacts for 
county and church record information. 28 

Adherence to schedules and timetables 
was taken quite seriously. If a contributor 
failed to meet a deadline or to correct per- 
ceived inadequacies in writing and research, 
the article was produced inhouse and submit- 
ted unsigned. The average article length con- 
tinued to grow as years went on. Several 
factors probably contributed to the develop- 
ment. Leslie Stephen, always striving for suc- 
cinctness, rarely hesitated to cut the length of 
submissions dramatically. Lee, however, ap- 
peared to enforce length restrictions with less 



DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGIUPHY 59 



rigor. Another factor affecting article length 
was the growing availability of primary 
sources. The historical profession was at last 
coming into its own and increasing numbers of 
indexed and calendared materials were ap- 
pearing. 

Scholars trained in historical research were 
a rarity when the project began. In England, 
universities were just beginning the study and 
teaching of historical research. The English 
Historical Review, begun in 1 886, was not yet 
a force in scholastic circles. TheZWi? served 
as the first training ground for historical re- 
search and in this capacity Lee and Stephen 
developed the methodological training of those 
who were to become Great Britain's elite 
historical scholars. These included C.L. 
Kingsford, C.H. Firth, A.F. Pollard, J.E. 
Creighton, Mary Bateson, and T.F. Tout to 
mention a few. Thomas Frederick Tout admit- 
ted: 

Like many Oxford men of my generation I 
approached historical investigation without 
the least training or guidance in historical 
method, and felt very much at a loss how to set 
to work. The careful and stringent regulations 
which [Stephen] drew up, and the brusque but 
kindly way in which he enforced obedience to 
them, constituted for many of us our first 
training in anything like original investiga- 
tion. 29 

Working with hundreds of contributors, 
many of them unfamiliar with biographical 
writing or possessing limited experience in 
historical research, the editorial staff of DNB 
successfully produced volume after volume, 
each one regarded as better than the one 
before it. 30 The accomplishment of punctually 
producing the quarterly volumes seems all the 
more remarkable when one considers the 
Dictionary's steadily increasing quality. 

Stephen's Burden 

The task took its toll on Leslie Stephen. 
The drudgery and strain of the vigilance he 
deemed necessary to meet deadlines eventu- 
ally proved too much for him. In addition to 



contributing many entries himself, he reviewed 
every submission and edited the contributions 
sternly, corresponding with the authors, and 
tactfully dealing with the myriad requests for 
inclusion of departed loved ones. He also 
continued with his own writing and studying 
and with his roles as a husband and the father 
of four. A selection of his letters appears in 
Frederic William Maitland's biography of 
Stephen. In these letters he refers to the Dic- 
tionary as the "infernal dictionary," "that 
damned dictionary," and the "accursed drudg- 
ery." 31 He refers to himself as a "dictionary- 
ridden animal," and laments that the damned 
thing goes on like a diabolical piece of ma- 
chinery, always gaping for more copy, and I 
fancy at times that I shall be dragged into it, 
and crushed out into slips."' 32 

Maitland elaborates that Stephen's corn- 
plaining was typical of the way he expressed 
his frustrations and that he intended people 
laugh when he used such hyperbole. 53 The 
frustrations, however, were very real and his 
health continued to deteriorate under the de- 
manding schedule. At one point he seriously 
considered delaying a quarterly issue. 34 Real- 
izing that he was placing more and more of the 
burden on Lee, he insisted that Lee's name 
begin appearing on the title page. So in March 
1 890, Lee and Stephen were listed as coedi- 
tors, a practice continued for the next four 
issues. The reduction in Stephen's work load 
failed to restore his health. In April 1891 he 
asked his wife to write to George Smith and 
inform him that his health precluded his con- 
tinuation as editor of the Dictionary. So, be- 
ginning with the June 1891 issue, only Lee's 
name appeared as editor. Lee's enormous 
capacity for work and his ability to pay atten- 
tion to detail guaranteed George Smith that the 
project would continue without interruptions. 
Stephen's resignation did not prohibit him 
from continuing to write articles for the DNB. 
Otherthan Lee himself, Stephen was theDNB's 
most prolific contributor; his writing com- 
prised approximately 1,000 pages and ac- 
counted for one-seventeenth of the entire 




60 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



work. 35 Upon its completion in 1901, the 
entire work stretched to nearly 30,000 pages 
commemorating nearly as many lives. 36 In 
1901 three supplementary volumes were pub- 
lished, covering an additional 1,000 lives. 
These supplementary volumes were issued as 
the final three volumes of the original set. Two 
hundred of these names were omissions from 
the original set and the remaining 800 were 
individuals who had died after their letter of 
the alphabet had been published. Because 
George Smith wished the death of Queen 
Victoria to mark the official end of the work, 37 
the DNB was extended to include lives of 
people who had died prior to January 22,1901, 
That the death of Victoria should mark the end 
of this set seems only fitting, for even in its 
own time the DNB was considered a monu- 
ment to British history. 38 

The size and scope of the DNB was such 
that errors, misprints, and other errata were 
bound to occur under even the most careful 
scrutiny. During the quarterly printings of the 
DNB, the corrections, compiled by the Rever- 
end W.C. Boulter, were printed in Notes and 
Queries. In 1904 Lee issued a volume of 
corrections that was distributed free to sub- 
scribers. These corrections were incorporated 
into the re-issue of 1 908-1 909. i9 In 1923, A.F. 
Pollard founded the Institute of Historical 
Research of the University of London to emu- 
late the training he had had received at the 
hands of Sidney Lee and to use the Institute's 
Bulletin as a vehicle for reporting addenda 
and correcting errors in the DNB. Today the 
Institute's publication, re-titled Historical 
Research, no longer serves that function. All 
corrections are referred to the DNB editorial 
offices at the Oxford University Press. 

Critical Reception 

From the appearance of its inaugural vol- 
ume theZWi? received praise. Its contributors, 
editors, and publisher were widely recog- 
nized, with both Lee and Stephen receiving 
knighthoods for their involvement in the 
project. Even continental scholars admitted 



that the DNB surpassed their own national 
biographies both in terms of scope and schol- 
arship/ Most secondary sources refer to the 
original set as a "monument to Victorian schol- 
arship, enterprise and philanthropy." 41 Re- 
views of the set as it came out repeatedly drew 
attention to the exceptional quality of both 
Stephen's and Lee's writing. 42 It was also 
noted, as Lee and Stephen had intended, that 
the shorter articles on those of lesser fame not 
only embodied the essence of the DNB, but 
would give it lasting value. 43 

There were negative comments. For ex- 
ample, historians of the time objected to the 
lengthy articles on kings and statesmen that 
could be better presented in book-length treat- 
ments. The emphasis of the editors that the set 
be geared to the general reader as well as to the 
scholar raised the eyebrows of more than one 
historian. 44 There were also comments re- 
garding the length of entries in comparison to 
an individual's overall historical importance. 45 
Current critiques of the DNB demonstrate that 
the set not only maintains its credibility but has 
taken on a persona of its own. Clearly the 
steady output of biographical entries has in 
itself become a significant value of the set and 
its supplements. Its serialization provides a 
continuous acknowledgment of British 
achievement and notoriety since the earliest 
times, with readers taking pride in the cumu- 
lative body of entrants that encompasses emi- 
nent statesmen as well as misers. 

The reviews of the twentieth-century 
supplements and, indeed, later retrospective 
reviews of the original set bring other criti- 
cisms into focus. Contemporary awareness of 
cultural and social issues have raised the con- 
sciousness of many reviewers. Comments re- 
garding the exclusion of women, labor lead- 
ers, sportsmen, and people of commerce are 
now noted. Some object that Stephen and 
Lee's intent to include all segments of the 
nation fell far short of the mark. 46 Stephen's 
biographer, Noel Annan, notes that twentieth- 
century critics call attention to moral judg- 
ments that appear throughout the original set 
and in Stephen's contributions particularly. 47 



DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY 61 



Annan replies that Stephen "would have had 
to step outside of his age to omit moral judge- 
ments." 48 Stephen's view on the status of 
women was reflective of the Victorian era. 
Even when friends were advocating female 
emancipation, Stephen resisted with vehe- 
mence. 49 Lee, the author of the "Statistical 
Account" was not unaware of the low number 
of women appearing in the DNB. He noted that 
in London in 1896 about 600 people would 
qualify for an entry in the work and that only 
about 20 of these would be women. He stated: 

In this last calculation I perhaps have made 
inadequate allowance for the recently devel- 
oped energy among women which seems likely 
to generate unlooked-for exploits of more or 
less distinction. But no statistics are needed to 
prove that the woman's opportunities of dis- 
tinction were infinitesimal in the past, and are 
very small compared with men's something 
like one to thirty at that present moment, 
Women will not therefore, I regret to reflect, 
have much claim on the attention of the na- 
tional biographer for a very long time to 
come." 50 

As early as 1890, a review in the English 
Historical Review notes that some women of 
distinction appear only in their husbands' bi- 
ographies. 51 And, as late as 1986, a reviewer 
of the recently published 1971-1980 supple- 
ment noted that only 1 5 percent of the entries 
were women and that nearly one third of them 
were writers." 

Another omission that has been steadily 
tracked from the original setthroughthe supple- 
ments is the lack of individuals from trade and 
commerce. 53 The Victorian distaste for revel- 
ling in commercial successes seems to have 
extended well into the twentieth-century 
supplements. Other omissions that have been 
noted include the scarcity of trade unionists 
and a lack of entries recording the violence in 
Northern Ireland, either in terms of victims or 
terrorists. 54 Stephen's anticlericalism is well 
documented. His refusal to list either St. Alban 
or St. Asaph in the original set was eventually 
amended by Lee in the supplements. 55 On yet 
another level, Pollard believed that Lee's in- 
terest in literary history accounts for what 



could be interpreted as an undue inclusion of 
very minor literary figures. 56 

The first supplement to deal explicitly 
with the sexual preference of individuals was 
the 1961-1970 supplement. Although even 
here, as one reviewer notes, most contributors 
were less than direct and perhaps inadvert- 
ently revealed a moral judgment themselves. 
For example, Somerset Maugham's homo- 
sexuality is referred to with subtlety when the 
biographer states that Maugham "stepped off 
his pedestal with a young American." 57 A 
reviewer of the 1971-1980 supplement notes 
that an entrant' s "propensity for solitary sex in 
parks and swimming pools could perhaps be 
stated more directly." 58 Another reviewer of 
that decennial supplement notes an absence of 
attributing drugs or alcohol as a direct influ- 
ence on the lives or careers of many of the 
entrants. 59 

Evaluations of the DNB concerning its 
biases or even its editorial practices must be 
considered in historical perspective. The de- 
gree to which these omissions reflect editorial 
bias or are seen as reflections of current cul- 
tural perspective, while debatable, are also 
what gives the set its historical value. The 
DNB has existed for over 100 years. The 
mores and even the research strategies used to 
produce it have changed over that time period 
and will continue to do so. One of its strengths 
rests in its lasting value as a source both 
reflective and indicative of its time. 

The original set included many lives from 
previous centuries and the writers of those 
biographies had the advantage of secondary 
sources andhistoricalperspective. As thcDNB 
moved into decennial volumes the biogra- 
phies wereoverwhelminglyratherrecentones. 
The change, although subtle, marks a signifi- 
cant difference between the original set and 
the supplements. Another significant differ- 
ence rests in the fact that more than half of the 
original set was written by only 34 regular 
contributors, while in the supplements the 
one-time contributor is virtually the norm. 60 
During the 1 6-year production schedule of the 
original set, the editors were also contributors 



62 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



and their writing style clearly influenced the 
character of the original set. The supplements 
have been produced for almost 90 years with 
contributors and editors changing throughout 
that time. While the original set serves as an 
embodiment of Victorian scholarship and car- 
ries with it the character and expressions of 
that era, the supplements are distinguished by 
the continuity provided by their Oxford base. 
According to one reviewer "One of the joys of 
the DNB, imparted by its Oxford base, is its 
tendency to delicate spite, dry periphrasis or 
oblique understatement,"* 1 

The DNB still serves as model of literary 
art and historical writing. Its succinct, and 
sometimes pithy writing is peppered with an- 
ecdotal accounts, fact, and individual per- 
spective. 62 Leslie Stephen believed that "No 
man is a real reader until he is sensible of the 
pleasure of turning over some miscellaneous 
collection, and lying like a trout in a stream 
snapping up, with the added charm of 
unsuspectedness, any of the queer little mor- 
sels of oddity or pathos that may drift past 
him." 63 The Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy still holds that charm forthe the twentieth- 
century reader. Even though newly available 
manuscripts may obviate nineteenth-century 
scholarship, the joy of the writing and the 
subtle inferences from a time past will be lost 
to only the most unimaginative of readers. 
Reviews of the supplements indicate that the 
twentieth-century endeavors have yielded suc- 
cess in this area as well. 64 

When George Smith died in 1901, he left 
the DNB to his widow. Mrs. Smith served as 
publisher of the supplement covering deaths 
from 1901—1911, while Lee continued as edi- 
tor, In 1917 Smith, Elder was acquired by the 
Murray publishing house. This was the same 
firm that had contemplated and then rejected 
the idea of publishing a national biography in 
the early 1850s. The DNB, not part of sale, was 
given to Oxford University by the Smith fam- 
ily with the stipulation that it was to continue 
to be published. 65 Oxford has continued to 
publish the DNB with decennial supplements 
through 1980, although the supplemental vol- 



umes have not appeared with the same punc- 
tuality as the original Smith, Stephen, and Lee 
venture. Oxford has broken the decennial 
tradition with the publication of the latest 
supplement. Beginning with the 1981-1985 
supplement issued in 1990, the set will be 
updated through quinquennial supplements. 66 

Extension and Revision 

Almost since its completion, speculation 
both as to the feasibility and to the desirability 
of revising the whole set has occurred. 67 In a 
1 949 Times Literary Supplement article a re- 
viewer of the 1931-1940 supplement also 
tackled the subject of a complete revision of 
the DNB. 6S The suggestion prompted a meet- 
ing between scholars and publishers who 
reached the mutual decision that the effort was 
simply not feasible. 69 The current editor, C.S. 
Nicholls, states that "books such as ours are 
very expensive to produce." 70 Efforts are 
underway to raise funds for a complete revi- 
sion, but in the meantime the editorial staff has 
decided to publish a volume of individuals 
who have been omitted from DNB since its 
beginning. 71 The current editor cautions that 
it may not be possible to raise all the funds 
needed for a complete revision. Whether or 
not funds are found to completely revise the 
DNB thoroughly, it will remain a cherished 
and significant contribution to British history 
and scholarship. Its significance as a land- 
mark reference title rests not only in its lon- 
gevity as a useful reference tool but also upon 
the unique mix of anecdotal characterization 
and detailed factual accounting of British lives. 
The introductions for each supplement pro- 
vide fascinating overviews of the cumulative 
body of entries and readers soon lose them- 
selves in the well-written biographies that 
follow. Only the most insensitive of readers 
can come away from an hour of browsing in 
"the most amusing book in the language" 
without having attained a deeper understand- 
ing of British history, life, manners, and 
achievement. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY 63 



Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie 
Stephen, volumes 1-2 1; editedby Leslie Stephen 
and Sidney Lee, volumes 22-26; edited by 
Sidney Lee, volumes 27-66. London: Smith, 
Elder and Company, 1885-1901. 66 vols, 

Dictionary of National Biography, From the Earliest 
Times to 1900, edited by by Sir Leslie Stephen 
and Sir Sidney Lee, [Reissue.] London: Smith, 
Elder and Company, 1908-1909. 22 vols. 

Dictionary ofNationalBiographyJndexandEpitome, 
editedby Sir Sidney Lee. London: Smith, Elder, 
and Company, 1903-1913. 2 vols. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1901-1911, ed- 
ited by Sir Sidney Lee. Oxford: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1912. 739p. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1912-1921, ed- 
itedby H.W.C. Davis andJ.R.H, Weaver. Ox- 
ford: Oxford University Press, 1927. 623p. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1922-1930, ed- 
ited by J.R.H. Weaver. Oxford: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1937. 962p. 



Dictionary of National Biography, 1931-1940, ed- 
ited by L.G. Wickham Legg. Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1949. 968p. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1941-1950, ed- 
ited by L.G. Wickham Legg and E.T.Williams. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. i,031p. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1951-1960, ed- 
ited by E.T. Williams and Helen M. Palmer. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. 1,l50p. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1961-1970, ed- 
ited by E.T. Williams and C.S. Nicholls. Ox- 
ford: Oxford University Press, 1981. l,178p. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1971-1980, ed- 
ited by Lord Blake and C.S. Nicholls. Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1986. 1,01 Op. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 1981-1985, ed- 
ited by Lord Blake and C. S. Nicholls, Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1990. 518p. 






BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The papers, correspondence, ledgers, and 
day books associated with the Dictionary of 
National Biography were destroyed after the 
third supplement was completed. Numerous 
secondary sources exist and several major 
biographies on key personnel are available. 
For Leslie Stephen, see Noel Annan's Leslie 
Stephen: The Godless Victorian, a revision of 
his 1952 biography on Stephen titled Leslie 
Stephen: His Thought and Character in Rela- 
tion to His Time. Both volumes are valuable. 
See also Maitland's£(/e and Letters of Leslie 
Stephen. For George Smith, see Jennifer 
Glynn's Prince of Publishers: A Biography of 
George Smith and Leonard Huxley's The 
House of Smith Elder. A full-length biogra- 
phy on Sir Sidney Lee has yet to be written. For 
a summary of the founding of the DNB, see 
both J.L. Kirby and R.H. Fritze cited below. 
Laurel Brake's article provides the clearest 
explanation of the publishing history of the 
DNB. Many reviews of the original set and the 
supplements have appeared throughout the 
past 1 00 years; only the more significant ones 
are listed in the bibliography. Forexcerpts that 
capsulize the essence of the DNB, see the 
examples cited in the reviews and especially 



the article by Pat Rogers. The best method for 
understanding and enjoying the DNB is to read 
the introductions to the original set and the 
supplements and to peruse the volumes them- 
selves, 

Annan, Noel. Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian. 
New York: Random House, 1984. 

. Leslie Stephen: His Thought and Character 

in Relation to his Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press, 1952. 

Bell, Allan. "Leslie Stephen and the DNB." Times 
Literary Supplement, no. 3951 (December 16, 
1977): 1478. 

. "A Portable Valhalla." Times Literary 

Supplement, no. 4096 (October 2, 1981): 1115— 
17. 

"Biographies Universelle, Ancienne et Moderne; 
Nouvelle Biographie Generale; Specimen of a 
'Dictionary of National Biography,"' Quar- 
terly Review 157 (July, 1884): 187-230. 

Brake, Laurel. "Problems in Victorian Biography: 
The DNB andths DNB 'Waiter Pater'." Modern 
Language Review 70 (October, 1975): 731^*2. 

Cannadine, David. "British Worthies." London Re- 
view of Boot 3 (December, 1981): 3-4, 6. 

Corrections and Additions to the Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1966. 

Davenport-Hines, Richard. "All Sorts and Condi- 
tions," Times Literary Supplement, no. 4363 
(November 14, 1986): 1263-64. 

Fenwick, Gillian. The Contributor's Index to the 
Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1901. 



64 DISTINGmSHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



m 



Winchester, Hampshire: St. Paul's Bibliogra- 
phies, 1989. 

Firth, C.H. "Memoir of Sir Sidney Lee," Dictionary 
of National Biography Supplement, 19 12-192 L 
London: Oxford University Press, 1927. 

Frank, Robert Worth, "The Most Amusing Book in 
the Language." American Scholar 54 (Winter, 
1984/85): 89-97. 

Fritze, Ronald H. "The Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy and Its Early Editors and Publisher." 
Reference Services Review 1 6 (1988): 21-29. 

Glynn, Jennifer. Prince of Publishers; A Biography 
of George Smith. New York: Allison & Busby, 
1986. 

Hull, Charles H. "Helps of Cataloguers in Finding 
FullNames." Library Journal 14 (1889): 7-20. 

Huxley, Leonard. The House of Smith Elder. Lon- 
don: Printed for Private Circulation, 1923. 

Kirby, J.L. "The Dictionary of National Biography." 
The Library Association Record 60 (June 1958): 
181-91. 

Lee, Sidney. "The Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy: A Statistical Account." Dictionary of 
National Biography, v. 1, pp. lxi-1 xxxxiv. Ox- 
ford: Oxford University Press, 1921-1922. 

. "Memoir of George Smith." Dictionary of 

National Biography, v. 1, pp. xxi-lix. London: 
Oxford University Press, 1921-1922. First pub- 



lished in September 1 901 in the first volume of 
the original edition of the Supplement. 

. "National Biography." Cornhill Magazine 

26 (March, 1896): 258-77. 

"Sir Leslie Stephen." Dictionary of Na- 



tional Biography. Supplement 1901-191 1. Lon- 
don: Oxford University Press, 1920. Reprinted 
1927. 

Maitland, Frederic William. The Life and Letters of 
Leslie Stephen. London: Duckworth &. Co., 
1906. 

Pollard, A. F. "Sir Sidney Lee and the 'Dictionary of 
National Biography.'" Bulletin of the Institute 
of Historical Research 4 (1926/27): 1-13. 

Rogers, Pat. "Diversions of the DNB." Essays and 
Studies 37 (1984): 75-86. 

Stephen, Leslie. "Biography." Living Age 199 
(October/December, 1893): 451-59. 

Stephen, Leslie. "National Biography." National 
Review 27 (March/August, 1896): 51-65. 

."ANewBiographiaBritannica.'M^enaeww, 

no. 2878 (December 26, 1882): 850. 

"Worthies of Empire." Times Literary Supplement, 
no. 2498 (December 16, 1949): 819. 

Wrong, George M. "Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy." American Historical Review 7 (April, 
1902): 588-90. 



NOTES 



1 Leslie Stephen, "Biography," Living Age 199 (October/ 

December 1893): 451 . This is a reprint ofan article 
that originally appeared in the National Review in 
1893. 

2 The Universal Cyclopedia. 

3 Ibid. 

4 "Biographies Universale, Ancienne et Moderne; Mo- 

velle Biographic Generale; specimen of a Dictio- 
nary of National Biography," Quarterly Review 
157 (July 1884): 204, 

5 Gillian Fenwick, "Introduction," The Contributor's 

Index to the 'Dictionary of National Biography \ 
1885-1900 (Winchester, Hampshire: St. Paul's 
Bibliographies, 1989),x. 

6 Encyclopedia Britanntca, 1 1th Edition. 
''Quarterly Review, "Biographies Univcrselle," 188. 

8 Eugene P. Sheehy, Guide to Reference Books, 10th ed. 

(Chicago: American Library Association, 1986), 

299. 
' Ronald H. Fritze, "The Dictionary of National Biogra- 

phy and Its Early Editors and Publisher," Reference 

Services Review 16 (1988): 22. 
10 J,L. Kirby, "The Dictionary of National Biography" 

The Library Association Record 60 (June 1958): 

181. 
"Ibid., 182. 
12 Leslie Stephen, The Mausoleum Book (Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 1 9 77), 85 . 



13 Leonard Huxley, The House of Smith Elder (London: 

Printed for Private Circulation, 1923), 181. 

14 Ibid., 181-82. 

15 Fritze, 23. 

16 Huxley, House of Smith Elder. 182. 
J7 Ibid. 

18 Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen; His Thought and Charac- 

ter in Relation to His Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press, 1952), 79. 

19 Phyllis Gosskurth, Leslie Stephen (Essex, England: 

Longmans, Green & Co. L, 1968), 13. 

20 Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian 

(New York: Random House, 1984): 85. 

21 Sidney Lee, "National Biography," Cornhill Magazine 

26 (March 1896): 258-77; Stephen, "Biography," 
451-59. Leslie Stephen, "National Biography," 
National Review 27 (March/ August 1896): 51-65. 

22 Leslie Stephen, "A New Biographia Britannica," .^A- 

enaeum no. 2878 (26 December 1882); 850. 
* 3 Stephen, "National Biography," 59-60. 

24 A. F. Pollard, "Sir Sidney Lee and the 'Dictionary of 

National Biography,"' Bulletin of the Institute of 
Historical Research 4 (1926/27): 12. 

25 Ibid., 2. 

26 Stephen, "National Biography," 62, 

27 Ibid. 

28 Pollard, 7. 

2 ' Annan, Leslie Stephen: Godless Victorian, 86. 



DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY 65 



™ Pollard, 6. 

31 Frederic William Maitland, The Life and Letters of of 

Leslie Stephen (London: Duckworth & Co., 1906), 
378-404. 

32 Ibid., 394. 

33 Ibid., 395. 

34 Ibid., 400. 
JS Fritze, 27. 

i6 Robert Worth Frank, "The Most Amusing Book in the 
Language," American Scholar 54 (Winter 1984/ 
85): 89. 

37 George M. Wrong, "The Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy," American Historical Review! (April 1902): 
588. 

JS Ibid. 

i9 Laurel Brake, "Problems in Victorian Biography: The 
DNB and the DNB 'Walter Pater,'" Modern Lan- 
guage Review 70 (October 1975): 732. 

4( ' Annan, Thought and Character, 78, 

41 Gillian Fenwick, "Introduction," ix, to The Contributor '$ 

Index to the 'Dictionary of National Biography', 
1885-1900 (Winchester, Hampshire: (St. Paul's 
Bibliographies), ix. 

42 "The Dictionary of National Biography" English 

Historical Review 6 (January 1893): 181-82; "The 
Dictionary of National Biography" English His- 
torical Review 9 (July 1894): 591-92. 

43 "The Dictionary of National Biography' 1 English 

Historical Review 5 (October 1890): 785. 

44 Ibid., 784-785; Wrong, 589. 

45 English Historical Review, 1890, 786; Wrong, 589; 

Annan, Thought and Character, 78; Alan Bell, "A 
Portable Valhalla," Times Literary Supplement no. 
4096 (2 October 1981): 1116. 



46 Pat Rogers, "Diversions of the DNB," Essays and 

Studies 37 (1984): 78; Annan, Godless Victorian, 
88. 

47 Rogers, 82. 

48 Annan, Godless Victorian, 88-89; Rogers, 76. 

49 Annan, Godless Victorian, 110. 
i0 Lee, "National Biography," 273 

51 English Historical Review, 1890, 786. 

52 RichardDavenport-Hines, "All Sorts and Conditions," 

Times Literary Supplement no. 43 63 (1 4 November 

1986): 1264. 
33 Ibid., 1264; David Cannadine, "British Worthies," 

London Review of Books 3 (December 1981): 4; 

Annan, Godless Victorian, 88. 
54 Bell, 1115;Davenport-Hines, 1264. 
si Pollard, 10. 
s6 Ibid., 11. 
51 Bell, 1 1 16; Christopher Booker, "Remembering Like 

Anything," Spectator 247 (3 October 1981): 21. 
iB Davenport-Hines, 1263. 
* 9 Ibid, 

<° Cannadine, 3. 
* l Davenport-Hines, 1263. 
"Rogers, 82; Brake, 741. 
° Stephen, "National Biography," 63. 
154 Bell, 1116. 
"Huxley, 190. 

66 C, S. Nicholls, letter to the author, 25 January 1990. 
61 "Worthies of the Empire," Times Literary Supplement 

no. 2498 (16 December 1949): 819. 

68 Ibid. 

69 Brake, 732. 

70 Nicholls, letter to author, 25 January 1990. 

71 Ibid. 



Controlling the Beasties: Dissertation 
Abstracts International 



Mary W. George 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Dissertations are strange beasties, combining 
the length of a book, the breadth of a grant 
application, and the depth, supposedly, of a 
scholarly treatise. An ordinary mortal will 
encounter just one such creature in a lifetime, 
taming it only after long and weary labor, 
despite the wiles of procrastination and the 
vagaries of a doctoral committee. 

As evidence of a person's ability to ask 
significant new questions about a highly spe- 
cific area of knowledge, and then to design, 
conduct, and interpret research appropriate to 
answer those questions, the dissertation can 
claim only mixed results. The Germans are 
very right to qualify the word with the adjec- 
tive inaugural, because the dissertation is at 
best a good start with no promises. In fact, as 
a predictor of intellectual energy and poten- 
tial, it fails miserably; witness the dearth or 
deficiency of subsequent scholarship by many 
who "earn" the Ph.D. Then, too, in our culture, 
those outside academe rank writing a disserta- 
tion somewhere near surgery and passing a 
driving test in terms of pain and challenge, 
respectively. Yet possessing a doctorate still 
commands great respect. 

Debate will always surround the content 
and process of graduate education, which is 
only right. The unexamined pursuit, in aca- 
deme as anywhere else, too easily becomes 
routine, drawn out, and ineffectual. Further- 
more, the tangible product of the process, the 



dissertation, is itself a knotty problem: What 
exactly should it "prove," and to whom? Are 
traditional expectations regarding its scope, 
format, readability, time and effort involved — 
not to mention its value — justified, especially 
given the low correlation between dissertation 
quality and any individual's later contribu- 
tions to the field? These are all ponderable if 
not solvable questions, ones which Theodore 
Ziolkowski has placed in historical perspec- 
tive and named the Ph.D. squid, an image 
which all who have been in the grip of gradu- 
ate school will understand too well. 1 

Availability of Dissertations 

There is one aspect of the dissertation, 
however, which Ziolkowski does not address, 
its availability. To add irony to adversity (view- 
ing the case from a student's perspective), this 
masterpiece, proof in the medieval sense that 
a person is worthy to enter a discipline's guild 
and participate in its rituals, is figuratively a 
closed book to everyone outside the candidate' s 
immediate circle — closed because it is unpub- 
lished and unpublicized. 

Here the story begins to twist and tangle. 
Every degree-granting institution in the world 
has its own rules about dissertations: how 
many bound copies the author must provide 
and whether these may be typed or must be 
printed; who is responsible for copyrighting 
the work; where dissertations are kept and 
under what physical conditions; how— and, 



DISSERTA HON ABSTRACTS INTERNA TIONAL 67 



-aajl 



for that matter, whether — they will be cata- 
loged, and if so, whether entries for them will 
appear in any published list or database; who 
will preserve brittle ones; what legalities must 
be observed by anyone wishing to read, copy, 
or quote from them; if they will be sold to, 
loaned to, or exchanged with other institu- 
tions, 2 To add to this crazy quilt, schools 
which also generate master's, senior, or hon- 
ors theses usually have a whole different set of 
rules for those writings, 3 and, of course, each 
university's idiosyncrasies have shifted over 
time. 4 

It is not as if people have not tried to solve 
these problems. There is, for example, an 
indispensable bibliography of dissertation bib- 
liographies which is arranged by both country 
and discipline, 5 Several guides to institutions' 
loan and photocopy policies now exist which 
indicate exactly what dissertations are avail- 
able, and how, from the originating school. 6 
Special lending agreements within national or 
regional library consortia make matters some- 
what smoother, although no one imagines 
there will ever be total reciprocity among 
institutions. A few scholarly journals even 
review selected dissertations. 7 

On the whole, researchers are faced with 
a paradox: the possible importance of disser- 
tations to their work is offset by the probable 
nuisance of identifying and obtaining them. 
Or, as many have said at a library reference 
desk, "If it's a dissertation, forget it." That 
dismissal is typically accompanied by the 
spoken or unspoken thought,"If it's any good, 
it should come out, sooner or later, as a real 
book." This is not the place, however, to 
digress on the economics or academic politics 
of that belief, let alone the overhaul necessary 
to transform a dissertation into a "real" book. 8 

Eugene B. Power 

The twists and tangles get still more bi- 
zarre owing to a second strange beastie, mi- 
crofilm, and its impresario, Eugene B. (for 
Barnum, no less) Power, who first recognized 



this format as an ideal way to preserve fragile, 
fugitive, rare, bulky, and low-demand print 
sources. Realizing that dissertations qualified 
on all those counts, Power made filming and 
selling them the cornerstone of University 
Microfilms, the business he founded in Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, in June 1938. 9 In February 
1 962 he sold the company to the Xerox Corpo- 
ration, which in turn sold it to Bell & Howell 
in December 1985. 10 Now called University 
Microfilms International (UMI), the firm has 
operations in Ann Arbor devoted to disserta- 
tions, serials, andout-of-print materials (Books 
on Demand). 11 

The idea of miniaturizing documents goes 
back to the mid-nineteenth century when it 
was first posited in England by James Glaisher 
and J.F.W. Herschel who independently sug- 
gested the possibility based on technological 
advances in photography and microscopy. 12 
To those who rely on microformat sources to 
conduct their research, the stuff is both a 
blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it 
allows access to essential works without spend- 
ing large amounts of money and time to con- 
tact and travel to distant repositories. And it is 
a curse owing to the physical discomfort of 
reading and transcribing microforms as well 
as the generally poor quality of paper copies 
made by reader-printers. It took Eugene 
Power's insight and entrepreneurial instincts 
to transform this ugly duckling technology 
into a corporate swan and in the process to 
create amarketing tool, DissertationAbstracts 
International {DAT), that has become a legend 
in academe. 13 

As legends go, this one is easy to relate: 
DAI is quite simply the Sears catalog of aca- 
deme, describing the intellectual goods avail- 
able for purchase from UMI. Or, put another 
way, it is a field guide to the strange beasties, 
standard equipment for anyone who needs to 
spot, track down, andbag dissertations. All the 
user who identifies a pertinent product (i.e., a 
dissertation) needs to do is phone a toll-free 
number and use a credit card to order the 
complete version. 14 By 1990UMI'sdisserta- 



jj&MjELa**- - 



68 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



tion database was growing by about 35,000 
titles per year. Starting in 1 991 , another 3 ,700 
Canadian dissertations will be added annually 
as well. 

DAI has come a long way since 1938 
when Eugene Power left his job as vice presi- 
dent for sales at Edwards Brothers, the large 
Ann Arbor printing firm best known to librar- 
ians for publishing various Library of Con- 
gress author and subject catalogs as well as 
sets of the National Union Catalog between 
1942 and 1970. Edwards Brothers was also 
involved in microform publishing. In the mid- 
1930s the company launched a major project 
to film pre-1550 English books. Power had 
coordinated this program and then acquired it 
from Edwards Brothers shortly after he set up 
his own company. 15 In a seven-page pam- 
phlet, A Plan for Publication of Scholarly 
Material on Microfilm, Power explained the 
purpose of his new company: 

The invention of printing provided the means 
for the tremendous expansion of scholarly 
research through the duplication of man's 
ideas, ... For centuries printing methods 
fulfilled the requirements of scholars as a 
means of reproducing the results of research. 
With the turn of the' century it has been in- 
creasingly apparent that the greater special- 
ization of scholarship has resulted in a de- 
crease in the potential market for books and 
monographs in any one field. This same print- 
ing process which at one time provided the 
release from the restricting influence of book 
production by scribes is now exerting a simi- 
larly restricting influence through a reverse 
process. 

Ourprinting facilities today are all geared 
to the production of a large number of copies 
on an extremely economical basis. However, 
they are not able to produce a small number of 
copies economically, and with this decrease in 
the size of the market, publication of scholarly 
material becomes an increasingly difficult 
problem unless accompanied by subsidy, . , . 

What scholarly publishing needs is a 
method of distribution which gives sufficient 
and adequate publicity to a title or list of titles 
so that the information regarding what is 
offered is readily available to prospective 
users, combined with a means of production 
which can produce as demand materializes at 
an economical and uniform rate. , . . 



Briefly, this is a plan to provide a means 
of production and distribution for the products 
of scholarly research which, because of their 
nature, command too small a market to war- 
rant publication through the ordinary and es- 
tablished channels. 1 * 

Power went on to describe his concept of 
having dissertation authors submit to UMI "a 
carefully typed manuscript accompanied by 
an abstract of 300 or 400 words with the 
deposit of the usual fee for this service." 17 His 
proposal continued: "The abstracts thus col- 
lected from several sources or authors, will be 
published in a booklet of abstracts issued at 
periodic intervals, each abstract occupying 
one page. At the bottom of each abstract will 
appear a statement to the effect that a film 
copy of the complete manuscript can be had at 
1 l A cent per page, and a total figure [i.e., price] 
for the entire book." 18 

Microfilm Abstracts 

This, then, was the origin of what is known 
today as Dissertation Abstracts International 
The first 1 1 volumes appeared at very irregu- 
lar intervals starting in 1938 under the title 
Microfilm Abstracts, with the subtitle origi- 
nally, A Collection of Abstracts of Doctoral 
Dissertations which are Available in Com- 
plete Form on Microfilm. Volume 1, number 
1, was only 32 pages long and contained 
abstracts of 17 dissertations from just five 
universities (Michigan, Nebraska, Princeton, 
Stanford, and Toronto). In that first issue's 
unsigned introduction, Power explained his 
project by contrasting the characteristics of 
what he called "ordinary publication" — large 
print runs, promotion, and distribution to cus- 
tomers — with the "different publishing phi- 
losophy" afforded by microfilm which, he 
said, "offers an effective, satisfactory, and 
economical method of distributing copies of 
scholarly manuscripts to a limited market. 
Because microfilm is a straight-line cost pro- 
cess one copy can be produced as reasonably 
as a dozen — " Therefore, he continued, "the 
only investment necessary is the cost of noti- 
fication and the small cost of making the 



DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL 69 



negative, . . . from which positive copies may- 
be prepared from time to time as individual 
orders come in." 19 

Power's notion of advertising his wares is 
also stated in that first introduction: "The 
abstract is printed in a booklet of abstracts, 
such as this, and distributed to leading librar- 
ies, journals and the current bibliographies, 
without cost to those receiving it. Printed 
library catalog cards for each abstract accom- 
pany the booklet. This completes the process 
of notification." 20 Since it was free, small, 
infrequent, and sent out as a promotion, Mi- 
crofilm Abstracts was essentially apublisher's 
blurb. Happily, libraries did not all treat it like 
one, so that complete or nearly complete runs 
exist at most large universities. The part about 
supplying cards sounds like a gimmick today, 
but 50 years ago it was probably considered a 
nice touch by librarians who were used to 
receiving cards from the Library of Congress 
for their depository catalogs. Unfortunately, 
there is no way to know how many libraries 
actually included these author and subject 
cards in their catalogs or if the existence of 
cards increased sales. In 1943 Microfilm Ab- 
stracts stopped coming with cards and instead 
gave a Library of Congress card number for 
each item, with cataloging performed in Ann 
Arbor — from the dissertation typescript, not 
just the abstract — and supplied to the Library 
of Congress. 21 

In the early years, Microfilm Abstracts 
ran a "Cumulative Index of Titles," but be- 
cause this was arranged by discipline, its only 
advantage over browsing the individual tables 
of contents, which were similarly organized, 
was that it covered several numbers at a time. 
Every so often the cumulation would stop, 
then resume again with a new start date. 

Beginning with volume 6, number 2, in 
1945, the scope and subtitle of Microfilm 
Abstracts changed to include monographs as 
well as dissertations. Only a handful of mono- 
graphs were ever listed, 22 however, and LTMI 
eventually started a separate publication, 
Monograph Abstracts (now called Research 
Abstracts) to treat these titles, just as it spun off 



Masters Abstracts (now Masters Abstracts 
International) to handle theses. Neither of 
these segments has ever approached the reputa- 
tion, success, or indispensability of DAL 

Microfilm Abstracts started appearing 
quarterly in 1950, with an annual cumulated 
title index, which was still arranged by disci- 
pline, not by actual topic. Volume 1 1 (195 1), 
the last before the title changed to the more 
familiar Dissertation A bstracts (DA), included 
two innovations which have been followed to 
the present: the four issues were paged con- 
tinuously, and a cumulated index to disserta- 
tion authors was provided in addition to the 
so-called title index. That particular volume 
ran to 1,212 pages and carried abstracts for 
816 dissertations, under 67 subject headings 
(with titles most numerous in the field of 
education) from about 30 institutions. 23 The 
publication was still distributed free, although 
the fee for filming and including a dissertation 
had risen from $1 5 to $20 in 1 949. The cost to 
purchase a film copy was constant at $,0125 
per page, but the price for paper copies had 
gone up from six cents to a dime per page. 

One feature of Microfilm Abstracts and 
its successors Dissertation Abstracts mdDis- 
sertation Abstracts International 'deserves spe- 
cial notice: arrangement of the abstracts has 
always been by broad discipline categories. 
Volume 1, number 1, for instance, included 
abstracts under the headings Botany, Chemis- 
try, Drama, Economics, Education, History, 
Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, 
Psychology, and Zoology, Fields and sub- 
fields were added as necessary, so that by 
1990 there were 10 large groups subdivided 
into 249 smaller ones. Today there are 10 
categories: Communication and the Arts; Edu- 
cation; Language, Literature and Linguistics; 
Philosophy, Religion and Theology; Social 
Sciences; Biological Sciences; Earth Sciences; 
Health and Environmental Sciences; Physical 
Sciences; and Psychology. When dissertation 
authors submit their abstracts, they must now 
indicate which subject category best reflects 
their area of research, although they may also 
designate one or two additional categories. 24 



70 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



When it debuted, Mcro/z/m Abstracts was 
not reviewed in the usual sense. Instead, there' 
were announcements of it, probably lifted 
from press releases, in major trade and profes- 
sional journals. 25 

Scope Changes 

One would think that after the title changed 
to Dissertation Abstracts with volume 12 in 
1952, the tool's history would be easier to 
describe. Far from it. Virtually every year 
through the 1960s there was some enhance- 
ment or oddity introduced. For instance, DA 
appeared six times in both 1952 and 1953 — 
and for the first time had a cover price, $6 per 
year 26 — then settled into its conventional 
monthly frequency in January 1954 with vol- 
ume 14, but without specifying which month 
anywhere on the publication, a detail which 
was not added until August 1957. Then, to 
keep subscribers guessing, volume 1 8 ran for 
only six issues, January through June 1958. 
Starting with volume 19, DA's volumes ex- 
tend from July to the following June "to facili- 
tate the listing of authors by academic year for 
the index."" 

With volume 27, number 1 , July 1 966, the 
cover took a turn for the worse : instead of drab 
gray it was brightly colored, but some be- 
nighted staffer decided to omit the volume, 
number and date from the front cover, an 
unconscionable decision that was notrectified 
for a full 20 years! Libraries cannot count the 
thousands of productive hours lost as check-in 
clerks had to turn to the title page to discover 
which issue had arrived. In a moremomentous 
change with volume 27, meiosis occurred and 
two monthly issues began appearing, section 
A covering the humanities and social sci- 
ences, and section B covering the sciences 
(including psychology) and engineering. Al- 
though this split is logical and benefits special 
libraries which can choose to subscribe to just 
one part or the other, it causes a practical 
problem. Should volumes be shelved by sec- 
tion, then by volume number, or vice versa? 
Alternatively, volumes can be arranged by 



calendar year first, which is how most users 
expect to see monthly issues run, but then one 
winds up with numbers 7 through 12 of one 
volume coming before numbers 1 through 6 of 
the next — correct but counterintuitive. 

Three years later, in July 1969 with the 
start of volume 30, the title changed again with 
the addition of "International" to both sec- 
tions, "to reflect the projected enlargement of 
University Microfilms' dissertation publica- 
tion program by the addition of dissertations 
from European universities." 38 Some Cana- 
dian dissertations had, however, been included 
from the very beginning, although most of 
them could be obtained only from the National 
Library in Ottawa. As a result of an agreement 
between UMI and the National Library of 
Canada and Micromedia, Ltd., in early 1990, 
UMI began in 1991 to distribute Canadian 
dissertations and theses and to include cita- 
tions and abstracts for them in the various 
UMI reference tools. 29 

It apparently took seven years for that 
"projected enlargement" to come about, which 
it did with another split in the fall of 1 976 when 
section C, European Abstracts, first appeared 
as a slender quarterly designated volume 37. 
The subtitle of section C switched from Euro- 
pean Abstracts to the one-word subtitle World- 
wide in the spring 1989 issue, while remaining 
a slender quarterly with both title-keyword 
and author indexes in each issue and a cumu- 
lative author index at the end of each volume. 
The introduction to a recent issue of section C 
(volume 51 , number 4, Winter 1990) makes 
this puzzling statement: "Sections A and B of 
DAI are published monthly and include dis- 
sertations accepted by North American insti- 
tutions and other institutions throughout the 
world. Section C covers a portion of European 
dissertations in all disciplines and is published 
quarterly." 30 The explanation seems to be that 
most of the dissertations with abstracts found 
in section C are not in fact available from 
UMI. Abstracts for those which are so avail- 
able appear in section A or B, as appropriate, 
and in section C. In any case, the 400-plus 
foreign universities whose dissertations have 



DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL 7 1 



ben included thus far in section C are not ones 
researchers are generally interested in. Only 
when DAI comprehensively identifies disser- 
.tations from Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne, 
and other renowned European institutions will 
its international pretensions be meaningful. 

DAPs usefulness has also been chroni- 
cally limited by the omission of several major 
U.S. universities (notably Harvard, MIT, and 
the University of Chicago) which maintain 
close control over reproduction and sale of 
their dissertations. Yet both Harvard and Chi- 
cago are on the list of participating institu- 
tions, something whichmisleads users. Itwould 
be good if DAP s front matter would also state 
not just the year of initial participation, but 
also the percentage of each university's dis- 
sertations which are actually submitted to 
UMI. 

Indexing 

Annoying as the publication details are, 
they are misdemeanors compared with DAPs 
author, title, and subject indexing "practices" — 
or rather, experiments — over half a century. 
Anyone who doubts this should try to memo- 
rize Carl Orgren's explanation and chart of the 
story just up to 1964, which reads like a plot 
rejected by Kafka. 31 Muchhas changed, which 
is a large part of the problem, but not much has 
improved in the intervening decades. (Note, 
however, that several venerable discipline 
indexes such as the MIA International Bibli- 
ography [New York: Modern Language As- 
sociation, 1921—] and Psychological Abstracts 
[Washington: American Psychological Asso- 
ciation, 1927-] have provided author and con- 
trolled- vocabulary subject access to DAI for 
decades, analyzing it like any other scholarly 
journal. There is, in fact, no reason why one 
should not cite a DAI entry as if it were an 
ordinary, if exceedingly short, periodical ar- 
ticle.) 

The case with author indexing, which 
began in 1951 in the last year of Microfilm 
Abstracts? 7 is not one of method but of mad- 



ness: the user never knows where to find it. 
Like the Cheshire Cat, it materializes at will all 
over the bibliographic forest, sometimes in the 
final issue of the volume, sometimes as a 
separate part II of the final issue, sometimes 
listing authors from sections A and B but not 
C, and at one point in the middle 1950s not 
appearing at all for two years! 

As noted above with regret, title indexing, 
which started in the second issue of Microfilm 
A bs tracts and continued through volume 29 of 
DA in June 1969, was never more than cumu- 
lated tables of contents for one or more vol- 
umes, arranged by broad fields— in short, not 
a true title index at all. The conundrum is that, 
unlike book titles, dissertation titles are rarely 
memorable. And even when they are, the fact 
that they are not "normally" advertised means 
that fewpeople know enough to refer to them, 
typically only the writer's advisors, family, 
and fellow students. The best use one can 
make of these title indexes is for browsing to 
see what was being done in an area at a certain 
time, after which one could refer to the ab- 
stracts of interesting items, recognizing that 
one will miss any dissertation not submitted to 
UMI. Far better, because complete, tools for 
browsing are List of American Doctoral Dis- 
sertations Printed in 1912-1938, Doctoral 
Dissertations Accepted by American Univer- 
sities (covering 1934-1955), Index to Ameri- 
can Doctoral Dissertations (covering 1955/ 
56-1962/63), and American Doctoral Disser- 
tations (covering 1 963/64 to the present). These 
works are organized by either Library of Con- 
gress classification, for printed dissertations, 
or by field subdivided by university, the ar- 
rangement of the last three series, and an 
extremely useful approach because most 
graduate students and scholars already know 
which schools are at the forefront of research 
in their specialty. 33 

Subject indexing has been equally prob- 
lematic. There was none at all for more than 
two decades until volumes 22 through 29 (July 
1961 -June 1969) appeared with an annual 
subject index using genuine Library of Con- 



72 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



& 



gress headings and cross-references. But that 
era was too good to last. Beginning with 
volume 30 in July 1969, Di/moved one step 
forward and two steps back. It dropped the 
farce of a title index, but replaced the Library 
of Congress subject index with a keyword-in- 
title (KWTT) computer one. At the same time 
UMI staff had entered all previous disserta- 
tion titles in a database, from which in 1 970 the 
company published an expensive nine-vol- 
ume Retrospective Index covering volumes 1 
through 29 and providing a KWIT approach 
under the all-too-familiar broad discipline 
categories. The result proved to be a disaster 
and was roundly attacked by Ralph Scott who 
said, in one of hiskinder comments, that it was 
"ill conceived and poorly edited . . . [and] 
promises to be the laughing stock of bibliog- 
raphers for years to come." 34 

Chastised but not deterred, UMI began its 
monumental Comprehensive Dissertation In- 
dex (CDI) series in 1973 with the delivery of 
a 37-volume set covering the astonishing time 
period 1861-1972 and an astounding 417,000 
dissertations by UMI's count. The work was 
compiled from information already in the UMI 
database, supplemented by citations to earlier 
dissertations supplied by U.S. and Canadian 
doctorate-granting institutions. As with the 
Retrospective Index, the primary organization 
is by field, with dissertations then listed by 
each keyword in their titles, inreverse chrono- 
logical order. An author index occupies the 
last five volumes. Thus, a dissertation in agri- 
culture with 12 significant title words will 
appear m the agriculture volume 12 separate 
times, each time giving author, full title, de- 
gree, institution, year, andlength. Ifthe disser- 
tation is available from UMI, the order num- 
ber and citation to DAI are provided. There are 
still major difficulties, the most vexing being 
the "invisibility" of dissertations with cute or 
enigmatic titles and the user's need to look up 
all conceivable keywords in all conceivable 
disciplines. Nonetheless, much as many li- 
brarians regret the demise of professionally 
assigned uniform subject access to disserta- 
tions, reaction to CDI was generally favor- 



able, 35 although Israel Shenker, reviewing the 
set in the New York Times, had a field day 
spotting weird or ambiguous dissertation titles 
and other oddities, including 13 dissertations 
on cockroaches. 36 Even Ralph Scott, who had 
rightfully denounced the Retrospective Index 
just three years earlier, gave CJ9/his qualified 
endorsement 37 

UMI has continued to publish annual sets 
of CDI (termed supplements), with five- and 
then ten-year cumulations. These cause some 
confusion because users are not always care- 
ful about which category they open to. For 
instance, in the 1988 set in volume 4, the 
keyword sequence for philosophy begins on 
page 541 and a new keyword sequence for 
religion starts on page 559. It is all too easy to 
lookup relevant keywords in the wrong disci- 
pline. 

Non print Forms of DAI 

Today there are more efficient ways to 
explore the rich CDI lode: by an online search 
in the BRS DISS or the DIALOG 35 files, by 
having UMI staff perform a DATRIX offline 
search, or by using the Dissertation Abstracts 
Ondisc CD-ROM product available in many 
university libraries. With any of these meth- 
ods it is possible either to ignore discipline 
categories altogether or to specify particular 
ones, using codes. One can also qualify a 
search by year or institution to further refine 
the results. 38 One bother accompanies the CD- 
ROM version: the need to swap as many as 
four discs in order to search the entire data- 
base, but this disadvantage is offset by the fact 
that there are no connect time or telecommu- 
nications costs involved as there are with 
online access. 

Eugene Power's brainchild of 1938 is 
now middle-aged, revered, and generally flour- 
ishing, with offspring well established on their 
own. Its growth at times took peculiar turns, 
and its features are far from perfect, but DAI 
will remain a notorious and necessary charac- 
ter in academe as long as dissertations, those 
strange beasties, exist. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNA TIONAL 73 



Microfilm Abstracts. Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms, vol. 1, no. 1, 1938; vol. 2, no. 1, 
1939; vol. 2, no. 2, 1940;vol.3,nos. 1-2,1941; 
vol. 4,no. 1,1942; vol. 4,no. 2, 1943; vol. 5,no. 
1, 1943; vol. 5, no. 2, 1944; vol. 6, nos. 1-2, 
1945;vol.7,no.I,1946;vol.7,no.2,l947;vol. 
8, nos. 1-2, 1948; vol. 9, nos. 1-2, 1949; vol. 9, 
no. 3, 1950; vol. 10,nos. 1-4, 1950; vol. 11, nos. 
1-4, 1951. 11 vols. 

Dissertation Abstracts, Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms, vol. 12(1952)-vol.26,no. 12 (June, 
1966). 15 vols. Bimonthly, 1952-1 953; monthly, 
January 1954-June 1966. 

Dissertation Abstracts: A, Humanities and Social 
Sciences. Ann Arbor, MI: University Micro- 
films, vol. 27, no. 1 (July, 1966)-vol.29,no. 12 
(June 1969). 3 vols. Monthly. 

Dissertation Abstracts: B, Sciences and Engineer- 
ing. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 
vol. 27, no. 1 (July, 1966)-vol. 29, no. 12 (June, 
1969). 3 vols. Monthly. 

Dissertation Abstracts International: A, Humanities 
and Social Sciences. Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms International, vol. 30, no. 1 (July, 
1969)- . Monthly. [Also available on microfilm 
or microfiche; orders can be placed for specific 
disciplines.] 

Dissertation Abstracts International: B, Sciences 
and Engineering. Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms International, vol. 30, no. 1 (July, 
1969)- . Monthly. [Also available on microfilm 
or microfiche; orders can be placed for specific 
disciplines.] 

Dissertation Abstracts International: C, European 
Abstracts. Ann Arbor, MI: University Micro- 
films International, vol. 37, no. 1 (Autumn, 
1976)-vol. 49, no. 4 (Winter, 1988). 13 vols. 
Quarterly. 

Dissertation Abstracts International: C, Worldwide. 
Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms Interna- 
tional, vol. 50, no. 1 (Spring, 1989)- . Quarterly. 



Indexes 

Dissertation Abstracts International, Retrospective 
Index, Volumes I-XXIX. Ann Arbor, MI: Uni- 
versity Microfilms, 1970. 9 vols. 

Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 1 861-19 72 . Ann 
Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 1973. 



37 vols. Comprehensive Dissertation Index: 
Supplement, 1973-. Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms International, 1974-. 5 vols./year. 
Annual. [Also available on microfiche.] 

Comprehensive Dissertation Index: Five-Year Cu- 
mulation, 1973-1977. Ann Arbor, MI: Univer- 
sity Microfilms International, 1979. 19 vols. 

Comprehensive Dissertation Index: Ten-Year Cu- 
mulation, 1973-1982. Ann Arbor, MI: Univer- 
sity Microfilms International, 1984. 38 vols. 

Comprehensive Dissertation Index: Five-Year Cu- 
mulation, 1983-1987. Ann Arbor, MI: Univer- 
sity Microfilms International, 1989. 22 vols. 
[Also available on microfiche and in separate 
packages for either the sciences or the social 
sciences and humanities.] 

Library and Information Science: Selected Collec- 
tion of Doctoral Dissertations and Masters 
Theses, 1984-1988, Ann Arbor, MI: Disserta- 
tion Abstracts International, 1989. 24p. Update 
frequency varies. [This is one of about six dozen 
free subject catalogs extracted from the Com- 
prehensive Dissertation Index database.] 



Machine-Readable Products 

DATRLX. Offline flat-fee search service of the entire 
dissertation and thesis database, available on 
request from University Microfilms Interna- 
tional. 1967- . 

Dissertation Abstracts Online. Covers 1861- ; ab- 
stracts included, July 1980- . Ann Arbor, MI: 
University Microfilms International. Updated 
monthly. [Available as DISS file from BRS 
Information Technologies and as File 35 from 
Dialog Information Services.] 

Dissertation A bstracts Ondisc. Ann Arbor, MI: Uni- 
versity Microfilms International, 1987- . Ar- 
chival I, 1861-June 1980; Archival II, July 
1980-December 1984; Archival III, 1985-1988; 
Current disc, 1989- . Semiannual updates, [In 
1991 two subsets became available as separate 
subscriptions, each subset corresponding to the 
discipline groupings in section A (humanities 
and social sciences) or section B (sciences and 
engineering) of the print tool. In either case, 
there is both an archival disc (1861-1985) and 
a current one (1986- ) with semiannual up- 
dates.! 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The secondary literature on Dissertation 
Abstracts is not large, surprisingly, given that 
it is a major reference tool which has been 



around for half a century. Among the items 
cited below, Colling's article, almost 20 years 
old, is the only overview of DAI before the 



,i>^S^P 



74 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



n 

^1 



present essay, and Meckler's book is the best 
general history of microforms. Power's auto- 
biography, Edition of One, although it is full of 
interesting anecdotes about his career and 
company, rambles and lacks precise dates. It 
has, however, an appendix which reprints his 
1938 manifesto on the subject of reproducing 
dissertations on microfilm. Moore's two-part 
study is essential for anyone trying to trace 
dissertation bibliographies over time. Orgren's 
brief article helps one appreciate the features 
of DAI as it is today by discussing how imp os- 
sibly confusing it used to be. Shenker's is by 
far the most informative and delightful review 
of the Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 

Asleson, Robert F. "A One-Mi llion-Erltry 'Starting 
Place' for Finding Dissertations." Wilson Li- 
brary Bulletin 46 (September, 1971): 76-77. 
Reply to Scott, below. 

Colling, Patricia M. "Dissertation Abstracts Interna- 
tional." In Encyclopedia of Library and Infor- 
mation Science, editedby Allen Kentand Harold 
Lancour, vol. 7, 238-40. New York: Marcel 
Dekker, 1972. 

Davinson, Donald. Theses and Dissertations As In- 
formation Sources. London: Clive Bingley; 
Hamden, CT: Linnet Books, 1977. 

Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc: Quick Reference 
Guide. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms 
International, 1987. 

Meckler, Alan Marshall Micropublishing: A His- 
tory of Scholarly Micropublishing in America, 
1 938-1980. Contributions in Librarianship and 
Information Science, no. 40. Westport, CT: 
Greenwood Press, 1982, 

Moore, Julie L. "Bibliographic Control of American 
Doctoral Dissertations: A History." Special Li- 
braries 63 (May/June, 1972): 227-30. 

. "Bibliographic Control of American Doc- 
toral Dissertations: An Analysis." Special Li- 
braries 63 (July, 1972): 285-91. 



Orgren, Carl F. "Index to Dissertations Abstracts." 
College and Research Libraries 25 (July, 1964): 
279-80. 

Power, Eugene B., and Robert Anderson. Edition of 
One. The Autobiography of Eugene B. Power, 
Founder of University Microfilms. Ann Arbor, 
MI: University Microfilms International, 1990. 

— -. "Microfilm and the Publication of Doctoral 

Dissertations." Journal of Documentary Repro- 
duction 5 (March, 1942): 37-44. 
— . A Plan for Publication of Scholarly Mate- 



rial on Microfilm, Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms, 1938. Reprinted in Edition of One: 
The Autobiography of EugeneB. Power, Founder 
of University Microfilms, by Eugene B. Power 
and Robert Anderson, 379-83. Ann Arbor, ML 
University Microfilms International, 1990. 

. "University Microfilms." Journal of Docu- 
mentary Reproduction 2 (March, 1939): 21-28. 

Review of Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 1861- 
1972. Choice 11 (July/August, 1974): 734. 

Scott, Ralph L. "A $1,000 Misunderstanding: UM's 
Indexto Its Dissertation Abstracts International." 
Wilson Library Bulletin 46 (September, 1971): 
73-76. For a reply, see Asleson, above. 

. "Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 1861— 

1972." RQ 14 (Fall, 1974): 61-62. 

Sheehy, Eugene P. Review of Comprehensive Dis- 
sertation Index, 1861-1972. College & Re- 
search Libraries 35 (July, 1974): 245-46. 

Shenker, Israel. "A Xeroxian Synopsis of Ph.D. 
Esoterica." New York Times, February 11,1974, 
p. 37, col, 6; p. 71, col. 4. 

Snelson, Pamela. "Online Access to Dissertations." 
Database 5 (June, 1982): 22-33. 

User's Guide, Dissertation Abstracts Online: How to 
Use the Online Dissertation Database Step-by- 
Step, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms 
International, 1988. 

Wynar, Bohdan S. Review of Comprehensive Dis- 
sertation Index, 1861-1972. American Refer- 
ence Books Annual 6 (1975): 309-10. 



NOTES 



1 Theodore Ziolkowski, "The Ph.D. Squid," American 

Scholar 59 (Spring 1990): 177-95. 

2 Sec Table I, "Practices of Publication and Loan of 

Doctoral Dissertations," appearing annually, with 
slight title variations, in Doctoral Dissertations 
Accepted by American Universities (New York: H. 
W. Wilson, 1934-1955); Index to American Doc- 
toral Dissertations (Ann Arbor, MI: University 
Microfilms, 1955/1956-1962/1963); and Ameri- 
can Doctoral Dissertations (Ann Arbor, Ml: Uni- 



versity Microfilms International, 1963/1964-1982/ 
1983), This useful information was dropped from 
more recent volumes of the last named title. 
3 The word thesis is often used as a synonym for disser- 
tation, but, in the U.S. at least, the former more 
accurately refers to a report of research conducted 
at the pre- or sub-doctoral stage, the latter to work 
at the doctoral level. That distinction will be main- 
tained throughout this essay. 



DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL 75 



4 For an excellent overview of the complex situation in 

the early 1 940s, together with an eloquent rationale 
for filming dissertations, see Eugene B. Power, 
"Microfilm and the Publication of Doctoral Disser- 
tations," Journal of Documentary Reproduction 5 
(March 1942): 37-44. 

5 Michael M. Reynolds, Guide to Theses and Disserta- 

tions: An International Bibliography of Bibliogra- 
phies, rev. and enl. ed. (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 
1985). A similar tool for just master's theses is 
Dorothy M. Black, Guide to Lists of Master's 
Theses (Chicago: American Library Association, 
1 965). The Eugene P, Sheehy, ed., Guide to Refer- 
ence Books, 10th ed., (Chicago: American Library 
Association, 1 986) also identifies numerous disser- 
tation bibliographies via its index. To find disserta- 
tion bibliographies in a library catalog, one can use 
the Library of Congress subject heading 
"Dissertations, Academic — [country] — Bibliogra- 
phy." Bibliographic Index (New York: H. W. 
Wilson, 1 93 8-) lists dissertation bibliographies on 
all subjects together under "Dissertations, Aca- 
demic." 

6 Dietrich Hans Borchardt and John D, Thawley, Guide to 

the Availability of Theses, IFLAPublicationsno. 17 
(Munich: Saur, 1981); G. G. Allen and K. Deubert, 
Guide to the A vailability of Theses: II, Non-Univer- 
sity Institutions, IFLAPublicationsno. 29 (Munich: 
Saur, 1984); Joseph Z.Nitecki,comp.,Z}j>ectory of 
Library Reprographic Services, 8th ed. (Westport, 
CT: Published for the Reproduction of Library 
Materials Section, American Library Association, 
by Meckler, 1982); Leslie R. Morris and Patsy 
Brautigam, Interlibrary Loan Policies Directory, 
3rd ed. (New York: Neal-Schuman, 1988). 

7 See, for instance, issues of Library & Information 

Science Research (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1979- ). 

8 Eugene Power has always stressed that his business 

exists to publish dissertations, a verb which the 
universities involved treat loosely to mean "make- 
available-to-save-us-the-trouble." The academic 
establishment, however, would contend that 
pseudo-, quasi-, or ersatz publishing would be 
more accurate, since what Power acknowledges are 
traditional prejudices against microfilm remain en- 
trenched half a century later, as does the conviction 
among experts that dissertations are mere novice 
research reports and only deserve genuine (i.e., 
book) publication after major reworking and inde- 
pendent peer review. A classic essay on the revi- 
s ions involved is Frances G. Halpcnny , "The Thesis 
and the Book," Scholarly Publishing 3 (January 
1972): 111-16. 
^The company was called simply University Microfilms 
from its inception to the middle 1 960s, after which 
it was known as Xerox University Microfilms. The 
name became University Microfilms International 
in June 1976, although it was still owned by Xerox. 
{Dissertation Abstracts had, however, already added 
"International" to its title in July 1969.) "UMI," 
really the corporate logo, appears on letterhead and 
most publications now, but is not the official name. 
In legal contexts University Microfilms, Inc., has 
been used continuously since 1938. 



10 "Microfilm Deal Slated by Xerox/Wov YorkTtmes,2\ 
February 1962, p. 75, col. 2; "Briefs," New York 
Times, 18 December 1985, p. D5, col. 6. 

1 ' For factual information about UMI, the author wishes 
to thank Dorie Mickelson, Marna Clowney, and 
Clare Long of UMI. The opinions and judgments 
expressed are, however, entirely the author's. 

n Alan Marshall Meckler, Micropublishing: A History of 
Scholarly Micro-publishing in America, 1938-1980, 
Contributions in Librarianship and Information 
Science no. 40 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 
1982), 6-7. 

15 Eugene Power was born in Traverse City, Michigan, in 
1905. He received an A.B. from the University of 
Michigan in 1927 and an M.B.A. there in 1930. His 
memoirs, written with Robert Anderson, have ap- 
peared as Edition of One: The Autobiography of 
Eugene B. Power, Founder of University Micro- 
films (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms Inter- 
national, 1990). Anderson, who died in early 1990, 
was also coauthor with Ray Kroc of Grinding It 
Out: The Making ofMcDonald's (Chicago: Regnery, 
1977), and with Thomas S. Monaghan of Pizza 
Tiger (New York: Random House, 1986), a history 
of Domino's Pizza. The tone of all three books is 
unabashedly egocentric . Power and Monaghan are, 
incidentally, good friends. 

14 From most of the United States the number is 800-52 1 - 

3042. Customers in Alaska or Michigan are told to 
makea collect call to 3 13-761 -4700, ext. 781. From 
Canada the phone is 800-343-5299, ext. 781. There 
is also a fax number, 313-665-5022. 

15 The gigantic microfilm series continues to this day 

under the title Marly English Books, using as its 
bibliographic basis Alfred William Pollard and G. 
R. Redgrave, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed 
in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English 
Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640 (London: Bib- 
liographical Society, 1926; reprinted Oxford; Ox- 
ford University Press, 1946). 

16 Eugene B. Power, A Plan for Publication of Scholarly 

Material on Microfilm (Ann Arbor, Ml: University 
Microfilms, 1938); reprinted in Power and Ander- 
son, Edition of One, 379-80. 

17 Ibid., 380. The charge was originally $15 and has 

increased to $25 in 1990, although it is explained 
today as a fee for having UMI copyright the disser- 
tation, not as a filming fee. Also, the maximum 
length of an abstract has fluctuated in the past, with 
700 words allowed at one time but only 350 in 
recent years. This reduction coincided approxi- 
mately with the inclusion of full-text abstracts in the 
BRS and DIALOG databases and in UMI's own 
CD-ROM product, effective with titles added in 
July 1980. 

18 Ibid., 380. Thus, at$.0125 per page, microfilm of a 486- 

page dissertation came to $6.08. Paper "enlarge- 
ments" were also offered at six cents per page, or 
$29.16 for the same item. To compare, as of January 
1991, prices for dissertations from UMI, regardless 
of length, are as follows: when ordered by anyone 
affiliated with an academic institution, $27.00 for 
either 35 mm microfilm or 98-frame microfiche; 



76 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



m 



$32,50 fora paper copy withsoftcover;arid$39. 50 
for a paper copy with hard cover. Prices for orders 
from outside academe are, respectively, $11.00, 
$21.00, and $25.00 higher. Shipping and handling 
are extra and vary dependingon the delivery method 
chosen. Orders arrive in three to four weeks. 

"Eugene B. Power, "Introduction," to Microfilm Ab- 
stracts 1, no. 1 (1938): v-vi. 

w Ibid., vi. Emphasis added. 

11 Eugene B. Power, "Introduction," to Microfilm Ab- 
stracts %, no. 2 (1948): iv. 

22 An example of a monograph abstract appended to the 
end of occasional issues of Microfilm Abstracts is 
a work in several parts by Joshua Whatmough, 
entitled "The Dialects of Ancient Gaul," As each 
section appeared, it was separately abstracted dur- 
ing 1950 and 1951. 

23 In early years, both Microfilm Abstracts and Disserta- 
tion Abstracts included "title" and author indexing 
for two other abstracting publications, one put out 
at Pennsylvania State University and the other at 
Colorado State University. Therefore, some of the 
816 entries in volume 11 were to dissertations 
available on film from those institutions only and 
not from Ann Arbor, 

^Publishing Your Dissertation: How to Prepare Your 
Manuscript for Publication (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI 
Dissertation Services, n.d.), 

"Publishers Weekly 133 (1 9 February 1938), 938; ALA 
Bulletin 33 (February 1939): 89; Journal of Docu- 
mentary Reproduction 2 (March 1939): 44-45. 
Publishers Weekly said Power' s plan "may be revo- 
lutionary in the Field of scholarly publishing." 

26 Compare a subscription at $6.00 per year with the 

standing order price in late 1 990 of sections A and 
B together at $495, including the author indexes, 
and of section C, which has four rather than twelve 
issues, at another $515. Despite these subscription 
rates, "UMI actually produces £Wat a loss, expect- 
ing dissertation copy sales to offset the production 
costs of the reference tools." (Dorie Micfcelson, 
Manager of Database and Bibliographic Opera- 
tions, UMI Dissertation Information Services Unit, 
letter to the author, 17 October 1990.) Volume 12 
was also the first to list, in issue number 6, which 
institutions were represented, although the starting 
year for each university's involvement with UMI 
was only indicated beginning with volume 26 in 
July 1965, and then always with caveats to the 
effect that some participating schools only supply 
abstracts and do not have their dissertations filmed 
or distributed by UMI. Lastly, in 19S2.04 increased 
in size from its original squat 5.5" x 8.25" dimen- 
sions to the 8.5" x 1 1" format it has today. 

27 "Introduction," to Dissertation Abstracts 19 (July 

1958):iii. 

28 "Introduction," to Dissertation Abstracts Interna- 

tional: A, The Humanities and Social Sciences 30 
(July 1969): [iii]. 



29 "UMI to Distribute Canadian Dissertations," news 

release (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms 
International, 1 March 1990). 

30 "Introduction," to Dissertation Abstracts Interna- 

tional: C, Worldwide 5\ (Spring 1990): v. There is 
now a separate abstracting tool for British disserta- 
tions, Index to Theses with Abstracts Accepted for 
Higher Degrees by the Universities of Great Britain 
and Ireland and the Council for National Academic 
Awards, vol. 35- (London: Aslib, 1986-). 

31 Carl F. Orgren, "Index to Dissertation Abstracts," 

College & Research Libraries 25 (July 1964): 279- 
80. 

32 For coverage of earlier years, see Microfilm Abstracts 

Author Index, CoveringVolumesl-11, 1938-1951, 
compiled by the Georgia Chapter of the Special 
Libraries Association with the cooperation of Uni- 
versity Microfilms (Atlanta: Georgia Chapter Spe- 
cial Libraries Association, 1956). 

33 U.S. Library of Congress Catalog Division, List of 

American Doctoral Dissertations Printed in 1912- 
1938 ("Washington: Government Printing Office, 
1913-39) ; Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by 
American Universities, compiled for the National 
Research Council and the American Council of 
Learned Societies by the Association of Research 
Libraries (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1934-55); 
Index to American Doctoral Dissertations (Ann 
Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 
1955/56-1 962/63); American Doctoral Disserta- 
tions (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms Inter- 
national, 1 963/64- ). For a detailed discussion of 
the inter-relationships and characteristics of these 
tools, see the two-part article by Julie L. Moore, 
"Bibliographic Control of American Doctoral Dis- 
sertations," Special Libraries 63 (May/June 1 972): 
227-30 and (July 1972): 285-91. 

14 Ralph L. Scott, "A Si, 000 Misunderstanding; UM's 
Index to Its Dissertation Abstracts International," 
Wilson Library Bulletin 46 (September 1971): 73. 
A rejoinder by Robert Asleson, then president of 
University Microfilms, follows. 

33 See review of Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 
1861-1972, Choice 1 1 (July/August 1974): 734; 
Eugene P. Sheehy, review of Comprehensive Dis- 
sertation Index. 1861-1 972,College & Research 
Libraries 35 (July 1974); 245-46; Israel Shenker, 
"A Xeroxian Synopsis of Ph.D. Esoterica," New 
York Times, 11 February 1974, p. 37, col. 6, p. 71, 
col, 4; Bohdan S. Wynar, review of Comprehensive 
Dissertation Index, 1861-1972, American Refer- 
ence Books Annual 6 (1975): 309-10. 

'* Shenker, p. 37, col. 8. 

37 Ralph L. Scott, review of Comprehensive Dissertation 

Index, 1861-1 972, RQ 14 (Fall 1974): 62. 

38 User's Guide: Dissertation Abstracts Online (Ann 

Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 
1988); Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc: Quick Ref- 
erence Guide (Ann Arbor, MLUniversity Micro- 
Films International, 1987). 



The Circle of Learning: 
Encyclopaedia Britannica 



Sandy Whiteley 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in 
1768, is the second oldest continuously pub- 
lished reference workin the English language. 
As an encyclopedia it had several centuries of 
precursors. Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia 
or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences 
(not to be confused with the modern 
Chambers's Encyclopaedia), first published 
in Great Britain in 1728, was the inspiration 
for Diderot's famous Encyclopedic (1751— 
1765), which, in turn, directly stimulated the 
creation of EB. 

EB's origins lie in Edinburgh, where it 
was first published in individual parts which 
subscribers had bound into volumes. Later it 
was published in half-volumes, then volumes; 
by the eleventh edition (1910-11) all the vol- 
umes in the set except the index were pub- 
lished at once, as we know it today. Early 
editions were sold on subscription; the pub- 
lishers used the proceeds from the sale of first 
parts or volumes to pay for the production of 
later ones, which sometimes resulted in a 
drawn-out publication schedule of more than 
a decade. Although encyclopedias are still 
called subscription books, they aren't sold that 
way any more. The term has come to mean 
books sold in the home and in the contempo- 
rary U.S., that is largely encyclopedias. 

Encyclopedias can be organized in one of 
two principal ways: systematically/topically 



or alphabetically. Within an alphabetically ar- 
ranged set, an encyclopedia's articles can 
cover either broad or specific subjects. Each 
combination of organizational options has its 
virtues. The alphabetical sequence is easy to 
use and is neutral (it doesn't favor one philo- 
sophical arrangement of knowledge over an- 
other), butit scatters various aspects of knowl- 
edge. The first 14 editions of EB were ar- 
ranged in one alphabet, but varied from edi- 
tion to edition to the degree to which broad or 
specific entries were used. With the fifteenth 
edition, some elements of a systematic/topical 
arrangement were introduced. 

Andrew Belt and Colin Macfarquhar 

The first edition of EB was conceived by 
two Scots, Andrew Bell and Colin 
Macfarquhar, an engraver and a printer. They 
were responsible for getting subscribers and 
hired William Smellie, a printer who had 
apprenticed for the printer to the University of 
Edinburgh, as editor. This first edition ap- 
peared in 100 parts between 1768 and 1771 
with a total of 2,689 pages. There were 160 
copperplate engravings scattered through the 
set, 1 The encyclopedia doesn't appear to have 
been very well planned. The articles for A-B 
took up the first volume, those for C-L the 
next, and the whole second hal f of the alphabet 
was squeezed into volume 3. The set con- 
tained 75 lengthy articles (on broad topics 



i 
u 



H 



«£*-*"' 



78 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



such as anatomy, chemistry, and law), some of 
them over 100 pages long, with brief dictio- 
nary-type articles, many of which were only 
one sentence long, interspersed. This edition 
of EB, like several that followed, contained 
articles digested from other sources plus new 
material written by the editor. It is not known 
how much of this set Smellie actually wrote 
himself, but it appears that his contribution 
was substantial. There were no biographies 
but many practical articles gave instructions 
on surgery, counterfeiting emeralds, and bee- 
keeping as well as other aspects of farming, 
reflecting Smellie's view that "Utility ought to 
be the principal intention of every publica- 
tion." 2 The encyclopedia inevitably reflected 
the level of knowledge of the day and much 
superstition and prejudice appeared. Califor- 
nia was described as "a large country of the 
West Indies." But the article "Midwifery" was 
illustrated with engravings that showed nor- 
mal and abnormal deliveries in clinical detail, 
creating a scandal among some subscribers. 
More than 3,000 sets were sold and the ency- 
clopedia was popular enough to be issued in a 
pirated edition by London publishers. 3 

Bell and Macfarquhar issued the second 
edition between 1777 and 1784 in 181 parts 
which were later bound in ten quarto volumes. 
It was almost three times larger than the first 
edition (8,595 pages) and contained maps and 
340 copperplates. The new editor, James 
Tytler, was an unsuccessful surgeon turned 
writer. Many articles from the first edition 
were retained and Tytler wrote new ones. This 
edition included biographies of deceased per- 
sons and geographical articles were expanded 
to include history. Like the first edition, many 
entries reflected a literal acceptance of the 
Bible. For instance, in "Chronology," the date 
of the world's creation was given as 4004 BC, 
and floor plans of Noah's ark were provided. 
Longer articles sometimes had indexes printed 
at the end of them. 

Bell and Macfarquhar also published the 
third edition between 1788 and 1797, hiring a 
series of editors. It was almost twice as large 
as the second, with 14,579 pages in 18 vol- 



umes and 542 engravings. Many articles con- 
tinued to be reprinted from the earlier editions. 
The third was popular all through the British 
Isles (13,000 sets were printed), 4 and it was the 
first of many editions to be issued in a pirated 
edition in the U.S. American publishers re- 
wrote some entries they thought too British 
(such as the one on the United States). (The 
U. S. copyright law at that time protected only 
American authors. Britannica continues to be 
pirated today, this time in Asia. 5 ) A two- 
volume supplement was published in 1 80 1 . Its 
article on chemistry was the first in EB to use 
chemical symbols. This edition was the first to 
be dedicated to thereigning sovereign, a prac- 
tice continued in every subsequent edition. 

The fourth edition was published in parts 
between 1801 and 1809. Its 20 volumes con- 
tained 16,033 pages. By this time Macfarquhar 
was dead and Bell was the sole publisher. This 
edition was edited by Dr. James Millar, clas- 
sical scholar and physician. Most volumes 
were little more than reprints of the third 
edition. Some new articles were added, among 
them a full description of Jenner's successful 
use of vaccination against cowpox in 1796. 
The fourth edition's additions reflect Millar's 
interests in chemistry and natural history. 

After Bell's death, the copyright for EB 
was purchased from his heirs by Edinburgh 
publisher Archibald Constable. HehiredMillar 
to edit the fifth edition as well. Published in 
1815, it was a corrected version of the fourth 
edition with some new articles. In 20 volumes 
with more than 16,000 pages, it was the first 
edition of Britannica to be advertised in news- 
papers, the principal advertising medium of 
the day. 

Refinements in Procedures and 
Content 

By the nineteenth century, several other 
encyclopedias were being published in Great 
Britain. To compete, Constable recruited au- 
thorities to write about the subjects they knew 
best for a six- volume supplement to Britannica. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 79 



For the first time, most articles were signed 
original contributions rather than, as in the 
past, digests of previously publishedmaterial. 
Britannica was the first encyclopedia to print 
initials at the end of the articles; a key linked 
these to the names of the authors, Some of the 
well known contributors were Sir Walter Scott 
on chivalry, William Hazlitt on fine arts, and 
Thomas Malthus on population. There also 
were foreign contributors. Edited by Macvey 
Napier, librarian and scholar, and published 
between 1815 and 1 824, these volumes served 
as a supplement to the fourth and fifth editions 
and to the sixth edition, which was issued 
concurrently with the supplement. The six 
volumes were issued in half-volume parts and 
totaled 5,000 pages containing 125 plates. 
One-quarter of the 669 articles were biogra- 
phies, all treating deceased subjects. 

The sixth edition, also published in parts 
between 1 820 and 1 823 by Constable, was just 
a corrected version of the fifth with a few new 
articles. Cross-references were added, lead- 
ing from the main volumes to the supplement. 
After the death of Constable, the copyrights 
were bought by Edinburgh bookshop owner 
Adam Black, later of the publishing firm of A 
& C Black. He issued the seventh edition, also 
edited by Napier, between 1830 and 1842. 
This set of 22 volumes and 17, 101 pages with 
506 plates represented a greater increase in 
size than the numbers might indicate because 
the pages were now larger, It was a revision of 
previous editions, incorporating some of the 
best articles from the supplement. New ar- 
ticles included Thomas de Quincey on 
Shakespeare, Pope, and Schiller. The seventh 
edition was heavily advertised and was the 
first to have a separate index. "While the qual- 
ity of the indexing was not good, this inclusion 
of an index set a precedent that other encyclo- 
pedias were to follow (but that Britannica 
itself abandoned for a time more than a cen- 
tury later). 

The eighth edition was edited by Dr. Tho- 
mas Stewart Traill, professor at the University 
of Edinburgh, replacing Napier, who had died. 



It was published between 1 852 and 1 860 in 22 
volumes with 17,957 pages. Some classic 
articles, including pieces by Scott, Ricardo, 
and Malthus, were reprinted, New articles 
included biographies by Macaulay of Samuel 
Johnson, JohnBunyan, Oliver Goldsmith, and 
William Pitt. An American contributor, the 
president of Harvard, appeared for the first 
time, writing on George Washington. New 
topics included photography, Communism, 
and the telegraph. In addition to separate pages 
of engraved plates, many illustrations from 
line blocks were inserted in the text. 

The Celebrated Ninth Edition 

The aging Black wasn't interested in a 
new edition, but his sons prevailed upon him 
and took over the firm. The resulting ninth 
edition, often called the Scholar's Edition, 
reflected the changes in intellectual thought 
occasioned by Darwin' s Origin of the Species. 
It is one of the most famous of all encyclope- 
dias and can still be found in many libraries 
today . For the first time, the set had an English 
rather than a Scottish editor, Professor Tho- 
mas Baynes, a Shakespearean scholar at St. 
Andrews University. The 25 volumes pre- 
sented the work of 1 , 1 00 contributors and took 
1 4 years to produce, being completed in 1 8 89. 
The articles are often described as leisurely 
nineteenth-century essays — long and beauti- 
fully written. T.H. Huxley wrote on evolution; 
Lord Rayleigh, who later won the Nobel Prize, 
on physics; and Lord Kelvin on chemistry. 
Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote on John 
Keats and Dante Gabriel Rossetti contributed 
biographies of painters. The article on anar- 
chism was written by the revolutionary Prince 
Kropotkin. James G. Frazer, then an unknown 
Cambridge don, wrote on anthropology. He 
later said his research tot Britannica articles 
marked the beginning of his systematic study 
of the subject which led to the publication of 
The Golden Bough. The ninth edition took a 
progressive stand on religious and scientific 
questions. W. Robertson Smith wrote many of 



3^ 




80 nTSTTNfil JISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



the ninth edition's articles that presented a 
historical interpretation of Christianity . As a 
result, he lost his position as a clergyman and 
became joint editor of the ninth edition. Some 
innovations in this edition were the use of 
colored plates and colored maps. Dates were 
given for a person's birth and death, an inno- 
vation despite the long presence of biogra- 
phies in Britannica, and longer articles were 
supplied with bibliographies. Because publi- 
cation of a volume was dependent on revenues 
from previous volumes, publication was a 
protracted process, and the earlier volumes 
were somewhat outdated by the time the later 
ones appeared. The ninth edition contained 
1 7,000 articles in 20,000 pages in 24 volumes. 
Some out-of-date articles were retained from 
the eighth edition but in the main this was a 
new work. Though scholarly, it did have some 
articles on practical topics, such as cookery, 
croquet, and making snowshoes. 

Five times as many sets were sold in the 
U.S., where an authorized edition was distrib- 
uted by Scribner's and Little, Brown, as in 
Great Britain. But even after the International 
Copyright Law was passed in the U.S. in 1 89 1 , 
piracy continued. Despite competition from 
such U.S. encyclopedias as the Encyclopedia 
Americana, 45,000 authorized sets 6 of the 
ninth edition were sold in the U. S . a s well as an 
unknown number of pirated sets. 

The late nineteenth century saw a boom in 
subscription book sales in the U. S . There were 
door-to-door sales of all sorts of books — 
cookbooks, Bibles, legal books, biographies — 
especially in the rural U.S. where people had 
no access to bookstores. While on vacation in 
England, Horace Everett Hooper, who had 
worked for subscription distributors, learned 
of a new printing of the ninth edition of 
Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 1 898 he entered 
into a joint venture with the London Times to 
sell an inexpensive reprint of the ninth edition 
on credit. He was the first to apply installment 
buying to books. He also applied the new 
advertising techniques being used to sell soap 
and cigarettes to selling EB. By this time A & 
C Black had moved from Edinburgh to Lon- 



don, and Hooper bought the rights to reprint 
the ninth edition from them. The Times was in 
a bad financial state and needed this new 
source of revenue. They ran advertisements 
and took orders, for which they received a 
commission. The reprint was sold at a more 
than 60 percent price reduction and was enor- 
mously successful, so much so that the need 
for a supplement was seen. A & C Black's 
ownership of Britannica began to be liqui- 
dated. By 1 90 1 EB was owned by Hooper and 
another American, Walter Montgomery Jack- 
son. An American editorial office was opened 
for the first time and Hooper' s brother Franklin 
was made American editor. Journalist Hugh 
Chisholm was named editor in London, where 
the main editorial office remained. 

The Twentieth Century 

The tenth edition (1902-03) reprinted the 
25 volumes of the ninth edition (some of 
which were now 25 years old) and added 1 1 
more. The new volumes contained photo- 
graphs, a first for Britannica. A single index 
volume covered both the old volumes and the 
new ones. Hooper designed a frenzied adver- 
tising campaign for Britannica. There was 
even a contest with one of the prizes a schol- 
arship to Oxford or Cambridge. Sales agents 
were sent throughout the Empire and even to 
Japan. Some Britons scorned the "Yankee 
invasion" and the use of American advertising 
tactics. Hooper now took on the additional job 
of advertising director of the Times. Ahead of 
his time in many ways, Hooper got the Times 
involved in selling discounted books which 
led to conflict with other publishers and even- 
tually to the sale of the newspaper. Britannica 's 
contract with the Times was cancelled. 

During this time work was proceeding on 
a totally new eleventh edition. Jackson was 
now more active in an American firm, the 
Grolier Society, which was publishing The 
Book of Knowledge, the precursor of today's 
New Book of Knowledge. Conflict arose be- 
tween Hooper and Jackson because Hooper 
wanted a completely new eleventh edition and 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 8 1 



Jackson wanted to reuse some of the ninth and 
tenth editions. Their discord led to a series of 
lawsuits, and work was suspended on the new 
edition while Jackson and Hooper tried to buy 
each other out. Finally, Hooper worked out an 
arrangement with Cambridge University Press 
that enabled him to publish the eleventh edi- 
tion. Though Cambridge did not put up any 
money and was to get a royalty on each set 
sold, its backing enabled Hooper to borrow 
money to finish the set. The university had the 
right to read all articles before publication and 
to censor ads and as a result the ads were 
considerably less florid than Hooper liked. 
For instance, he had to change a hyperbolic ad 
that read "The Source of all Knowledge" to 
the tamer "The Key to All Knowledge." 7 

The eleventh edition of Britannica has 
been called the finest ever published. Issued in 
1910-191 1, it had 1,507 contributors, among 
them 168 fellows of the Royal Society. Fa- 
mous contributors included Thomas Huxley, 
Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Murray Butler, 
Frederick Jackson Turner, Robert Louis 
Stevenson, and Alfred North Whitehead. Brit- 
ish contributors were still the largest number, 
but Americans were next, outnumbering Eu- 
ropeans. It was the first edition to acknowl- 
edge the importance of the American market 
by being dedicated to the president of the 
United States as well as the king. It was also 
the first edition to be typeset and printed in the 
United States as well as in Great Britain. It was 
printed on thin, opaque India paper, the kind 
used for Bibles. Because the ninth edition had 
been issued over so many years, it hadbecome 
a collection of monographs which were not 
very unified. The eleventh edition was not just 
a revision of the ninth; editorial planning and 
control were much improved and more edito- 
rial work was done on contributions than in 
any previous edition. This edition took more 
of a specific-entry approach than the ninth, 
splitting up topics from the ninth edition into 
more short articles. Although the new set was 
only slightly larger, the eleventh edition con- 
tained 40,000 articles versus 17,000 in the 



ninth edition. It was more of a practical refer- 
ence work for lay people than just a source for 
scholars. There was a drift toward populariza- 
tion, with more biographies of contemporary 
people. Most critics found it far more read- 
able. The public agreed; morethan75 ,000 sets 
were sold.* 

Sale and Resale of BB 

After one last legal battle, Hooper finally 
bought Jackson out in 1914, Hooper decided 
to issue a biennial book to update the eleventh 
edition and published it in 1913 as the 
Britannica Year Book. Nearly a quarter of the 
pages were devoted to American topics. There 
were plans for a children's encyclopedia but 
the outbreak of World War I caused the can- 
cellation of that project as sales of Britannica 
dropped sharply and plans for future editions 
of the Year Book were shelved as well. Hooper 
returned to the U.S. His next project was a 
photo-reduced set of the eleventh edition of 
Britannica^ the "Handy Volume" edition, to 
be sold through the Sears & Roebuck catalog 
for $55. It was very successful, with 200,000 
sets sold. 9 With U.S. entry into the war in 
1917, President Wilson asked for a curtail- 
ment of installment buying and sales of the 
"Handy Volume" edition dropped dramati- 
cally. As he had done previously when faced 
with a financial crisis, Hooper tried to align EB 
with a major university or scholarly society, 
but was unsuccessful. Sears, led by philan- 
thropist Julius Rosenwald, came to the rescue 
and bought the set. 

In 1920 Hooper undertook a supplement 
to treat the war years. Contributors included 
the president of the new republic of Czecho- 
slovakia, Thomas Masaryk, and General 
Danilov writing on the Russian Army. Many 
articles were devoted to blow-by-blow ac- 
counts of particular battles, but little attention 
was paid to the humanities. For instance, 16 
pages were devoted to artillery but only four to 
music. The so-called twelfth edition was made 
up of the eleventh edition and these three 



82 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Vi 



supplementary volumes published in 1921- 
22. Upon Hooper' s death in 1 922, his brother- 
in-law William Cox bought the company. 
Seats had lost $1,800,000 on EB and was 
happy to sell it to him.' 

The thirteenth edition (1926) was edited 
by James Garvin, an Irish journalist with pro- 
American views. It was really just another 
three- volume supplement to the eleventh edi- 
tion. However, it continued the practice of 
recruiting expert contributors. Leon Trotsky 
wrote the biography of Vladimir Lenin and H. 
L. Mencken, Carl Van Doren, Louis 
Untermeyer, and W.E.B, DuBois wrote on 
American literature. Andrew Mellon wrote on 
finance, Amos Alonzo Stagg on football, and 
Bernard Baruch on war debts. It was the first 
edition to contain color photographs. 

Cox finished a completely new fourteenth 
edition in 1929 on the eve of the Depression. 
He approached the University of Chicago to 
take over the company and publish the new 
edition in cooperation with Cambridge Uni- 
versity, but the plan fell through, so once again 
Julius Rosenwald of Sears put up over $1 
million," Garvin continued as editor in the 
U.K. and Franklin Hooper remained as the 
American editor. The 24-volume set had 3 ,500 
contributors, half of them Americans. Advi- 
sors for subject areas included Julian Huxley, 
JohnDewey, and Roscoe Pound, and 1 8 Nobel 
Prizewinners contributed articles, among them 
Albert Einstein writing on Space-Time. Even 
celebrities contributed to the set: Gene Tunney 
onboxing and Irene Castle on dancing, part of 
an attempt to popularize Britannica. This edi- 
tion furnished instructions on how to swim, 
play golf, drive a car, and do handicrafts. 
Famous articles from previous editions — Tho- 
mas Babington Macauley on Dr. Johnson, for 
instance— were reprinted with only slight re- 
vision. The set still had a British orientation— 
for instance, the article on checkers was under 
Draughts, the one on pensions under Superan- 
nuation. Cox ran out of money and had to 
cancel articles and reuse some from previous 
editions in shortened form. Sears bought the 



set once more, this time from Cox. The new 
edition was enthusiastically received in the 
U.S. but was criticized in Great Britain for 
being too American and too popular in tone . In 
the U.S. most sets were sold through the mail. 
The Depression cut into sales and they re- 
mained low through the 1930s. When 
Rosenwald died, Sears had a new president 
who thought the acquisition of EB had been a 
mistake. Cox retired and the new publisher 
was a Sears executive who dropped mail- 
order sales and built up the door-to-door sales 
force, still the main sales method used today. 

The Fourteenth Edition and 
Continuous Revision 

With the fourteenth edition, there was a 
major change in the way Britannica was pub- 
lished, with the implementation of a system of 
continuous revision. This means that some 
percentage of articles are updated every year 
on a flexible schedule instead of entirely new 
editions being published periodically. It is the 
standard procedure for encyclopedia revision 
today in the U.S. (though not in Europe). The 
practice of continuous revision began because 
Sears did not want to put up large sums for a 
new edition after the fourteenth; yet the sales 
staff said that the set must be kept current, 
After extensive study, they found that with 
continuous revision they could keep a regular 
staff instead of hiring a large one for a new 
edition and firing them when it was done. A 
number of competitors {Encyclopedia Ameri- 
cana, World Boole) had already started using 
this system. From this point, the size of the set 
remained fairly constant until the fifteenth 
edition. The company offices were central- 
ized in Chicago; Walter Yust became editor; 
and, over time, the set was restyled, and the 
index redone. 

In 1 936 the Library Research Service was 
established. Its purpose is to provide for pur- 
chasers answers to questions that could not be 
found in EB. Purchasers were allowed to ask 
as many questions as they wanted for ten years 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 83 



after buying the set. Researchers scoured 
Chicago libraries to respond to these requests. 
The service became so popular that a limit had 
to be placed on the number of questions that 
could be asked. (Today the service answers 
135,000 questions a year.) The idea of a 
yearbook was revived and the Britannica Book 
of the Year was published in 1938 and contin- 
ues to be issued annually, though publication 
was suspended during World War II. Through 
1968 separate yearbooks were published for 
the U. S . and the U.K., but since then there has 
been one international edition. 

The University of Chicago 
Connection 

As the nation pulled out of the Depres- 
sion, sales and profits improved but Sears still 
felt that EB was not an appropriate business 
for the company and wanted to sell it. It was 
felt that in order to maintain the set's reputa- 
tion, it shouldnotbe sold to a commercial firm. 
In 1942, Sears tried to interest the University 
of Chicago in EB again. William Benton, 
founder of the advertising agency of Benton 
and Bowles and eventually senator from Con- 
necticut, was vice-president for public rela- 
tions at the university. After initial discussions 
with Sears, he recommended to university 
President Robert Maynard Hutchins that they 
try to persuade Sears to donate EB to the 
university. Sears agreed to do this, but the 
university trustees turned the offer down be- 
cause the university would have had to put up 
some working capital. Benton was so enthusi- 
astic about the gift that he agreed to put up the 
money and assume management of the com- 
pany. Under this plan Benton would own two- 
thirds of the stock and the university one-third, 
with an option to buy half of Benton's stock. 
The university would get a royalty on each set 
sold and three of the nine directors of the 
company would be university trustees. The 
trustees finally agreed to this arrangement. 

Benton expanded the company, and 
bought an educational film company which 



became Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. 
During World War II, sales rose rather than 
fell, as they had in World War I. However, 
after the war, when consumers were able to 
buy cars and other consumer items again, 
sales dropped. A financial crisis developed in 
1947 and a new president was brought in, a 
former executive with World Book, That year 
the first Board of Editors was established, 
chaired by Hutchins, with the charge to con- 
sider questions of general editorial policy. 
These questions may range from the decision 
to create a new edition or some other major 
publication to a debate over the proper treat- 
ment of history. The board's members alert 
editors to changes in the scholarly community 
that may affect EB and help it maintain an 
international perspective. In 1952, EB pub- 
lished Great Books of the Western World, 
edited by Mortimer Adler, who became chair- 
man of EB's Editorial Board after the retire- 
ment of Hutchins. After Walter Yust, who had 
been editor from 1938 to 1960, retired, Harry 
Ashmore, a journalist, was editor from 19 60 to 
1963. Color pictures in the body of text, rather 
than in separate inserts, were introduced in 
1 963 . In 1 96 1 EB bought Compton 's Encyclo- 
pedia. Today EB also owns dictionary pub- 
lisher Merriam- Webster, Evelyn Wood Read- 
ing Dynamics, Britannica Software, and 
Britannica Learning Centers. 

In 1964 the fourteenth edition was criti- 
cized by Harvey Einbinder in his book The 
Myth of the Britannica (New York: Grove 
Press). He found over 600 articles in the 1963 
set that had been taken from the eleventh and 
ninth editions. Some of these articles were 
almost 1 00 years old. Those written by famous 
contributors were openly retained and still 
carried their names, occasionally with a note 
explaining why this classic article was re- 
printed. But in other cases articles by un- 
known contributors were reprinted without 
their initials. Einbinder found obsolete statis- 
tics — for instance, almost 20 years after World 
War II the article on Warsaw said its popula- 
tion was 30 percent Jewish. Articles on clas- 



<£= _«_41IIUJJU^ 



84 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



id. 



sical writers dated back to a time when a 
classical education was the mark of an edu- 
cated person and so contained lines in Latin or 
Greek without translation. He found that inad- 
equate updating had led to inconsistencies 
among articles. Biographies often didn't re- 
flect the relative importance of people in the 
contemporary world. For instance, the article 
on Theodore Roosevelt was more than twice 
as long as the one on Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt. 

Britannica 3 

The editors of EB were not unaware of 
problems and planning was already underway 
for a totally new edition. After more than 35 
years of continuous revision, EB was losing its 
focus. The editors felt that they couldn't con- 
tinue to just cut and paste; they needed a clear 
concept of what the encyclopedia should be. 
As early as 1961 studies had begun on a new 
plan; Mortimer Adler worked out the scheme 
between 1965 and 1968. In 1968 work on a 
revision began in great secrecy; the company 
managed to keep the new edition under wraps 
until just before publication in 1974. 

The general editor of the fifteenth edition 
was Warren Preece, former English professor 
at the University of Chicago, and the execu- 
tive editor was Philip Goetz, who became 
editor-in-chief in 1 979. This edition had 3,000 
pages in 30 volumes, 1 9, 000 photographs, and 
an editorial price tag of $32,000,000. n It had 
4,000 contributors, many of them quite distin- 
guished, from 100 countries. While Ameri- 
cans made up the largest number and British 
next, almost every part of the world except 
Africa was well represented. Its publication in 
1974 was widely hailed as the publishing 
event of the year with wide media coverage. It 
was not just a new edition but a new encyclo- 
pedia with a totally different orientation. 

The editors looked anew at the whole 
concept of the encyclopedia. A review of the 
day observed that "They have tried imagina- 
tively to solve the problems that all modern 



encyclopedias face and to provide with au- 
thority and accuracy for all of the varied uses 
that people make of general reference books, 
from the fast factual check to the extended 
search. And they have gone beyond this to 
attempt to create a tool for systematic self- 
teaching." 13 The concept was developed by 
Benton, Hutchins, and Adler, but the rear- 
rangement reflected Adler' s interest in self- 
education, and his love for classification and 
bringing a unity to knowledge — the encyclo- 
pedia as the "circle of learning." It was in a 
three-part form that tried to combine the best 
of both a topical and alphabetical arrangement 
and hence was known as Britannica 3. The 
one- volume Propaedia took a topical approach, 
the ten- volume Micropaedia strictly an alpha- 
betical one, and the nineteen-volume 
Macropaedia combined aspects of both. The 
Propaedia served to impose a topical arrange- 
ment on the set by organizing knowledge in 
outline form under ten broad headings. There 
is no index to the Propaedia and it is difficult 
for the unsophisticated reader to use. This 
volume appears to be the least-used part of the 
encyclopedia. The Macropaedia had about 
4,200 long articles, averaging 5 pages, but 
with some over 1 00 pages long. These lengthy 
articles were intended to overcome the frag- 
mentation of knowledge that often occurs in 
encyclopedias and were to serve the self- 
education function. All articles in the 
Macropaedia were signed and were espe- 
cially written for the fifteenth edition. For the 
first time, maps were placed throughout the set 
with the articles they were intended to illus- 
trate, rather than being isolated in an atlas in 
the last volume. As an interesting experiment, 
Russian contributors were asked to write many 
articles on the Soviet Union. These were not 
well received; in that jnz-Glasnost era, they 
were biased and they have largely been re- 
placedin later revisions. Some reviewers criti- 
cized the Macropaedia for retaining an alpha- 
betical arrangement, rather than being ar- 
ranged topically. Since the EB editors had 
criticized the typical encyclopedia alphabet!- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 85 



cal arrangement for the wayitfragments knowl- 
edge, some thought it an indefensible incon- 
sistency to create a hybrid that retained that 
arrangement in part. 

The Micropaedia served the ready refer- 
ence function and had about 100,000 articles, 
none of them more than 750 words long. These 
articles were not signed. A list of 2,600 au- 
thorities were given for the Micropaedia, but 
many articles were written by freelance writ- 
ers or staff. Some reviewers criticized the 
Micropaedia because many of the entries were 
just abstracts of articles in the fourteenth edi- 
tion, but others, especially librarians, found it 
to be the most useful part of the set. Most of the 
illustrations intheset werehere. Every subject 
in the Macropaedia also had a much shorter 
entry in the Micropaedia with a reference to 
the Macropaedia section. Most biographies 
were in the Micropaedia but over 1,000 were 
found in the Macropaedia. Reviewers com- 
plained that it sometimes was not clear why 
one person merited a long Macropaedia ar- 
ticle and another got only brief coverage in the 
Micropaedia. For example, Aleksander 
Suvorov, an eighteenth-century Russian mili- 
tary commander, received full coverage in the 
Macropaedia while nineteenth-century Brit- 
ish poet Algernon Charles Swinburne received 
only brief treatment in the Micropaedia. There 
were few bibliographies in the Micropaedia, 
An addendum to the last volume of the 
Micropaedia contained statistics and direc- 
tory information that was likely to need fre- 
quent updating. Reviewers complained that 
this information was likely to be overlooked 
and, in 1 985, it was moved to the yearbook, to 
become the "Britannica World Data "section. 
Britannica 3 originally had no separate index. 
Instead, the Micropaedia had an elaborate 
system of cross-references that was to serve in 
place of an index. This was the most widely 
criticized flaw of the fifteenth edition, both by 
librarians and the public. To capitalize on 
librarians' need for an index, a publisher ad- 
vertised an index widely by direct mail and 
offered substantial discounts for prepaid or- 



ders. Many librarians took advantage of this 
offer, but were taken advantage of by the 
publisher; he had notproduced the advertised 
index and eventually was convicted in federal 
court for mail fraud. Later, because of com- 
plaints from librarians that in a library setting 
where several people might be using the set at 
once it was sometimes impossible to use the 
Micropaedia as an index, Britannica issued a 
separate "Library Guide" volume. Because it 
was not an index but merely listed all the index 
citations from the Micropaedia, its value was 
limited. 

Revision of Britannica 3 

In 1985, a major revision of the fifteenth 
edition, addressed some of the criticisms of 
Britannica 3. A well regarded two-volume 
index was added. The Micropaedia was ex- 
panded to 12 volumes and the Macropaedia 
was reduced to 17. The 4,200 articles of the 
Macropaedia were reduced to 681, some of 
them more than 100 pages long. Many entries 
resemble short books. Many smaller articles 
were brought together into a broader entry; 
e.g., all the states appear under "United States 
of America." Many articles, including all 
biographies (except 100 people who pro- 
foundly affected world history) were moved 
to the Micropaedia. The 750-word limit on 
articles in this part of the set was lifted. Some 
Micropaedia articles now included bibliogra- 
phies (usually ones transferred over from the 
Macropaedia). All the entries were arranged 
in a word-by-word alphabetization, which is 
easier to use than the former letter-by-letter 
arrangement. For topics included in both parts 
of the set, many Micropaedia articles were 
rewritten to include more information, so they 
were no longer just outlines of Macropaedia 
articl es. Highly datable material was moved to 
the Britannica Book of the Year/ Britannica 
World Data Annual and cross-references were 
provided to this volume. The Propaedia was 
also restructured . The new index included the 
Britannica WorldData Annual and was judged 



4 



86 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 






an excellent finding device. This format and 
arrangement is currently being used in 1991. 
In 1991 Editor-in-Chief Philip Goetz stepped 
down and was succeeded by Robert McHenry, 
former managing editor. 

Today Britannica is not only the oldest 
but is also the largest and most expensive 
general encyclopedia published in the U.S. A 
scholarly encyclopedia, it is not for elemen- 
tary and middle school children, though it is 
sometimes marketed as being for that age 
group. Unlike some encyclopedias, there is no 
vocabulary control and no attempt to include 
the topics that children are most likely to look 
up. Many of the science and math articles are 
too technical for the "curious, intelligent lay- 
person" Britannica has always characterized 
as its audience. Compared with its closest 
competitors, Encyclopedia Americana and 
Collier's Encyclopedia, it contains more eso- 
teric information and does not provide practi- 
cal, how-to-do-it type information nor much 
coverage of popular culture. Its real strength is 
its historical treatment of topics. While most 
encyclopedias are tailored for a North Ameri- 
can audience, Britannica also takes a broader 
world view than competing American sets. 
For instance, the biographies of the American 
president and the British prime minister are 
roughly the same length. The British spelling 
that is still used is sometimes termed an affec- 
tation and is not used consistently. For in- 
stance, when a word begins with a different 
letter in British English ("oestrogen"), the 
American spelling is used. EB is unique in that 
contributors are allowed to list foreign-lan- 
guage materials in the bibliographies at the 
end of their articles. For example, the bibliog- 
raphy for the article on the U.S.S.R. lists books 
in Russian as well as Italian and German. 
While authors of articles have been instructed 
not to list obscure materials that would be hard 
to find, these bibliographies are more schol- 
arly than those in any other encyclopedia. 

Who owns EB today? Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, Inc. is a privately held for-profit 
company. All of the company's stock is held 
by the William Benton Foundation, an Illinois 



not-for-profit corporation established in 1 948 
to support the University of Chicago. In 1957, 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. paid the Uni- 
versity of Chicago $2 million for its shares of 
stock in the company. The foundation is con- 
trolled by a thirteen-member board of direc- 
tors, consisting of five members from 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., four from the 
University of Chicago, and four from the 
public sector. They are responsible for elect- 
ing the company's board of directors and for 
working with the University of Chicago to 
allocate the annual grants made by the founda- 
tion. Currently, the foundation gives the uni- 
versity about $2,000,000 a year; it has given 
the university more than $ 100 million over its 
lifetime. 14 This makes EB the university's 
largest contributor, exceeding even the 
Rockefellers, whose gifts founded the univer- 
sity. The foundation ownership of the com- 
pany safeguards it against a takeover by an- 
other firm and from stockholders seeking to 
dictate policies. In order to sell any of its stock, 
a two-thirds majority vote is necessary. As 
measured by revenue, Encyclopaedia Britan- 
nica, Inc. is the seventh largest publisher in 
America today. 15 Sales from all divisions now 
amount to $650 mi Uion a year. ' 6 The company 
does business in more than 100 countries and 
has produced encyclopedias in many foreign 
languages. 

EB's Future 

Britannica has traditionally been very cir- 
cumspectaboutrevealingfuture plans. A com- 
pany spokesperson stated that there are no 
plans to change the structure of the set (plans 
for revisions in Macropaedia articles are al- 
ready scheduled through 1993) and no elec- 
tronic version of EB is planned. (The com- 
pany issued a CD-ROM version of Compton 's 
Encyclopedia in 1990.) Since the arrange- 
ment of a printed work becomes transparent 
when it is converted to electronic form, per- 
haps a CD-ROM version of EB would end the 
debate over the set's plan. The 1990 EB was 
the first to be printed on acid-free paper and 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 87 



the company is investigating the digital han- 
dling of art in the future. Changes in printing 
technology under development may also im- 
prove the way that the encyclopedia is revised. 
New technologies may cut production costs so 
that encyclopedia publishers may be able to do 
new layouts more frequently. EB, Inc. has 
always been in the forefront in using new 
technology; it installed a computer system to 
do Britannica 3 and the entire set is in 
machine-readable form. One can predict that 
the company will remain in the technological 
vanguard. 

Today's New Encyclopaedia Britannica 
bears little resemblance to the modest "Dictio- 
nary of the Arts and Sciences" first published 



in Edinburgh in 1768. While its editors' will- 
ingness to experiment with the arrangement of 
the set's contents has been cause for contro- 
versy, its also shows their commitment to EB 
as more than just a reference tool — as an 
instrument of self-education as well. After 
more than 220 years of publishing history, EB 
"continues to provide both outstanding schol- 
arship and balanced coverage of world learn- 
ing" and retains its undeniable authority, 17 
"Throughout the English-speaking world and, 
for that matter, anywhere in the world, the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica is by far the most 
famous encyclopedia in the English lan- 
guage." 18 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Encyclopaedia Britannica: or, a Dictionary of Arts 
and Sciences ... By a society of gentlemen in 
Scotland. Edinburgh, 1768-1771. 3 vols. Re- 
printed in facsimile. Chicago: Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, Inc., 1968. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts, 
Sciences, etc. . . . 2nd ed. Edinburgh, 1777- 
1784. 10 vols. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts, 
Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . , 3rd 
ed. Edinburgh, 1788-1797. 18 vols. Supple- 
ment to the third edition. Edinburgh, 180L 2 
vols. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts, 
Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . . 4th 
ed. Edinburgh, 1801-1809. 20 vols. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or a Dictionary of Arts, 
Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature,. . . 5th 
ed. Edinburgh, 1815. 20 vols. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts, 
Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature ... 6th 
ed. Edinburgh, 1820-1823. 20 vols. 

Supplement (to the 4th, 5th, and 6th eds.) Edinburgh, 
1815-1824. 6 vols. 



The Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of 

Arts, Sciences, and General Literature. 7th ed. 

Edinburgh, 1827-1842. 21 vols. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, Dictionary of 

Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, 8th ed. 

Edinburgh, 1853-1861. 21 vols, plus index vol. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica; a Dictionary of Arts, 

Sciences, and General Literature. 9th ed. 

Edinburgh, 1875-1889. 24 vols, plus index vol. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica; Dictionary of Arts, 

Sciences, and General Literature. 10th ed. Lon- 
don, 1902-1903. 34 vols. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, 

Sciences, Literature and General Information. 

1 lth ed. Cambridge andNew York, 1910-191 1. 

29 vols. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1 2th ed. London and 

New York, 1921-22. 32 vols. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica. 13th ed. London and 

New York, 1926. 32 vols. 
The Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14th ed. Annually 

revised. Chicago , 1929-1973. 24 vols. 
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. 15th ed. Chi- 
cago and London, 1974- . 30 vols, through 

1984; 32 vols. 1985 to date. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The best, most easily accessible historical 
survey appears in Britannica itself, in the 
Micropaedia. Kogan's The Great EB is the 
official company history and stresses corpo- 
rate matters more than the content of the set. 
Collison has valuable historical information 



up through the fourteenth edition, as does 
Walsh. The fifteenth edition was widely re- 
viewed; see the 1974 volume of Book Review 
Digest for citations. Lengthy reviews of re- 
cent printings can be found in Kister and 
Sader. Reviews of many editions of Britannica 



88 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OP REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



* <■ i 



m 






can be found in various issues of Reference 
Books Bulletin in Booklist. Know: A Maga- 
zine for Britannica People Everywhere is the 
corporate house organ and has many interest- 
ing articles but is rarely available in libraries, 

American Library Association. Reference Books 
Bulletin Editorial Board. Purchasing an Ency- 
clopedia: 12 Points to Consider* 3rd ed. Edited 
by Sandy Whiteley. Chicago: Booklist, 1989, 

Ashmore, Harry S. Unseasonable Truths: The Life of 
Robert MaynardHutchins. Boston: LittleBrown, 
1689. 

Collison, Robert. Encyclopaedias: Their History 
throughout the Ages.Naw York: Hafner, 1964. 

Einbinder, Harvey. The Myth of the Britannica, New 
York: Grove Press, 1964. 

. "The New Britannica: Pro and Con." Li- 
brary Journal 1 12 (April 15, 1987): 48-50. 

"Encyclopaedia Britannica. " Hie New Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. Chicago: EncyclopaediaBritannica, 
1990. Vol. 4: 487-88. 

Fine, Sheila. "This Day is Published: A Condensed 
History of Encyclopaedia Britannica" Know: 
A Magazine for Britannica People Everywhere. 
22 (Spring, 1986): 10-13. 

Hyman, Sydney. The Lives of William Benton. Chi- 
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. 

Kister, Kenneth. Kister's Concise Guide to Best 
Encyclopedias. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1988. 

Kogan, Herman. The Great EB: The Story of the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: Univer- 
sity of Chicago Press, 19S8. 



Koning, Hans. "Onward and Upward with the Arts: 
the Eleventh Edition." Hew Yorker 51 (March 
2, 1981): 67-83. 

Kruse, Paul. The Story of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
1768-1943. Ph.D. dissertation, University of 
Chicago, 1958. 

McClintock, Robert, Enkyklios Paideia: The Fif- 
teenth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
National Academy of Education, 1976. Also 
published in the Proceedings of the National 
Academy of Education, vol, 2. 

McCracken, Samuel. "The Scandal of 'Britannica 
3'." Commentary 61 (February, 1976): 63-67. 

"The New Encyclopaedia Britannica." Booklist/ 
Reference Books Bulletin 171 (June 1, 1975): 
1021-28. 

Sader, Marion. General Reference Books for Adults. 
New York: R.R. Bowker, 1988. The article on 
Britannica also appears in a slightly different 
version in Reference Books for Young Readers, 
Marion Sader, ed. New York: R.R. Bowker, 
1988. 

Walsh, S. Padraig. Anglo-American General Ency- 
clopedias: A Historical Bibliography, 1703- 
1967. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1968. 

Wells, James M. The Circle of Knowledge: 
Encyclopaedias Past and Present. Chicago: 
Newberry Library, 1968, 

Wolff, Geoffrey, "Britannica 3 , Failures of." Atlan- 
tic 238 (November, 1976): 107-10. 

"Britannica 3, History of." Atlantic 233 

(June, 1974): 37-47. 



NOTES 



1 The statistics for this edition and subsequent editions 
described here are from Robert Collison, Encyclo- 
pedias: Their History Throughout the Ages (New 
York: Hafner, 1964), 138-45. 

J Herman Kogan, The Great EB (Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1958), 10. 

3 Ibid., 13. 

4 Ibid,, 24. 

s For a history of pirated editions in Ihe U.S., see Padraig 
Walsh, Anglo-American General Encyclopedias 
(New York: Bowker, 1968), 52-54. 

6 Collison, 145. 

7 Kogan, 162-163. 

8 Walsh, 50 

9 Ibid. 



10 Kogan, 212. 
"Ibid., 222. 

12 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., press release, n.d, 

13 "New Encyclopaedia Britannica," Reference and Sub- 

scription Books Review (1 January 1975): 

14 "Who Owns EB, Inc?, News from Encyclopaedia 

Britannica, press release, n.d, 

15 "The Biggest Publishers," Publishers Weekly (21 

December 1990): 12. 

16 "The 400 Largest Private Companies in the U.S.," 

Forbes 146 (10 December 1990): 246. 

17 "Reference Books Bulletin," Booklist (15 October 

1989): 488. 

18 Walsh, 44. 



The Book that Built Gale Research: 
The Encyclopedia of Associations 



Carol M. Tobin 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

The Encyclopedia ofAssociations arose out of 
one man's desire to find the information he 
needed to do his job. Because of the character 
of the man and the need of others for the 
information he sought, that one book became 
the foundation of Gale Research, a publisher 
that specializes in reference materials for li- 
braries. 

Frederick G. Ruffner 

In 1954 Frederick G. Ruffner was a re- 
search manager for General Detroit Corpora- 
tion. He needed to find information about 
some trade associations and assumed that there 
would be a listing of such organizations. He 
came across one, National Associations of the 
United States, that the U.S. Commerce De- 
partment had put out in 1 949, but it was out of 
date. He concluded that there was a market for 
a directory of organizations. "It seemed so 
basic that I thought if I needed such a book, 
others must need it too." He decided to publish 
such a book himself, and with his wife Mary 
worked on what would become the Encyclo- 
pedia of American Associations. At first the 
newlyweds worked in a corner of their bed- 
room and later expanded to renting desk space 
in the aptly named Book Building in down- 
town Detroit. Ruffner eventually quit his job 
to work on the project full-time. 1 

He sought advice from C. J. Judkins, chief 
of the Trade Association Division of the U.S. 



Department of Commerce, the compiler of the 
Commerce Department directory; Charles M. 
Mortensen, manager of the Trade Association 
Department of the U.S. Chamber of Com- 
merce; and Walter E. Forster, chief librarian 
of the Business and Commerce Division, De- 
troit Public Library. 

Method of Compilation 

The method of compilation of the first 
edition is still used today: identifying associa- 
tions by scanning various listings and then 
confirming the information by mail or phone 
inquiries to the organizations themselves. 
While compiling the directory, Ruffner moved 
from a shared office to a private one, and in 
1956 he hired his first part-time employee 2 
and published the Encyclopedia of American 
Associations (EAA). The EAA was described 
in the Preface as "a directory of non-profit 
organizations of national scope." Readers were 
given the caveat that "the nature and magni- 
tude of the directory make it impossible for the 
publisher to guarantee complete accuracy. 
Listing in this book does not confer status 
upon any organization, nor should omission 
imply lack of status." No editor was listed for 
the first edition. The acknowledgements were 
signed "Gale Research Company," with the 
name "Gale" taken from Ruffner's middle 
name. 

From the beginning, Gale has seen librar- 
ies as one of its prime markets. The preface to 
the first edition of EAA stated "this book has 



90 DISTrNGUlSHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



4 

n 



been designed as a reference tool for librar- 
ians, businessmen, educators, government of- 
ficials and research workers." Ruffner has 
said "Right from the start we sold by mail, 
mostly to libraries and go vernment agencies . ' ' 3 
The first edition of the EAA started a 
number of practices continued by the later 
editions and by Gale to this day. The preface 
asks that "errors of omission or commission" 
and suggestions be sent to the publisher. The 
postage paid reply cards for orders and sug- 
gestions still found in the 1991 edition ap- 
peared in the first edition. There was a reply 
form to add, change, or delete information 
about an organization. A footnote added "Upon 
receipt of this card the publisher will send 
questionnaire for detailed data on new organi- 
zations." 

The EAA started the Gale practice of 
using a lengthy title reminiscent of older En- 
glish works. The full title of the first edition is 
Encyclopedia of American Associations: A 
Guide to the Trade, Business, Professional, 
Labor, Scientific, Education, Fraternal and 
Social Organizations of the United States. 
The EAA announced itself from the start as a 
first edition and two supplements were prom- 
ised for December 1956: Supplement I, Func- 
tional and Topical Listings, and Supplement 
II, Additions and Corrections, also to include 
Labor Unions. Thus EAA began another Gale 
tradition, supplementing works between edi- 
tions. 

A section entitled "How to Use this Direc- 
tory" has been a standard feature from the 
start. In the first edition it took two pages; in 
the 1991 edition it took four. That first edition 
was divided into six sections: Trade, Business, 
Agricultural and Governmental Associations; 
Scientificand Engineering Associations; Edu- 
cation and Social Welfare Associations; Health 
and Medical Associations; General Associa- 
tions; and Chambers of Commerce. Section 
seven was a "Finding Guide Index." 

The entries were arranged within each 
sectionalphabeticallyby keyword, exceptthat 
the Chambers of Commerce were listed alpha- 



betically by state and city. The Finding Guide 
Index listed each association under its name 
and by each keyword in the name. 

The entries provided information on the 
name of the organization, its address, the chief 
paid official or secretary, the staff, the found- 
ing date, and a description that included the 
activities, purpose and membership, and num- 
ber of local groups or chapters. Old names and 
predecessor organizations' names were given 
if a merger had occurred. In the Chambers of 
Commerce section, population figures for cit- 
ies and towns from the 1950 Census were 
listed. 

Critical Reception 

The work was well received by the library 
press. The Booklist and Subscription Books 
Bulletin in October 1957 gave the most de- 
tailed review. It took the book to task for 
calling itself an encyclopedia rather than a 
directory, when even the publisher "always 
refers to the book as a ' directory' , never as an 
'encyclopedia.'" The review criticized the 
lack of running titles in the sections and men- 
tioned some problems with the keyword group- 
ing. Significantly, the review mentioned that 
there was no truly comparable directory. The 
reviewer's comparison of EAA with the Na- 
tional Associations of the United States and its 
1956 supplement revealed "a similarity of 
content but totally different presentations." 
The review noted that EAA had 30 percent 
more entries under the letter G. Some discrep- 
ancies in names of personnel for library orga- 
nizations between the .£4/4 and the ALA Mem- 
bership Directory were mentioned; however, 
the review noted that a spot check of the New 
York City addresses with the Manhattan phone 
directory revealed no errors. The binding, 
paper, and typeface were judged to be good. 
The review concluded: 

Until the publication of the Encyclopedia of 
American Associations^ there has been no 
current directory of this type available for use 
as a reference tool by librarians, businessmen, 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OP ASSOCIATIONS 91 



educators, government officials, and research 
workers. While there are some discrepancies 
and inaccuracies in individual entries, they do 
not appear to be numerous enough to detract 
from the value of the volume as a current 
listing of American associations. It is there- 
fore recommended for purchase by libraries 
having a definite established demand from 
their clientele for directory material. 4 

Paul Wasserman's review of EAA for 
Library Journal in December 1956 also com- 
pared it favorably with National Associations 
of the United States, whose 1956 supplement 
he judged "very slight and inadequate." He 
said the EAA "should prove a highly useful 
and frequently thumbed through volume." 
Wasserman did mention the high price ($ 1 5), 
but said that in spite of it, "this work will be 
required in virtually every library where busi- 
ness is being served in even a minor way." 5 
The EAA was also cited in Frances Neel 
Cheney *s "Current Reference Books" column 
in the Wilson Library Bulletin in October 
1956. 6 

Perhaps the best indication that Ruffner 
and Gale had created a classic was the inclu- 
sion of EAA in a list of 1 1 titles for 1956 "that 
gave promise of high reference potential." 
The list was compiled by the independent 
Reference Checklist Committee chaired by 
Louis Shores. In that checklist, the EAA is 
recommended for public, academic, and re- 
search libraries; only school libraries were 
excluded. 7 

No other source of information about 
associations published prior to the EAA, in- 
cluding the Commerce Department's Na- 
tional Associations of the United States* and 
the Public Administration Clearing House's 
Public Administration Organizations 9 could 
boast the breadth of EAA, which encompassed 
fraternal, women's, sports, educational, and 
religious organizations among others. 

The Second Edition and Beyond 

With the critical and financial success of 
the first edition, Gale was able to proceed with 



a second edition, although the EAA did not 
become the hoped-for annual until the ninth 
edition, nearly 20 years later. The second 
edition was published in 1959. The price had 
gone up to $20 but for this one got half again 
as many listings, a subject index, andanumber 
of items added to the description. The work 
now had 19 sections instead of 6 as well as a 
section of items "received too late to classify." 
The descriptions were expanded to include 
acronyms; affiliated organizations; sections, 
divisions or special committees; publications, 
including frequency; and convention or an- 
nual meeting. The how-to-use section showed 
a sample listing to illustrate the different ele- 
ments of the description, a feature retained to 
this day. The introduction now specified a 
Reader Service Bureau maintained by Gale 
that could supply at no charge additional data 
that might result as part of the continuing 
program of editing the EAA. The Reader Ser- 
vice Bureau is mentioned through the thir- 
teenth edition in 1979, but the twelfth and 
thirteenth editions cautioned: "The staff can- 
not, however, answer inquires concerning the 
general history of associations and does not 
compile statistical surveys." The second edi- 
tion was also financially successful andhelped 
Gale become "a full-fledged publishing com- 
pany." 10 

The third edition came a little more 
quickly. It was published in 1961 under the 
now familiar name of the Encyclopedia of 
Associations (EA). Once again the price rose, 
this time to $25. However, for this buyers 
received 30 percent more listings and a second 
volume, the Geographic andExecutive Index. 
The introduction mentioned other volumes in 
preparation, Volume III, "State and Local 
Associations of the U.S.-East"; Volume IV, 
"State and Local Associations of the U.S.- 
Wesf"; and Volume V, "National Organiza- 
tions of Canada." These volumes never ap- 
peared, but they show the idea behind titles 
that did appear much later, i.e., Encyclopedia 
of Associations: Regional, State, and Local 
Organizations (1987- ) and Encyclopedia of 



92 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



If 



SI 



Associations; International Organizations 
(1983-). 

The title change occasioned some more 
reviews. Eric Moon cited some errors ofinfor- 
mation but concluded ''Despite such errors 
and omissions, which are probably unavoid- 
able to some degree, this is a valuable refer- 
ence work which should be in all but the 
smallest libraries." 1 ' EA appeared on the "Out- 
standing Reference Books of 196 1" list, as "a 
useful compilation of information hard to find 
elsewhere." 12 

The fourth edition in 1964 was significant 
both because Ruffner was listed for the first 
time as editor along with three others and 
because of the mention of the idea that the EA 
can be used as a guide to information as well 
as a directory of organizations. In the fifth and 
subsequenteditions the information functions 
of organizations have been likened to "switch- 
boards" to connect "persons needing informa- 
tion to highly-qualified sources of informa- 
tion." The fifth edition billed this function as 
EA's primary value. The acceptance of EA by 
librarians was acknowledged in the introduc- 
tion to the fourth edition: "Surveys of refer- 
ence librarians repeatedly show that the Ency- 
clopedia of Associations is among the three or 
four most-used books in any reference depart- 
ment." In December of 1 964 a supplementary 
loose-leaf volume entitled New Associations 
was launched. Originally appearing quarterly, 
it listed newly formed associations. 

In subsequent years the EA continued to 
receive good reviews, along with some sug- 
gestions for improvements, most of which 
were eventually incorporated in EA. Running 
titles were added and the early troubles with 
keywords were corrected. Librarians were not 
always happy with some of the "improve- 
ments." Eugene Sheehy says that a new edi- 
tion is always "cause for rejoicing in the 
reference department," but the enthusiasm for 
the seventeenth edition was dampened when it 
was found that volume one came in two physi- 
cal volumes, which Sheehy felt made EA less 
convenient to use. 13 There was also consider- 



able discussion in the reviews about the use- 
fulness of volume three, New Associations, 
because its price soon approached that of 
volume one alone. 14 

By 1959 EA was listed in A. J. Walford's 
Guide to Reference Material, and appeared in 
the eighth edition of Constance Winchell's 
Guide to Reference Books in 1967 where it 
was characterized as the "most comprehen- 
sive list for the United States." It was recorded 
in the fifth edition of the Enoch Pratt Free 
Library's Reference Books: A Brief Guide in 
1 962 and by 1 965 the appearance of the fourth 
edition was noted without comment in Choice 
as befitted a "new edition of standard refer- 
ence works . . . recommended for purchase." 
BohdanWynar in the second edition of Ameri- 
can Reference Books Annual in 1971 de- 
scribed it as the "standard directory well- 
known to all librarians." 15 A 1982 feature 
article on EA in Reference Services Review 
noted that "because of its uniqueness, diver- 
sity, and accuracy the Encyclopedia of Asso- 
ciations merits recognition as a 'landmark of 
reference.'" 16 

Expanding Scope 

With few exceptions, expanding scope 
has characterized EA throughout its history. 
The fifth edition added nonmembership groups 
if they might seem to be voluntary member- 
ship groups; some foreign groups if they were 
deemed to be of interest to Americans (e.g., 
the Tennyson Society); and some regional and 
local groups if their subjects or objectives hold 
interest outside their immediate vicinity, (e.g., 
Anti-Coronary Club) . The state and local cham- 
bers of commerce were dropped because of 
space considerations and because they are 
adequately covered by other directories. The 
sixth edition added international groups hav- 
ing a large American membership, (e.g., the 
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament); citizen 
action groups (e.g., theNational Interreligious 
Service Board for Conscientious Objectors); 
and governmental advisory bodies (e.g., the 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASSOCIATIONS 93 



President's Council on Youth Opportunity), 
The sixteenth edition added "information en- 
tries," which describe a group or project for 
which no address was given. This category 
included groups that moved around, ad hoc 
committees, and underground groups like the 
Students for a Democratic Society. With the 
addition of volume four, International Orga- 
nizations, in the eighteenth edition in 1983, 
those groups formerly in volume one moved to 
volume four except for listings for groups with 
American sections or bi-national groups. In 
1987, Encyclopedia of Associations: Regional, 
State, and Local Organizations, a multi -vol- 
ume set, started publication. Except for "a 
hundred or so regional organizations" consid- 
ered to be of national interest and thus also 
listed in EA, the material in this work was all 
new. 

The 19 sections of the second edition 
stayed more or less stable with only the sub- 
traction of chambers of commerce in the fifth 
edition, the dropping and reassigning of hor- 
ticultural organizations and general organiza- 
tions in the eighth, and the addition of cultural 
organizations in the eighth and fan clubs in the 
twenty-second. The items included in the de- 
scription continued to grow with zip codes and 
phone numbers (fifth edition); computerized 
services and telecommunications service 
(twentieth edition); budget of the organiza- 
tion and presence of exhibits at conventions 
(twenty-first edition); and additional informa- 
tion about publications (i.e., circulation fig- 
ures, prices, former and alternative names, 
ISSN, online and microfiche availability) 
(twenty-fourth edition). 

The indexing of EA has become increas- 
ingly sophisticated over the years. Additional 
keywords were added over time, and, with the 
twentieth edition, the separate name and key- 
word indexes had grown to occupy a separate 
volume. A catchword was added to the top of 
the index pages in the twenty-third edition to 
make use more efficient. One of the reasons 
for the separate index volume with the twen- 
tieth edition was the inclusion of all the entries 



from the international organizations volume 
and from eight other related Gale directories. 
This was expanded in the twenty-first edition 
to include more Gale directories and some 
non-Gale publications such as the US Govern- 
ment Manual and the Federal Yellow Book for 
a total of 15. In the twenty-fourth edition, the 
editors reverted to the practice of indexing 
only Gale directories. 

As the EA grew from several thousand 
entries to nearly 22,000, its editorial staff also 
grew. It has had ten editors (sometimes work- 
ing in pairs or, as on the twenty-fourth edition, 
in a group of three). The range of editorial 
titles is perhaps best illustrated by the twenty- 
first edition (1986). It had one editor, three 
associate editors, a contributing editor, three 
senior assistant editors, thirteen assistant edi- 
tors, two editorial assistants, a contributing 
editor, two contributing senior assistant edi- 
tors, two contributing assistant editors, a con- 
tributing research editor, an editorial director, 
an associate editorial director, and, finally, a 
senior editor of thz Encyclopedia of Associa- 
tions Series. In reading the masthead of the 
various editions, one can follow an editor's 
movement up through the various editorial 
ranks thus providing a historical perspective 
and a consistency of vision foriL4 . The current 
staff is smaller than that of the twenty-first 
edition because of rearrangements in the 
workflow. The EA National staff is ten people 
but only 5.5 FTE; the International is four and 
the Regional three, There is no longer a re- 
search department devoted just to EA, Instead 
Gale's research department works on a vari- 
ety of directories and otherprojects as needed. 17 

The work is still done basically the same 
way as it was for the first edition, although 
greatly expanded. The staff scans for new 
associations and sends out questionnaires. Cur- 
rent organizations are sent revis ion forms with 
two follow-up mailings. The research depart- 
ment also makes calls both to new groups and 
to check up on previous listings. Through the 
years the introductions have cited 90 percent 
as the number of entries that receive some kind 



94 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



of revision orupdating. Each year about 1,000 
new organizations are added, while 500 to 600 
groups drop out. The current practice is to list 
as "missing" those groups which cannot be 
located. Requests forupdated information from 
these organizations have "remained unan- 
swered for at least three editions or have been 
returned by the Post Office" as undeliverable. 
In the index these organizations* entries bear 
theannotation"addressunknownsmce[date]." 

Computerized Production 

Computerization has helped the staff of 
EA. Ruffner wrote in 1 97 6 that "In the late 60s 
and early 70s, it took two years to produce a 
600-page Encyclopedia of Associations. To- 
day, it takes less than half that time to produce 
a 3000-page, three-book set, a companion 
international volume, and a printed 'update' 
service." 18 The ninth edition (1975) is the first 
to mention computerized photo composition 
and it was from this date that EA became an 
annual. 

As with so many other sources, the exist- 
ence of a computer tape led to new services. In 
September 1979 Gale made the thirteenth 
edition of EA available as File 114 on DIA- 
LOG. This file now includes International 
Organizations and Regional, State, and Local 
Organizations. In the 1 9th edition ( 1 9 84) Gale 
announced the availability of tapes and also 
stated that it would do custom computerized 
selection sorts, e.g,, on locations. Gale Global 
Access: Associations a CD-ROM product that 
used the Knowledge Access International soft- 
ware became available from Gale in January 
1989 at a price of $1495 a year. It included all 
the EA volumes, supplements, and updates 
and also the records from Association Peri- 
odicals. It was reviewed favorably. 19 A press 
release from SilverPlatter dated January 3, 
1990, announced that SilverPlatter would co- 
produce Gale's CD-ROM products. EA was 
the first product chosen for production; the 
SilverPlatter CD continued to use the name 
Gale GlobalAccess: Associations. 10 



EA not only kept pace with modern tech- 
nology, using computer composition and pro- 
viding fax numbers in the listings, but it also 
kept up with the demand for more informa- 
tion. But as quick as Gale and Ruffner were to 
pick up on a good idea, they were also able to 
drop ideas that did not work. In 1978 a Youth 
Sewing Organizations Directory based on the 
twelfth edition of EA appeared for one edition. 
Along the way, EA had at various times a 
Rankings Indexes volume (twenty-first edi- 
tion), and a Research Activities and Funding 
Programs (Volume V) published only for the 
seventeenth edition. A related publication, 
Association Periodicals (1987) was discon- 
tinued after only a year. It provided more 
information about association publications but 
with the twenty-fourth edition of EA increas- 
ing the amount of information given about 
periodicals, it is not needed. The Updating 
Service for volumes I and III begun in 1985 
and the New Associations and Projectsbegun 
in 1964 were combined in the twenty-fifth 
edition (1990). 21 

In the first edition Ruffner included a 
quote from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democ- 
racy in America that appeared in the next 
twenty-three editions: 

The Americans of all ages, all conditions and 
all dispositions constantly form associations. 
They have not only commercial and manufac- 
turing companies in which all take part but 
associations of a thousand other kinds, reli- 
gious, moral, serious, futile, restricted, enor- 
mous, or diminutive. The Americans make 
associations to give entertainments, to found 
establishments for education, to send mis- 
sionaries to the antipodes Wherever at the 

head of some new undertaking you see the 
government of France or a man of rank in 
England, in the United States you will be sure 
to find an association." 

This observation on the American pro- 
pensity for associations helps explain why the 
EA was such a success and found such a 
welcome niche in reference departments. It 
also explains why the national organizations' 
entries take two volumes while the interna- 
tional organizations' entries fill only one vol- 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASSOCIATIONS 95 



ume. And perhaps it explains why this type of 
reference work found its fullest flowering in 
United States. The EA itself is a fascinating 
ground for social history. Some of the reviews 
in nonlibrary journals emphasize the more 
humorous aspect of this. Richard Kern in 
Sales and Marketing Management picked out 
the American Association of Dental Victims, 
the Texas Barbed Wire Collectors Associa- 
tion, and the National Association of Insect 
Electrocutor Manufacturers as worthy of men- 
tion. 23 A New York Times article was entitled 
"Banana Club Meets Electrical Women." 24 

The EA is, however, worthy of deeper 
study. Starting in the twenty-first edition, 
(1986) the editor(s) wrote mini-essays on the 
types of new associations listed and how they 
"mirror the current interest and concerns of 
the American public." In that edition hunger, 
national economic issues, children's rights, 
and Central America were particularly high- 
lighted. In the twenty-fourth edition, Central 
America was still mentioned and environ- 
mental concerns (spurred by the Alaskan oil 
spill), senior citizens rights, and surrogate 
parenthood were among the areas that had 
newly formed groups. Just a comparison of the 
subjects listed under Social Welfare Organi- 
zations in the table of contents in the sixth 
edition (1970) and the twenty-fourth edition 
(1989) reveals some of the changes in the 
United States during that period. Anti-pov- 
erty, nutrition, rehabilitation, sex information, 
crime and delinquency, family life, alcohol- 
ism, and narcotics were listed only in the sixth 
edition and child welfare, community action, 
criminal justice, disabled, family planning, 
gay/lesbian, homeless, population, recreation, 
selfhelp, service clubs, social work, substance 
abuse, surrogate parenthood, and voluntarism 
only in the twenty-fourth edition. In some 
cases only the terminology had changed (e.g., 
"substance abuse" instead of "narcotics"); 



but in others (e.g., selfhelp and homeless) the 
changes demonstrated newly articulated con- 
cerns. 

The EA has been used to trace trends in 
American life. For example, the author of a 
1985 article in the Annals of the American 
Society of Political and Social Science con- 
sulted it to study the growth of religious re- 
form movements. 25 Other authors use it to 
compile mailing lists for surveys, as did the 
author of "Fee Sharing Between Lawyers and 
Public Interest Groups." Lawyers seem to find 
it a particular favorite because it has the facts 
that can bolster their arguments, e.g. , the num- 
ber of groups concerned with drinking and 
driving, the founding dates of associations, the 
number of people who have taken transcen- 
dental meditation courses. 26 It seems that the 
only limits on EA 's uses are its users' imagi- 
nations. 

Gale's Growth 

As the EA grew and matured so did Gale. 
However, in a 1984 profile of Ruffner, John 
Baker was still able to say "Gale is still so 
much the creation of one man . . . that it's 
difficult to imagine where it would go without 
Ruffner at the helm." 27 When Ruffner was 
asked about how Gale would be without him 
he said that he hoped it would survive as the 
Bowker Company did without R. R. Bowker. 
In 1985 Gale was sold to International 
Thomson. 28 

Ruffner left Gale and EA shortly after the 
company was sold and he has since started 
another publishing company, Omnigraphics, 
with offices in the same building in downtown 
Detroit as the Gale offices. However even 
without its creator, EA continues to this day, 
changing to meet new demands while main- 
taining its established strengths to satisfy the 
old needs it was created to fulfill. 



96 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

Encyclopedia of American Associations. Detroit: 
Gale Research. 1st ed.,1956; 2nd ed., 1959. 

Encyclopedia of Associations. 3rd ed.,1961; 4th 
ed.,1964; 5th ed.,1968; 6th ed.,1970; 7th 
ed„1972;8thed.,1973. 

Encyclopedia of Associations. Annual, Detroit: Gale 
Research Company, 1975-. Vol. 1, National 
Organizations of the United States. Vol. 2, 
Geographic and Executive Index, Vol. 3, New 
Associations, Dec. 1964- , 1970 changed to 
New Associations and Projects, 1990 changed 
to Supplement, Vol. ^International Organiza- 
tions, 18th ed., 1983-. Vol.5, Research Activi- 
ties and Funding Programs, 17th ed., 1982 
only. Updating Service for vols. 1 and 3, 1985- 



1989. International Organizations Supplement 
1985- . Rankings Indexes 21st ed., 1987 only. 

Encyclopedia of Associations: Regional, State, and 
Local Organizations. Detroit: Gale Research, 
1987- . Biennial. 

Encyclopedia of Associations: Association Periodi- 
cals, edited by Denise Allard and Robert Tho- 
mas. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1987. 

Encyclopedia of Associations. DIALOG File 114. 
Palo Alto, CA: Dialog Information Services, 
Sept. 1979- . 

Gale GlobalAccess: Associations. CD-ROM. De- 
troit: Gale Research, 1989-1990. 

Gale GlobalAccess: Associations. CD-ROM. 
Wellesley Hills, MA: SilverPlatter Informa- 
tion, 1990- . 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Through its introductions the Encyclope- 
dia of Associations provides a good explana- 
tion of the publishing history and editorial 
policy changes. Baker gives important back- 
ground about Frederick G. Ruffher and Davis ' s 
review article is a good summary of EA to 
1982, Bradley is good on both Ruffher and 
Gale. There are many reviews of different 
editions of EA and its parts. Only reviews that 
go beyond description are listed here, 

Adams, John. Review of Encyclopedia of Associa- 
tions, 14th ed. Reference Services Review 8 
(July/September 1980): 78-79, 

Angelo, Frank. "A Fact? A List? Answer Man Has 
It." Detroit Free Press, July 17, 1974. Re- 
printed in Biography News 1 (August, 1974): 
944. 

Baker, John F. " Portrait of a Publisher: Frederick G. 
Ruffher." Publishers Weekly 226 (December 7, 
1984): 25-27. 

"Bibliophile Prevails with Written Words "Nation 's 
Businesses (May, 1980): 94-95. 

Bradley, Philip. "A Founding Father: Frederick 
Ruffner and the Gale Research Co. "Indexer 16 
(April 1, 1988): 22-31. 

Byerly, Greg. Review of database Encyclopedia of 
Associations. RQ 20 (Summer, 1981): 409. 

Davis, Mary Ellen Kyger. "Encyclopedia of Asso- 
ciations." Reference Services Review 10 (Sum- 
mer 1982): 11-14. 

Moon, Eric. Review of Encyclopedia of Associa- 
tions, 3rd ed. Library Journal 87 (January 15, 
1962): 209-10, 



O'Leary, Mick. "Encyclopedia of Associations Ex- 
pands Online Research." Database 12 (Octo- 
ber, 1989): 59-61. 

Quint, Barbara. "Connect Time." Wilson Library 
Bulletin 63 (March, 1989): 78-79, 125. 

Rettig, James. Review of Encyclopedia of Associa- 
tions: Association Periodicals, 1 st ed. Wilson 
Library Bulletin 62 (January, 1988): 99. 

Review of Encyclopedia of American Associations: 
A Guide to the Trade, Business, Professional, 
Labor, Scientific, Educational, Fraternal, and 
Social Organizations of the United States, 1st 
ed. Booklist and Subscription Books Bulletin 54 
(October 1,1957): 60-64. 

Review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 7th ed. 
Booklist 69 (April 1, 1973): 724-25. 

Ruffner, Fred.,"The Buzz Industry and the Book 
Industry." Reference Librarian no. 15 (Fall, 
1986): 131-37. 

"Ruffher, Frederick G." ALA Yearbook 10 (1985): 
13. 

"Ruffner, Frederick Gale." ALA Yearbook 13(1988): 
76. 

Shores, Louis. "Reference Checklist '56." Library 
Journal 82 (January 15, 1957): 145-57. 

Sturtevant, Anne F. "Reference Books of 1961." 
Library Journal 87 (April 5, 1962): 1533-41. 

Wasserman, Paul. Review of Encyclopedia oj Ameri- 
can Associations: A Guide to the Trade, Busi- 
ness, Professional, Labor, Scientific, Educa- 
tional, Fraternal and Social Organizations of 
the United States, 1st ed., Library Journal 81 
(December 15, 1956): 2961. 



NOTES 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASSOCIATIONS 97 



1 John F. Baker, " Portrait of a Publisher: Frederick G. 

Ruffner," Publishers Weekly 226 (7 December 
1984): 25. 

2 Ibid, 25. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Review of Encyclopedia of American Associations: A 

Guide to the Trade, Business, Professional, Labor, 
Scientific, Educational, Fraternal, and Social Or- 
ganizations of the United States, Booklist and Sub- 
scription Books Bulletin, 54 (I October 1957): 60- 
64. 

5 Paul Wasserman, review of Encyclopedia of American 

Associations: A Guide to the Trade, Business, Pro- 
fessional, Labor, Scientific, Educational, Frater- 
nal and Social Organizations of the United States, 
in Library Journal 81 (15 December 1956): 2961. 

6 Francis Neel Cheney, "Current Reference Books," Wil- 

son Library Bulletin 31 (October 1956): 196-98. 

7 Louis Shores, "Reference Checklist ' '56 "Library Jour- 

nal 82 (15 January 1957): 146, 149. 

8 U.S. Department of Commerce, National Associations 

of the United States (Washington: Government 
Printing Office, 1949). 
9 Public Administration Organization, 7th ed., (Chicago: 
Public Administration Clearing House, 1954). 

10 Mary Ellen Kyger Davis, "Encyclopedia of Associa- 

tions" Reference Services Review 10 (Summer 
1982): 12. 

1 1 Eric Moon, review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 

3rd ed., Library Journal 87 (15 January 1962): 
209-10. 

12 Anne F. Sturtevant, "Reference Books of 1961," Li- 

brary Journal 82 (15 April 1962): 1533-41. 

13 Eugene Sheehy, "Selected Reference Books of 198 1- 

82," College and Research Libraries 44 (January 
1983): 54. 

14 Mary Allen, review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 

11th ed., Serials Review 3 (April/June 1977): 22; 
review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 9th ed,, 
Booklist 72 (15 October 1975): 326; Edwin G. 
Tyler, review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 7th 
ed., .Kg 12 (Spring 1973): 314. 

15 A. J. WalfordandL. M. Payne, eds., Guide toReference 

Materials (London: Library Association, 1959), 
51; Constance M. Winchell, Guide to Reference 
Books, 8th ed. (Chicago: American Library Asso- 
ciation, 1967), 77, 79; Mary Neill Barton and 
Marion V. Bcll,Reference Books: A Brief Guide for 
Students and Other Users of the Library, 5 th ed. 



(Baltimore: Enoch Pratt Free Library, 1962), 98; 
review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 4th ed., 
Choice 1 (February 1965): 545; Bohdan S. Wynar, 
review of Encyclopedia of Associations, 6th ed., 
American Reference Books Annual 2 (1971): 55. 

16 Davis, 11; Nancy Jean Melin, "Ending the Old Year 

with Some New Beginnings," Reference Services 
Review 8 (October/December 1980): 3. 

17 Deborah Burek,. coeditor of Encyclopedia of Associa- 

tions, 24th ed., telephone conversation with the 
author, 30 March 1990. 
l8 Fred Ruffner, "The Buzz Industry and the Book Indus- 
try," Reference Librarian, no. 15 (Fall 1986), 132. 

19 Jim Bloom and Vickey Bloom, "Gale Global Access 

Associations in Review," CD-ROM Librarian 4 
(November/December 1989): 57-59, 

20 SilverPlatter Information, Inc.," SilverPlatter Add Gale 

Databases on CD-ROM," Press release, 3 January 
1990; "Gale Joins Forces with SilverPlatter," The 
SilverPlatter Exchange 3 (June 1990): 2. 

21 Burek, telephone conversation with author, 30 March 

1990. 

22 The ellipsis points have disappeared over time. The 

quote does not appear in the twenty-fifth edition. 
Deborah Burek, telephone conversation with au- 
thor, 23 April 1990. 

23 Richard Kem, "National Association of. . .," Sales and 

MarketingManagement 136 (3 February 1986): 15. 

24 Margaret Wills and Stewart Wills, "Banana Club Meets 

Electrical Women," New York Times, 1 1 August 
1986, A19. 

25 Robert Wuthnow, "The Growth of Religious Reform 

Movement," Annals of the American Society of 
Political and Social Science 480 (July 1985): 112, 

26 Roy D. Simon, Jr., "Fee Sharing Between Lawyers and 

Public Interest Groups," Yale Law Journal '98 (March 
1989): 1071-72; Douglas E.Lahammer, "The Fed- 
eral Constitutional Right to Trial by Jury for the 
Offense of Driving While Intoxicated," Minnesota 
LawReview73 (October 1988): 123; Marina Angel, 
"White-Collar and Professional Unionization," 
Labor Law Journal 33 (Februaryl982): 83; "Note: 
Transcendental Meditation and the Meaning of 
Religion Under the Establishment Clause," Minne- 
sota Law Review 62 (June 1 978): 911. 

27 John Baker, "Portrait of a Publisher," 27. 

28 John Mutter, "International Thomson Buys Gale Re- 

search for S66 Million," Publishers Weekly, 227 
(24 May 1985): 19. 



Code of Courtesy from the Roaring 
Twenties: Emily Post's Etiquette 



Richard W. Grefrath 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

The history of Emily Post's Etiquette and the 
biography of Emily Post are virtually insepa- 
rable. Edition after edition, her famous book 
has embodied the values she lived by. Emily 
Post was born Emily Price on October 3,1873, 
in Baltimore to an aristocratic family which 
could be traced back to the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Bruce Price, her father, was a famous 
architect who designed Chateau Frontenac in 
Quebec and most of the buildings in Tuxedo 
Park, New York, a high society country club 
estate. 

The Prices moved toNe w York City when 
Emily was five. As a child she often accompa- 
nied her father during work on his buildings, 
and she enjoyed scampering around the scaf- 
folding. She grew up in the conventional man- 
ner of the wealthy, with summers in Europe or 
Bar Harbor, Maine, and winters at her family's 
four-story, red brick house at 12 West 10th 
Street in Greenwich Village. Her mornings 
were spent with lessons from her German 
governess and afternoons featured a walk in 
the park. 

Tall and strikingly beautiful, she created 
a sensation as a debutante in 1892. Four men 
were often required to carry her cotillion fa- 
vors to her carriage after a ball' When some 
years later she wrote about the etiquette of 
debutante balls, she did so from personal 
experience, as was the case with the many 
other high society topics on which she became 
an authority. 



Marriage and Divorce 

Within a year of her debut she married 
Edwin Main Post, a handsome young banker 
from one of New York's Vanderbilt families. 
Soon the Posts had two children, Edwin Main 
Post, Jr., and Bruce Price Post, named after 
Mrs. Post's father. 

The first setback for the family came 
when Edwin Post lost most of his money 
following the panic of 1901. Then, being 
somewhat of aplayboy, his philandering came 
to the attention of a scandal sheet titled Town 
Topics which published accounts of Post's 
infidelities. The resulting scandal ended the 
Posts' marriage in 1906. 

Divorced and without means of support, 
Emily Post and her young sons had to econo- 
mize. Although hardly destitute, the enterpris- 
ing Mrs. Post attempted to forge a career for 
herself. At the time of her divorce, Mrs. Post 
had published two novels, which had been 
drawn from long entertaining letters written to 
hermother while vacationing in Europe. Since 
novel writing was not considered an accept- 
able occupation for a woman in her social 
realm, she reluctantly accepted payment of 
$3,000 for one of them. For this same reason 
she hesitated to turn to writing as a career after 
her divorce. 

Nevertheless, she continued to write nov- 
els, and she published four additional books 
by 1920. These successes made her a minor 
celebrity and additional income from gossipy 
fictional articles published in magazines had 



EMILY POSTS ETIQUETTE 99 



greatly improved her financial situation by 
1 92 1 when Richard Duffy, an editor at Funk & 
Wagnalls, sent a message to Mrs. Post asking 
for an appointment to speak with her about an 
"encyclopedia." She sent back word that she 
already owned five encyclopedias and hardly 
needed another. But Duffy persisted: '"We do 
not want you to buy an encyclopedia, we want 
you to write one.'" 1 Mrs. Post was enthused 
with the prospect and wondered what type of 
encyclopedia it might be. However, as she 
herself relates, "All the lovely balloons of 
vague fantasy collapsedatthe word 'etiquette. 1 
... To me at that time the word meant a lot of 
false and pretentious fuss over trifles." 2 Duffy 
persuasively argued that all her published 
writings abounded with people of fashionable 
manners, with scenes set in the high society of 
New York, Tuxedo Park, London, Paris, and 
Rome. But Mrs. Post was adamant. She was 
not interested in "thousands of silly and per- 
fectly mechanical little rules or in trying to 
exaltthe obvious." 3 Mrs. Post declinedDuffy's 
subsequent appeals for further meetings. 

But after a time, Duffy called again, bring- 
ing with him a stack of the then popular books 
on etiquette to demonstrate the need for a new 
one. "I really thought him a little mad," Mrs. 
Post recalled; but to get rid of him, she agreed 
to peruse the volumes. 4 

In her account of these events she was too 
discreet to name the book she examined first, 
but whatever it was, Mrs. Post was aghast over 
the "shocking misinformation" contained in 
the book she examined and was appalled at its 
condescending tone. In disgust, she slammed 
the book shut and at 3:00 a.m. telephoned Mr. 
Duffy at his home. "I will write the hook for 
you," she said, "and at once! It will only be a 
little primer — -just a few of the essential prin- 
ciples of taste. I'll begin it tomorrow morn- 
ing." 5 

The First Edition of Etiquette 

With dogged persistence, she worked on 
the book day after day for a year and a half. 
The final manuscript ran 692 pages, hardly "a 



little primer." Her richest source was her own 
memory of incidents and personalities. To 
organize her data she thumb-tacked various 
headings, "weddings," "correspondence," and 
so on around her workroom and under these 
headings fastened notes on each subject. She 
would disappear for days in her study, work- 
ing at the typewriter, emerging only for tea by 
the open fire and some welcome conversation 
at the Tuxedo Park clubhouse. 

The first edition of Emily Post's Etiquette 
was published in July 1922, during the Prohi- 
bition Era. Persistent publisher Richard Duffy 
contributed "Manners and Morals," an intro- 
ductory essay. Without really naming names, 
Duffy deplored the "blunt, unpolished hero of 
melodrama and romantic fiction" and offered 
readers aj aunty, belletristic discussion of trends 
in English and American manners from the 
Ten Commandments, through Confucius, 
English knighthood, and Samuel Coleridge, 
among others. 6 He offered the public Mrs. 
Post as this tradition's new standard bearer 
and quoted her definition of its premises; 
'"Best Society is not a fellowship of the 
wealthy, nor does it seek to exclude those who 
are not of exalted birth; but it is an association 
of gentlefolk, of which good form in speech, 
charm of manner, instinctive consideration 
for the feelings of others, are credentials by 
which society the world over recognizes its 
chosen members,"' 7 Inher first chapter, "What 
is Best Society?" Mrs. Postpursued this theme : 

"Best Society is not at all like a court with an 
especial queen or king, nor is it confined to 
any one place or group, but might better be 
described as an unlimited brotherhood which 
spreads over the entire surface of the globe, 
the members of which are invariably people of 
cultivation and worldly knowledge, who have 
not only perfect manners but a perfect manner. 
Manners are made up of trivialities of deport- 
ment which can be easily learned if one does 
not happen to know them; manner is personal- 
ity — the outward manifestation of one's inti- 
mate character and attitude toward life." 8 

Many people today, as many did during 
the Roaring Twenties, consider Emily Post's 
etiquette rules to be mere "trivialities." Mrs. 



kl 



100 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



S d "! 



Post herself was ever mindful of the ease with 
which etiquette can degenerate into mindless 
following of rules. Her emphasis on the true 
spirit of etiquette* a system designed to smooth 
over the awkward moments of life by taking 
into account the feelings of others and the 
happiness of all involved, is a major theme in 
her book and probably accounts in large part 
for its endurance through so many editions 
and through so many eras of varying manners 
and mores. The appeal of an egalitarian broth- 
erhood of the courteous has proved to be 
timeless, expressed as it is by a true lady of not 
only wealth and social standing but of human- 
ity and sensitivity as well. 

Throughout her subsequent career as the 
preeminent arbiter of taste and decorum, Mrs. 
Post was known to belittle the "trivialities" of 
etiquette, perhaps most notably in her 1929 
article in Collier's, "Any Fork WillDo." Since 
publication of the first edition of Etiquette, the 
question she was asked most frequently in 
letters had been "How can I tell which is the 
proper fork to use?" when confronted by sev- 
eral at a table setting. "Those who ask me 
about the most unimaginable trivialities of 
table manners are most often the very same 
people who unknowingly break the rules of 
genuine importance." 9 What, then, is impor- 
tant? The effect of conversation and behavior 
on others is the primary and abiding concern 
throughout Mrs. Post's writings. Among other 
breaches of taste, she deplored "screaming 
voices and loud, raucous laughter" and the use 
ofpoor grammar both ofwhichshe considered 
embarrassing to those one is with. 

After laying a philosophical foundation in 
the first chapter, thepractical advice followed. 
The second chapter started, logically, with 
"Introductions," such as "Mr. Distinguished, 
may I present Mr. Young?" Here Mrs. Post 
introduced the technique of using names in- 
dicative ofa person's social standing, age, and 
personality. In subsequent chapters the reader 
comes to know Mr. and Mrs. Toplofty; Mr. 
and Mrs. John Appleyard (who until now had 
not left their home state of Iowa); Mr. andMrs. 



Newlyrich; Mrs. Wellborn; Mr. and Mrs. 
Oneroom; and Mr. Richard Vulgar, among 
many others. This was not an innovative liter- 
ary conceit; similar symbolic names had been 
used at least as far back as the medieval 
morality plays such as Everyman, and in more 
recent history Charles Dickens had invented 
characternames such as Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton 
Veneering to indicate a polished superficial- 
ity. Nonetheless, Mrs. Post was a master of the 
technique, populating her text with an excep- 
tionally large number of such symbolic names, 
each one skillfully fitted to the situation, dis- 
armingly witty, and drawn from her own ex- 
periences in society. In fact, the book's dedi- 
cation reads: "To you my friends, whose iden- 
tity in these pages is veiled in fictional dis- 
guise." 10 Readers could easily identify them- 
selves in the proceedings, whether Newlyrich 
or Toplofty, and the comical overtones helped 
to make this whole world of etiquette rules less 
stuffy and formidable for the uninitiated wish- 
ing to learn the ropes. Reading Mrs. Post's 
book could be downright entertaining. 

"Introductions" progressed to "Greet- 
ings," including from Younger to Older, in 
church, informal greetings, and so on. She 
gave particular attention to handshakes. A 
gentleman on the street never shakes hands 
with a lady without first removing his glove, 
but the glove stays on if the handshake occurs 
at the opera. Mrs. Post's witty banter reigned 
supreme in a heartfelt discussion of the "per- 
sonality of the handshake." She asked "Who 
does not like a 'boneless' hand extended as 
though it were a spray of sea-weed, or a 
miniature boiled pudding?" Rather, the proper 
handshake is made briefly, but there should be 
a "feeling of strength and warmth in the clasp, 
and — one should atthe same time look into the 
countenance of a person whose hand one 
takes." 11 

Two subsequent chapters pursued saluta- 
tions of courtesy (including the proper way for 
a gentleman to tip his hat, informal bows, the 
Bow of Ceremony, the Bow ofa Woman of 
Charm) and how to conduct oneself in public 



EMILY POSTS ETIQUETTE 101 



(including how a gentleman offers his arm, 
how to deal with the restaurant check, and 
behavior in stores and shops). "Do not attract 
attention to yourself in public," Mrs. Post 
insisted, "is one of the fundamental rules of 
good breeding." 12 In discussing conduct in 
stores, the book emphasized its theme of kind- 
ness towards others, saying that "lack of con- 
sideration for those who in any capacity serve 
you, is always an evidence of ill-breeding, as 
well as of inexcusable selfishness."' 3 

The chapter on "Conversation" carried 
the credo "Think Before you Speak." It spoke 
much common sense, such as advising to try 
not to repeat oneself, either by telling a story 
again and again or by going back over details 
of a narrative that seemed especially to amuse 
a listener. This is surely another reason for the 
continuing popularity of Emily Post. Since the 
rules prescribed follow common sense, they 
do not appear arbitrary and artificial. Obvi- 
ously people of high society spend a great deal 
of time sitting around talking, so the art of 
conversation is a serious matter. Bores and 
"tactless blunderers" were censured. Rather 
than let an amiable conversation turn into an 
argument, the tactful person should keep his 
opinion to himself, suggested Mrs. Post. And 
readers were advised to switch to another 
topic of conversation than argue with a speaker 
whose opinion was opposed to their own. 

An entire chapter on "Words, Phrases, 
andPronunciation" included "Phrases Avoided 
in Good Society" and a brief table of phrases 
one could use: "Let me help you" (not "permit 
me to assist you") "I will find out" (not "I will 
ascertain"); and "had something to drink" (not 
"partook of liquid refreshment"). 14 This 
straightforwardapproachappealedtothemany 
newly wealthy people who had attained a 
higher social standing suddenly and who were 
assured by its unpretentiousness that they did 
not have to learn a whole new sophisticated 
language to converse properly in the their 
new-found society. 

A quaint little parable about "the Bank of 
Life" highlighted the chapter on "One' s Place 



in the Community," Life is a bank in which 
one deposits funds of "character, intellect, 
and heart, or other funds of egotism, hard- 
heartedness, and unconcern." 1 s One can only 
withdraw from (the bank of) life what one has 
deposited. This also applies to the community, 
where one gets out what one puts in. In this 
instance Mrs. Post invoked a somewhat moral 
tone, that etiquette is a system of rules and 
traditions based not only on good common 
sense but also on ethics and morality. Formal 
written invitations and the procedures of vis- 
iting one's friends on formal and informal 
occasions were discussed in subsequent chap- 
ters. The book's title page reads, "Illustrated 
with Private Photographs and facsimiles of 
social forms," and, true to that promise, there 
are innumerable examples of engraved cards 
and invitations for all types of occasions. 
Examples of acceptances and regrets were 
also furnished. 

An entire chapter was devoted to letter 
writing, with examples of business and social 
letters; and several chapters explored the many 
procedures involved in maintaining a proper 
household, including teas, afternoon parties 
and formal dinners. Many household proce- 
dures are described thoroughly, including 
"How a Cook Submits a Menu" and the daily 
duties of the butler. Also specified in detail are 
the dress and decorum of other servants, such 
as the house footman, the kitchen maid, the 
parlor maid, the housemaid, the lady's maid, 
the valet, the housekeeper, and the nurse. 

The whole matter of servants has received 
considerable attention throughout the various 
editions of Emily Post's Etiquette. To those 
readers of the first edition who had lately 
earned a position in society, its extensive 
instructions about servants were undoubtedly 
most welcome. But each new edition of Eti- 
quette reduced the emphasis on servants, re- 
flecting the changing times as well as the 
expansion of the book's audience to social 
strata below the highest levels. As in all rela- 
tions with others, courtesy to one's servants 
was counseled consistently. 



102 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Acknowledging that not all readers of 
Etiquette were able to accumulate a large 
servant staff, Mrs. Post suggested ways to 
entertain graciously with few or no servants. 
One of the key ingredients in her formula is 
use of the buffet, allowing all guests to serve 
themselves. Mrs. Post was so enamored of this 
food service technique, she expanded on the 
topic in her book How to Give Buffet Suppers 
(Waterbury, CT: Chase Brass & Copper Co., 
193 3), which included eight pages of selected 
menus and recipes. 

The architect's daughter also paid special 
attention to the way a distinguished house 
reflects thegood taste and charm of its owners. 
Furniture should be suitable for the architec- 
ture of the house. Mrs, Post even proposed a 
four-question test to determine an art object's 
suitability for a particular house. She pursued 
these concerns in her The Personality of a 
House: The Blue Book of Home Design and 
Decoration (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 
1930). 

One of the more controversial topics in 
Etiquette through the years and one which 
critics like to cite to demonstrate the hope- 
lessly outdated conventions prescribed by 
Emily Post is the matter of the chaperon. "A 
young lady who is unprotected by a chap- 
eron," she wrote, "is in the position precisely 
of an unarmed traveler walking among 
wolves." 16 The chaperon does a great deal 
more than simply being present when young 
people congregate; she coordinates the social 
life of the young lady, sends out invitations on 
her behalf, and even stays up until the young 
lady returns home from a date to let her in the 
door since no proper young lady lets herself in 
with her own key ! Yet Mrs. Post did insist that 
the best chaperon is "the young girl's own 
sense of dignity and pride," 17 and were it not 
for the conventions of propriety, this should be 
more than adequate. Later editions of Eti- 
quette progressively toned down the impor- 
tance of the chaperon. 

Arguably the most popular and widely 
read section in Etiquette, from the first edition 



to the present day, is the chapter on weddings. 
For many this is one of the very few occasions 
in life when formal dress is rented, profes- 
sional caterers hired, and florists engaged, all 
at once, at a time which seems the most 
important celebration of a lifetime. Mrs. Post 
covered all the details so graciously that the 
whole ordeal seems almost enjoyable rather 
than intimidating. 

The other major rites of passage, christen- 
ings and funerals, each warranted their own 
chapters. According to son Edwin, Mrs. Post 
was not a religious person, but she interpreted 
the details of church ceremony with her char- 
acteristic simplicity and thoughtfulness. 18 

Chapters entitled "The Country House 
and Its Hospitality," "The House Party in 
Camp," and "Clubs and Club Etiquette" pro- 
vide good advice for these activities. The 
"Games and Sports" chapter covers mostly 
how to play bridge courteously, as well as 
golf. The most important considerations are 
playing for the sake of playing rather than 
winning, never losing your temper, being a 
good loser, and giving your opponent the 
benefit of the doubt. 

The "Fundamentals of Good Behavior" 
chapter is especially central to the philosophy 
of Etiquette. A lengthy succession of do's and 
don'ts attempted to advise those who would be 
true ladies and gentlemen! A gentleman does 
not borrow money from a woman; no gentle- 
man goes to a lady's house when he is affected 
by alcohol; a gentleman never takes advan- 
tage of another's helplessness or ignorance. 
These are manifestations of a fundamental 
code of honor which demands the "inviolabil- 
ity of his word, and the incorruptibility of his 
principles." 19 She added that "the instincts of 
a lady are much the same as those of a gentle- 



man 



"20 



When Etiquette: In Society, in Business, 
in Politics, and at Home was published in mid- 
summer, 1 922, the timing did not appear ideal, 
coming after the rush of June weddings, one of 
the major social occasions with which Eti- 
quette was designed to help. 21 Nonetheless, 



EMILY POST'S ETIQUETTE 1 03 



Etiquette was an immediate success, steadily 
scaling the bestsellers lists. 22 

As Funk & Wagnalls had expected, a 
large number of Etiquette's purchasers were 
people who had suddenly made a lot of money 
on the stock market during the post-war boom. 
These people were traveling abroad, buying 
new large houses, hiring servants, joining 
clubs, and putting on large-scale fashionable 
weddings. For them, Etiquette was a practical 
guidebook, a manual for the newly rich. 23 

Another aspect of the book's appeal was 
the glimpse it offered into the world of the 
aristocracy. For a middle-class housewife who 
bought Etiquette to plan a wedding, it was 
fascinating to read about "double service din- 
ner service" for 12 persons, where the food 
starts at opposite ends of the table, progresses 
clockwise, the butler stationed directly behind 
the hostess at the end of the table. Other 
chapters, such as the one on the debutante ball, 
held similar interest for those who would 
never attend such affairs. 

Many fell under the spell of Emily Post 
the storyteller. Critic Edmund Wilson said that 
Etiquette's first edition had "the excitement of 
a novel" and "snob appeal," both important 
factors in its success. Wilson reported that F, 
Scott Fitzgerald was so taken by the atmo- 
sphere and drama in Emily Post's book that he 
was "inspired with the idea of a play in which 
all the motivations should consist of trying to 
do the right thing." 24 

Nowhere was Mrs. Post's skill with witty, 
entertaining prose more apparent than in the 
five-page tale, "How a Dinner Can be 
Bungled," in the "Formal Dinners" chapter. 
Mr. and Mrs. Newwed give a formal dinner 
and everything goes wrong. The fire in the 
drawing room fills the house with smoke so 
everyone starts blinking and sneezing. The 
clear soup is not clear, is barely tepid, and 
tastes like dishwater. The fish with Hollandaise 
sauce arrives in a huge mound too big for its 
platter with a narrow gutter of water around 
the edge and a curdled yellow mess dabbed 
over the center. None of the guests eats any- 



thing, except for Mrs. Kindheart who sips at 
the cold soup. After the guests have gone, Mr. 
Newwed tries to console his weeping wife. 
"Remembering the trenches" of World War I, 
he tries to convince her that dinner was not so 
bad! 25 

The authoritative tone of Mrs. Post's writ- 
ing also accounts for the book's success. She 
wrote effortlessly and with great wit and charm 
about a social world she and her family had 
been solidly a part of for several generations. 
Not since Mrs. Sherwood, whose Manners 
and Social Usages (New York: Harper & 
Bros. , 1 884) was popular when Mrs. Post was 
a girl, was an etiquette manual published by a 
woman of such high social position. 26 

Critical and Popular Reception 

Contemporary book critics were enthusi- 
astic and laudatory reviews from hundreds of 
newspapersbeganpouringintothepublisher. 27 
"Up-to-date, sensible, comprehensive," 
praised Booklist. 2 * In a lengthy treatise en- 
titled "A School for Better Manners in 
America," novelist Gertrude Atherton claimed 
that "as a nation, we are the most ill-mannered 
in the world," populated by the "awful" char- 
acters portrayed in Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, 
another popular book of the day. But, she 
implied, Mrs. Post's excellent text would lift 
the country out of its rudeness. Atherton ech- 
oed others in her observation that "Not only is 
its style delightful, but it reads like a first-class 
society novel " 29 Will Cuppy of the New York 
Tribune also found it entertaining and said 
"Mrs, Post is a delightful writer — humorous, 
wise, witty, worldly, sympathetic, human." 30 
The Literary Digest perceptively saw behind 
the innumerable rules in Etiquette to its true 
purpose; "Not to teach us to display our so- 
phistication, but to enable us to live without 
friction." 31 

Soon after the publication of Etiquette, 
hundreds of readers wrote to Mrs. Post asking 
for rulings on specific situations not covered 
in the book. This was an unexpected develop- 



$* 



N 



104 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



ment since nowhere in Etiquette had Mrs. Post 
invited inquiries. Dutifully she read, consid- 
ered, and answered all the letters. Those in 
haste sent telegrams, including one reading 
"REPLYW1RECOLLECT.WEDDINGTO- 
MORROW WHICH SIDE OF BRIDE DOES 
GROOM LEAVE CHURCH ON?" 32 This 
flood of letters served a crucial function in the 
Following years, providing material to revise 
and make additions to revisions of Etiquette. 
This corpus of letters composed the kind of 
market survey which in more recent years 
publishers have paid considerable sums for. 
, As the sales of Etiquette continued to 
increase steadily (within ten years it had sold 
more than 500,000 copies), Mrs. Post was able 
to parlay her new found celebrity status into 
other successful ventures. Soon she began a 
monthly column on etiquette for McCall's 
magazine; a full-time secretary was hired to 
assist her with this. The column was a conve- 
nient way to share with many the answers to 
questions she received in her bulging daily 
mailbag, 

Mrs. Post was continually besieged by 
manufacturers who wished her to endorse 
their merchandise. She ordinarily declined to 
endorse a particular brand, as in the case of a 
ginger ale company, which paid $3,000 for a 
pamphlet written by Mrs. Post saying that 
"ginger ale is a refreshing drink to serve at 
parties," without specifically mentioning the 
brand of the company sponsoring this "en- 
dorsement." She wrote pamphlets for linen, 
silver, and glass manufacturers as well, never 
endorsing a brand name, but describing the 
correct use of these items in entertaining. 
These manufacturers paid up to $5,000 apiece 
for these advertisements, 33 

By 1929, her fame was sufficiently estab- 
lished for Collier's magazine to state, in the 
caption to her photograph accompanying her 
article "Any Fork Will Do," that Mrs. Post "is 
perhaps the highest authority on just what you 
should do at the right moment." 34 

In the early 1930s Mrs. Post stopped writ- 
ing her McCall 's column in favor of doing her 



own radio program on NBC, a program that 
aired for eight years until the outbreak of 
World War II. 35 Shortly after leavingMcCo// 's, 
she contracted with the Bell Syndicate for a 
syndicated newspaper column on etiquette; 
called "Social Problems."Thiscolumn'spopu- 
larity increased continually and, at the time of 
her death in 1 960, was still being syndicated to 
more than 200 papers. 36 

Early Revised Editions 

None of these many activities deterred 
Mrs. Post from paying attention to the book 
that had brought her celebrity. In 1927, 193 1 , 
and 1934 revised editions of Etiquette were 
published and, though the revisions were mi- 
nor, each of these new editions enabled Mrs. 
Post to incorporate into her famous book some 
of the situations readers had frequently asked 
about in letters. The deluge of letters that 
followed publication of the first edition re- 
mained steady; an average of 6,000 arrived 
each week through the 1930s. 37 The 1927 
edition of Etiquette carried a new subtitle, 
"The Blue Book of Social Usage," which was 
used in all further editions until Mrs. Post's 
death in 1960. 

The 1927 edition added a chapter on 
"American Neighborhood Customs," includ- 
ing bridal showers, singing groups, and sew- 
ing circles, topics which readers had brought 
to Mrs. Post's attention through letters. In this 
edition the first edition's "The Chaperon and 
Other Conventions" was changed to "The 
Vanishing Chaperon," though much of the 
content remained, including the infamous sen- 
tence about a young girl without a chaperon 
being like "an unarmed traveler walking among 
wolves." 38 

Servants still occupied a major section, 
somewhat expanded by new members such as 
the business or social secretary; yet there is 
also a new, modern wife, Mrs. Three-in-One, 
who manages to be cook, waitress, andhostess 
when conducting servantless entertaining. The 
chapter "When Mrs. Three-in-One Gives a 



EMILY POST'S ETIQUETTE 105 



Party" shows the multitude of Etiquette read- 
ers who were of moderate means and without 
servants how to throw a party. "Again the 
Buffet!" counseled Mrs. Post— "One of the 
nicest and most fashionable entertainments 
that can be given," whether for lunch, supper 
or dinner. 39 Following Mrs. Post's instruc- 
tions, Mrs. Three-in Once could give a dinner 
yet never leave the table. One trick that helped 
make this possible was keeping a tea wagon at 
the hostess's side. For many years the oft- 
repeated query, "How can I serve a formal 
dinner for eight without a maid?" met the 
reply, "You can't." But eventually Mrs. Post 
determined to find a solution to this dilemma. 
To test her plan she invited six good friends to 
dinner with her and her son Bruce, Mrs. Post 
ladled soup from a tureen and all courses were 
served from, and plates stacked on a tea wagon 
at her side . Her success went a step beyond the 
buffet! 40 

Like its predecessors, the 1937 edition 
was a "complete new edition: rewritten, re- 
vised, reset," according to the note on its title 
page, and completely "modernized," accord- 
ing to the announcement of its publication in 
the September 18, 1937, Publishers Weekly. 
Funk & Wagnalls launched an energetic pro- 
motion campaign with special emphasis on 
New York and advertisements in The New 
York Times Book Review, This Week, the New 
Yorker, Bride 's Magazine, and others. Book 
sellers received window and counter displays 
and imprinted circulars. Publishers Weekly 
said that "All of the editions, from 1922 to 

1936, retained the rather unbending attitude 
towards certain forms of behavior which has 
been relaxed in the present rewriting." 41 

"The Vanishing Chaperon" of the 1927 
edition became "The Vanished Chaperon" in 

1937. The old idea of "protection," Mrs. Post 
then explained "is out of tune with the world 
today." A girl, she believed, should chaperon 
herself. Still, Mrs. Post gave up the point 
grudgingly, suggesting that when girls are too 
free, trouble results. "Continuous pursuit of 
thrill and consequent craving for greater and 



greater excitement gradually produces the 
same result as that which a drug produces in an 
addict," she warned, and likened the promis- 
cuous girl to cheapened merchandise thrown 
on the mark-down sale table in a clothing 
store. 42 

"Modern Man and Girl," a new chapter 
reflecting the jazz age's effect on mores since 
1922. "How Can a Man with Almost No 
Money Take a Nice Girl Out"? asked one 
section. Rather than direct a young man to a 
particular type of date, it suggested that if 
Sally Hiborn is really worth the trouble she 
won't care if they dine in a neighborhood 
cafeteria instead of the Fitz-Cherry Hotel. 
This is typical Emily Post, the parrying of the 
question and an answer based on common 
sense and the feelings of all concerned. 

New characters joined Etiquette's cast in 
1937. One was Gloria Gorgeous who needed 
to learn to stop applying makeup in public lest 
men wonder: If she really is gorgeous, why 
does her face need such constant attention? 43 

The 1937 edition includes a few letters 
from readers, including one asking what if she 
is high society and "he is from over the car 
tracks." "Go out on those car tracks and take 
a good look at them," stormed Mrs. Post, and 
"ask yourself if you are really such a snob that 
you can't see true values except as some of 
your friends happen to appraise them for you. 
And if the car track boundaries still seem that 
of a foreign country, break your engage- 
ment!" 44 What a firebrand! It calls to mind the 
Emily Post who campaigned for the repeal of 
Prohibition although she herself was a 
nondrinker. And how perfectly modern this 
advice is, yet based on one of Emily Post's 
basicprinciples — that the most important value 
is the happiness of all. A similar letter from a 
female reader who was from the wrong side of 
town drew a similar response. 

Some of the 1937 edition's additions ex- 
hibited a timeless modernity, for example, the 
new section on smoking. Characteristically, 
Mrs. Post, a nonsmoker, saw both sides of the 
argument. She advised smokers to be more 




106 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



discreet and careful about smoking habits 
(e.g., don't put out cigarettes on lamp bases, 
etc.) and advised nonsmokers to be tolerant of 
smokers. 

New technology generates new questions 
of courtesy. Of those who blasted radios at full 
volume, Mrs. Post said, it "is something that 
causes too much misery to need comment 
further than to beg them to remember the 
rudeness they are perpetrating in putting oth- 
ers to the torture of blaring noise." 45 On the 
other hand, she considered it acceptable to 
turn down a dinner invitation to stay home to 
hear a program on the radio. Mary Littlehouse 
liked the opera, but, not being able to afford 
tickets, listened on the radio. So she was not 
being rude when she declined the dinner invi- 
tation from Mrs. Onthehill 

She also addressed other technologies. 
She cautioned that those who did not own a 
telephone should not make frequent calls on a 
neighbor's phone, especially not toll calls. 
And she added a new chapter on "Manners for 
Motorists." Though she herself never learned 
to drive, Mrs. Post loved traveling by car; one 
of her early publishing successes was her 
account By Motor to the Golden Gate (New 
York: D. Appleton, 1916). Predictably, she 
advised motorists to be courteous and to avoid 
unnecessary horn honking because of impa- 
tience. Motorists are to make the hand signal 
for "stop" the moment they know they are 
about to apply the brakes, and no drinking and 
driving. 46 

Other new chapters covered "Etiquette in 
Washington and State Capitals" and "Restau- 
rant Etiquette." Another new chapter on the 
"Fraternity House Party and Commencement" 
analyzed the concept of "popularity." Here 
Mrs, Post warned college freshmen of both 
sexes not to make an excessive effort to be 
popular, but to be themselves. This, she as- 
sured them, would cultivate fine andgenerous 
friends. Who pays what and appropriate dress 
and behavior at major college events were 
also thoroughly described. 

The 1937 edition (in numerical sequence 
the fifth edition of Etiquette, although not so 



designated) was very well received by the 
book-buying public as well as the critics. 
Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt envisioned 
"an exquisitely ordered universe in which 
everyone from debutantes to motorists put 
courtesy first," thanks to following Emily 
Post's principles which she likened to a "mod- 
ern code of chivalry" rather than a mere com- 
pilation of social do's and don'ts. 47 Though the 
price of Etiquette had remained $4 for 1 5 
years from the first edition to the fifth, Mrs. 
Wyatt thought the cost high, but nonetheless 
well worth it. In Etiquette, The New York 
Times perceived "a philosophy of behavior 
which insists that no line of conduct can be 
correct that is not kindly and wise." 48 

After the outbreak of World War II, sales 
of Etiquette continued to climb. One reason 
was U.S .0. Clubs throughout the United States 
and overseas made a special point of obtaining 
the book and they reported that requests for it 
ran second only to requests for the Rand 
McNally atlas. Public libraries discovered that 
more copies of Etiquette were borrowed and 
not returned (or simply stolen) than any other 
book except the Bible. The great war corre- 
spondent Ernie Py le boosted sales of Etiquette 
by writing in one of his published dispatches 
that when he was in Ireland, the candidates for 
officer training schools had to know their 
Emily Post. Later he coined the term "Emily 
Posters." The Chicago Daily News picked up 
the idea and did a story reporting that while 
Betty Grable was their Number One Pin-up 
Girl, Emily Post was their Number One Look- 
Up Girl. 49 

The 1942 revised edition of Etiquette 
came with a special separate 20-page War 
Time Supplement addressing many of the 
specific situations occurring in a nation at war. 
One of her Bell Syndicate columns titled "Our 
Wounded Come Home: How to Treat Them," 
was widely reprinted in 1943, appearing in 
This Week Magazine and the Reader 's Digest. 
"From now on more and more of our serious 
wounded will appear in public " Mrs. Post 
said. "What are we going to do and say when 
they leave the hospitals and take theirplaces in 



EMILY POST'S ETIQUETTE 1 07 



the world for which they have given so much?" 
She advised, "Don't stare, don't point, don't 
make personal remarks.*' She added that it is 
rude to ask a man how he lost an eye or leg or 
what injuries caused the scars on his face and 
that commiseration from strangers is obnox- 
ious. Wives and mothers, she warned, must 
school themselves to keep tears under con- 
trol. 50 

The 1945 edition of Etiquette carried the 
expected addition, "Concerning Military and 
Postwar Etiquette." It covered many situa- 
tions involving returning veterans. In it she 
noted that it is inconsiderate to tell a veteran 
how difficult the hardships of war-time living 
were at home and cautioned against imitating 
the girl at a soda fountain who said, "I guess 
you're glad to be home to get a real job." 51 
There was a new, brief section on Reformed 
and Orthodox Jewish weddings and "Simpli- 
fied Wedding Details for a Bride in Everyday 
Clothes," this being anot uncommon carryover 
practice from the war years, An expanded 
section on telephone etiquette suggested that 
"Hello" remained the correct way to answer 
the phone at home; furthermore, giving one's 
name, as in "Mrs. Jones speaking," leaves one 
without chance of retreat from salesmen and 
strangers. 

The 1955 edition of Etiquette appeared 
with minor revisions. Mrs. Post was then 82 
years old and more and more of the activity 
concerned with the world of "Emily Post's 
Etiquette" was being handled by the Emily 
Post Institute, founded by son Edwin Post in 
1946 and operated under his direction. The 
institute handled the voluminous mail Mrs. 
Post received, did research for her books, and 
prepared a cookbook, published as the Emily 
Post Cookbook in 1951 (New York: Funk & 
Wagnalls). 52 Some of the 1955 edition's revi- 
sions diluted the vigor and originality of Mrs. 
Post's original text. The famous bungled din- 
ner episode was abridged; the concluding line 
from every previous edition had been "What- 
ever you do, don't dine with the Newweds 
unless you eat your dinner before you go, and 



wear black glasses so no sight can offend 
you." The 1955 edition shortened this to 
"Whatever you do, don't dine with the 
Newweds unless you eat your dinner before 
you go," 53 without the cleverly extravagant, 
amusingly snide remark about wearing dark 
glasses. And the ill-rnannered fire, which up 
through the 1945 edition had smoked every- 
one out of the drawing room, was eliminated. 
In a New Yorker article entitled "The Waning 
Oomph of Mrs. Toplofty," Geoffrey Hellman 
cleverly explored this watering-down. He cited 
another example along the same lines: the first 
edition's statement, "To be a slattern in a 
vulgar household is scarcely an elevated 
employment, but neither is working in a sweat- 
shop," had by the 1955 edition been changed 
to "To be a slattern in a vulgar household is 
scarcely an elevated employment, but neither 
is belonging to the lower ranks of any other 
calling." 54 The sharp, poetic "sweatshop" im- 
age is gone, perhaps revealing acute politic 
instincts in not making smart comments which 
might offend labor or management. 

The Tenth Edition — Mrs. Post's 
Last 

The tenth edition of Etiquette was the last 
edition "by Emily Post;" it appeared in the 
spring of 1960, the year of her death. Mrs. Post 
died inNew York City onSeptember 25, 1960, 
at the age of 86. A front-page obituary in The 
New York Times pointed out how Mrs. Post 
had pioneered the simplification of good man- 
ners whi ch at the time of the 1 922 edition were 
unnecessarily elaborate. "Every edition of her 
book emphasized the basic rule of etiquette: 
make the other person comfortable." 55 

A helpful improvement in format in the 
1960 edition was expansion of the table of 
contents by several pages, allowing listing of 
all subheadings in each chapter, thus permit- 
ting easier browsing. New topics reflecting 
the times were discussed, including the "blind 
date" (but only if the third party gets approval 
from Gloria Gorgeous before giving her phone 



108 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



number to John Handsome). The chapter on 
"Military and Postwar Etiquette" from the 
previous edition was boiled down to a small 
chapter limited to the display, care, etc., of the 
U.S. flag. Most revisions were minor. Tele- 
phoning and smoking, for instance, previ- 
ously covered in a single chapter, received 
their own chapters. The classic chapter "Mrs. 
Three-in-One Gives a Dinner Party," a staple 
since the 1927 edition, was eliminated. In- 
deed, little by little many of the famous char- 
acters with the symbolicnames had departed — 
too corny, perhaps was the thought; but with 
them left much of the charm of the first edition. 

The tenth edition added a brief four-page 
concluding chapter titled "For and About 
Young People." It emphasized "fair play," 
respect for others* property and rights, and 
counseled children "to give credit to others 
and not take too much credit to themselves," 56 
In short, the philosophy of courtesy and con- 
sideration towards others, the Emily Post phi- 
losophy, applies to children as well as adults. 

Funk & Wagnalls, publisher of every edi- 
tion through the tenth (1 960), was acquired by 
Reader's Digest in 1965; Reader's Digest 
published the eleventh edition that same year. 
In 1 97 1 Reader's Digest sold Funk & Wagnalls 
to Standard Reference Library, Inc., then later 
the same year ownership of Funk & Wagnalls 
was transferred to the Donnelly Corporation. 
Donnelly subsequently assigned trade pub- 
lishing operations to Thomas Y.Cro well Com- 
pany. Eventually Harper & Row acquired 
Etiquette and published the fourteenth edi- 
tion, the current edition, in 1984. 

Reader's Digest published the eleventh 
edition in 1965 although it still carried the 
Funk & Wagnalls imprint. This, the first edi- 
tion published after Emily Post's death, was 
revised by Elizabeth L. Post, Emily Post's 
granddaughter-in-law. 

Elizabeth L Post 

Elizabeth Post seemed true to the spirit of 
the Emily Post philosophy. In her "Preface" 



she described her first apprehensive meeting 
with Mrs. Post. "I found that the supposedly 
unapproachable authority on all our manners 
and behavior was the sweetest most natural 
warm-hearted unaffected person I had ever 
met." Elizabeth Post understood that perfect 
manners can only be achieved "by making 
consideration and unselfishness an integral 
part of your behavior." 57 

Elizabeth Post made several bold addi- 
tions. An entirely new chapter advised how to 
make successful appearances on radio and 
television. Emily Post, for eight years a suc- 
cessful radio celebrity, could have written a 
chapter such as this, but never did. The new 
chapter on public speaking was an excellent 
primer on the subject, advising how to pre- 
pare, what kind of notes to bring, opening 
words, use of humor and props, what to do 
with one's hands, and even how to dress, as 
well as how to introduce a speaker. A new 
chapter on pets and people described how to 
keep a dog or cat without allowing the animal 
to become nuisance to others. Consideration 
of others' feelings was extended to animals. 

Emily Post's "Sports and Games" section 
had consisted mostly of the card game of 
bridge and some discussion of golf. The 1965 
edition added a major discussion of skiing 
along with advice on "conduct at a profes- 
sional match," including football, baseball, 
basketball, ice shows, and even rodeos! Ac- 
knowledging the increasingly important role 
of etiquette in the business world, Elizabeth 
Post added a chapter on "Conducting Meet- 
ings" that covered both business meetings and 
meetings held in the home for planning charity 
fund raisers and the like. 

The 1965 Elizabeth Post edition made a 
decided effort, as have subsequent editions, to 
be trendy and au courant. In a sense, therein 
lies a problem. In the 1922 first edition, Emily 
Post truly captured the personality of the post- 
World War I realm of high society and of its 
breeding and manners which today, as they 
did in 1965, seem old-fashioned and artificial. 
Though the aristocracy she described appeared 



EMILY POST'S ETIQUETTE 109 



^ P ^S 



exclusive, there was a genuine noblesse oblige 
in her writing. Emily Post's etiquette code was 
tied to Victorian tradition, which made hers a 
conservative approach. Through the many 
editions of Etiquette, one sees traditions up- 
held for the sake of tradition, long after they 
have ceased to be common practice. 

Elizabeth Post has made a conscientious 
effort to be relevant to the times but has been 
burdened by the old baggage of much of the 
Emily Post approach. Among other conven- 
tions indicative of this dilemma, the chaperon 
was still discussed, at unnecessary length, in 
the 1965 edition. The Emily Post text retained 
in Elizabeth Post editions has often been re- 
vised, smoothing out its delightfully rough 
edges. 

Some of Emily Post's symbolic charac- 
ters have been retained along with her text, but 
few if any new ones have been created. Little 
by little through the years they have faded into 
the wings. In the 1965 edition, the "Blind 
Date" section, for instance, retained the sec- 
tion Emily Post wrote about Gloria Gorgeous 
and John Handsome, but Elizabeth Post added 
paragraphs describing Cindy, Charlie, and 
Jane. This supplanting of colorful, witty, sym- 
bolic names with dull, generic, android names 
is characteristic of the increasing lack of ex- 
citement in Etiquette, a gradual dehumanizing 
process making it progressively more difficult 
for the reader to sense the author's personal- 
ity. 

As if inviting comparison, in 1 969 Funk & 
Wagnalls/Reader's Digest published two edi- 
tions of Etiquette, one the twelfth edition by 
Elizabeth Post and the other a reprint facsimile 
of the original first edition of Etiquette by 
Emily Post. (The latter sold for $10, $6 more 
than in 1 922.) Reviewing the two in the Satur- 
day Review, Jerome Beatty found the 1922 
edition "a delight to read" and "more interest- 
ing" than the newcomer. 58 Justin Kaplan 
couldn't resist comparing the two in a fasci- 
nating Harper's article, "A Rose for Emily." 
He perceived that the book's concept had 
shifted over the years "from a guide to forms 
and etiquette to a general encyclopedia of 



modern living which now gives practical and 
for the most part sensible advice on how to 
conduct yourself." He observed the effect of 
retaining in the newer editions the sections 
Emily Posthad written. That nowhere in those 
sections is "sex" mentioned except in the term 
"the opposite sex," that one should avoid 
discussing religion and politics, and that one 
should never write a letter that would be 
embarrassing if printed in the newspaper sug- 
gest that "things haven't changed all thatmuch 
in Emily Post's world in nearly fifty years . . . 
under twelve layers of writing and revision 
there is still Emily Post's Troy, a rather crusty 
place." 59 

This captures the perpetual dilemma. The 
truly captivating passages, those of genuine 
literary merit, are holdovers written by the 
cantankerous, lively Emily Post. Conscien- 
tiously excising these would make the book 
less old-fashioned and Victorian, but then 
much of the appeal would be lost. The bright- 
est literary gem, the bungled dinner episode, 
which appeared in one form or another in all 
of Emily Post's editions, was removed by 
Elizabeth Post in the 1965 edition, never to 
reappear. One can speculate about the rea- 
sons; but whatever they were, Etiquette lost a 
memorable story. 

The twelfth edition added a section on the 
Bar Mitzvah and expanded discussion of teen- 
agers' social interactions. An analytical as- 
pect crept into this edition, at one point caus- 
ing Elizabeth Post to disagree with Emily Post 
on introductions. "Best Society has only one 
phrase in acknowledgement of an introduc- 
tion: 'How do you do?' It literally accepts no 
other," according to Emily Post in the first 
edition. 60 She did allow, however, that "Hello" 
suffices for greetings on informal occasions. 
Challenging this supposedly absolute dictum, 
Elizabeth Post declared, "If you think about it, 
the phrase 'How do you do?' has little mean- 
ing. Therefore, except on very formal occa- 
sions when tradition is important and desir- 
able, I prefer the less formal responses: 'Hello,' 
or 'I'm very glad to meet you.'" 6 'Insisting that 
expressions make literal sense was a new 



* 



% 



1 10 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



concept; Emily Post's approach had been to 
affirm the traditional greetings with which 
people were familiar and comfortable. 

The 1975 edition was called The New 
Emily Post Etiquette. In it Elizabeth Post ad- 
vised, "Don't panic if you find your child has 
smoked marijuana," though she thought it 
prudent to persuade him or her not to graduate 
to harder drugs. 62 Other formerly forbidden 
topics were now discussed, including sex, but 
only in the context of "sexual relations during 
engagement." Typical of the attempt in recent 
editions tobe all things to all people, Elizabeth 
Post concluded that "each couple must decide 
this question for themselves." Although rel- 
evant factors in that decision are discussed, 
including the alleged nonapproval of society 
in general, the reader is left without the opin- 
ionated lectures Emily Post delivered when 
she was at the helm, In other words, "permis- 
siveness" had crept into the rules of etiquette; 
allowing that may have been a serious tactical 
error. As Charles Bunge observed, Elizabeth 
Post "has tried to revise this edition to keep up 
with today's informal, open way of life, thereby 
diminishing the distinction between Post and 
other guides." 53 Other new sections included 
"You and Your Neighbor," geared to subur- 
banites. In this section the advice is more a 
collection of homilies than true insights, with 
Elizabeth Post advising, "Apply the Golden 
Rule, treat them as you would like them to treat 



»64 



you. 

A sampling of quotes from the 1922 edi- 
tion were scattered throughout the 1975 edi- 
tion, perhaps to resurrect some of the charac- 
ter which had been disappearing from recent 
editions. But this is an awkward device since 



the quotes are not integrated into the text but 
just sit here and there as amusing but insular 
epigraphs. 

Elizabeth Post is also author of the current 
edition, the fourteenth, Emily Post 's Etiquette, 
published in 1 984 by Harper and Row. A huge 
new section, "Your Professional Life," incor- 
porates what is often called "business eti- 
quette" and which in previous editions re- 
ceived little attention. This section includes 
chapters on getting ahead in business, busi- 
ness clubs and associations, leaving your job, 
and traveling on business. This in-depth treat- 
ment of business issues is consistent with the 
modernization of Etiquette, which the four- 
teenth edition's dust jacket describes as "A 
Guide to Modern Manners," 

Described by one critic as "blunt and 
homely*' 65 compared to the Emily Post's origi- 
nal work, the Elizabeth Post 1984 edition 
continues the practice of reproducing quotes 
from the 1922 edition, as if to recapture past 
glories, but with no greater success than be- 
fore. 

The Elizabeth Post revisions are compe- 
tent and comprehensive. They can be useful 
guides in coping with the rapidly changing 
social situations of recent decades. The one 
thing they lack is the true genius of Emily Post, 
whose skills as a literary stylist, combined 
with a playful sense of humor which matured 
to jaunty cantankerousness in her later writ- 
ings, made her editions of Etiquette a true 
delight. Emily Post was a celebrity whose 
personality caught the American imagination 
in the Roaring Twenties and maintained that 
hold until her death. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at 

Home, by Emily Post. New York: Funk & 

Wagnalls, 1922. 627p. 
Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 

Post. New and enlarged ed. New York: Funk & 

Wagnalls, 1927. 692p. 
Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 

Post. New and enlarged ed. New York: Funk & 

Wagnalls, 1931. 740p. 



Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 
Past. Complete new ed., rewritten, revised, and 
reset. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1937. 877p. 

Etiquette: War-Time Supplement, by Emily Post, 
New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1942. 20p. 

Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 
Post. Complete new ed., rewritten, revised, and 
reset, including War-Time Supplement. New 
York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1942. 913p. 



EMILY POST'S ETIQUETTE 1 1 1 



Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 

Post. New York: Funk &Wagnalls, 1945. 654p. 
Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 

Post. 9th ed. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 

1955. 671p. 
Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, by Emily 

Post. 10th ed. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 

1960. 67 lp. 
Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social 

Usage, revised by Elizabeth L. Post. 11th rev. 

ed. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1965. 707p. 



Emily Post's Etiquette, by Elizabeth L. Post. 1 2th 

rev. ed. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969. 

721p. 
The New Emily Post 's Etiquette, by Elizabeth L. 

Post. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1975.978p. 
Emily Post's Etiquette, by Elizabeth L. Post. 14th ed. 

New York: Harper & Row, 1984. l,018p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Truly Emily Post, the only book-length 
biography of Post is her son Edwin's enter- 
taining and loving tribute to a memorable 
personality. Owing to Edwin Post's some- 
times overly respectful approach to his sub- 
ject, other sources, especially the articles in 
the Dictionary of American Biography and 
Notable American Women are valuable for 
filling in some of the factual details of her life. 
Among commentators on Etiquette, Atherton 
and Wyatt evoke the book's initial impact. 
The front-page New York Times obituary did 
justice to one of New York' most celebrated 
citizens, skillfully summarizing and evaluat- 
ing her distinguished career. A long standing 
institution is always ripe for iconoclastic at- 
tack, but among modern critics, Kaplan's 
thoughtful piece is the most balanced. 

Ames, William E. "Post, Emily Price." {^Dictionary 
of American Biography, Supplement 6: 1956- 
1960, edited by John A. Garraty, 514-15. New 
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980. 

Aresty, Esther B. The Best Behavior: The Course of 
Good Manners from Antiquity to the Present as 
Seen Through Courtesy and Etiquette Books. 
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. 

Atherton, Gertrude. "A School for Better Manners in 
America." The Literary Digest International 
Book Review 1 (March, 1923): 10-11+. 

Burrell, Martin. "Manners and Etiquette." InBetwixt 
Heaven and Charing Cross, 123-31. Toronto: 
Macmillan Company of Canada, 1928. 

Carson, Gerald. Polite Americans: A Wide-Angle 
View of Our More or Less Good Manners over 
300 Years, New York: William Morrow, 1966. 

Cate, James L. "Keeping Posted." University of 
Chicago Magazine 64 (May/June, 1972): 24- 
34. 

Dolson, Hildegarde. "Ask Mrs. Post." Independent 
Woman 20 (April, 1941): 103-104+. A con- 



densed version appeared in Reader's Digest 38 
(April, 1941): 7-12. 

Downs, Robert B. "Social Arbiter: Emily Post's 
Etiquette: TheBlueBookof Social Usage, 1922." 
InFamous American Books, 266-73. New York: 
McGraw-Hill, 1971. 

"Emily Post is Dead Here at 86; Writer Was Arbiter 
of Etiquette." New York Times, September 27, 
1960, sec. l.pp. 1,37. 

Harriman, Margaret Case. "Dear Mrs. Post." In 
More Post Biographies, edited by Joseph E. 
Drewry, 255-73. Athens, GA: University of 
Georgia Press,- 1947. This was originally pub- 
lished in The Saturday Evening Post 209 (May 
15, 1937): 18-19+. 

Harris, Neil. "Post, Emily Price." In Notable Ameri- 
can Women, The Modern Period: A Biographi- 
cal Dictionary, edited by Barbara Sicherman 
and Carol Hurd Green, 554-56. Cambridge, 
MA: Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 
1980. 

Hellman, Geoffrey T. "Onward and Upward with the 
Arts: The Waning Oomph of Mrs. Toplofty." 
The New Yorker 31 (June 18, 1955): 80-86. 

Kaplan, Justin. "A Rose for Emily." Harper's 238 
(March, 1969): 106-09. 

Mencken, H, L. Review of Etiquette, by Emily Post. 
In The American Mercury 13 (February, 1928): 
255. 

O 'Rourke, P. J, "ComeBack, Mrs. Kindheart." House 
and Garden 157 (August, 1985): 18+. 

Perkins, Jeanne, "Emily Post: America's Authority 
on Etiquette." Life 20 (May 6, 1946): 59-60+. 

Post, Edwin. Truly Emily Post. New York: Funk and 
Wagnalls, 1961. 

Post, Emily. "AnyForkWiUDo."Co///er^83 (April 
10, 1929): 21+. 

. "How I Came to Write About Etiquette." 

Pictorial Review 38 (October 1936): 4 +. 

"Post, Emily." Current Biography (1941): 681-83. 

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Learning How to Behave: A 
Historical Study of American Etiquette Books. 
New York: Macmillan, 1947. 

Smith, Helena Huntington. "Profiles: Lady Chester- 
field." The New Yorker 6 (August 16, 1930): 
22-25. 



r, 



1 12 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Sypher,Wylie. "Mrs. Post, May I Present Mr. Eliot." 
American Scholar 54 (Spring, 1985): 250-52. 

Wilson, Edmund. "Books of Etiquette and Emily 
Post." /« Classics and Commercials: A Literary 
Chronicle of the Forties, 572-82. New York: 
Farrar, Straus, 1 950. This is a revisionof "Books 



of Etiquette and Emily Post." The New Yorker 
23 (July 19, 1947): 51-58. 
Wyatt, Euphemia Van Rensselaer. "Courtesy First." 
The Commonweal 27 (November 26, 1937): 
135-36. 



NOTES 



1 Emily Post, "How I Came to Write about Etiquette," 

Pictorial Review 38 (October 1936): 4. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid, 

4 Ibid. 

3 Ibid, 56. 

6 Richard Duffy, "Manners and Morals," introduction to 

Etiquette by Emily Post (New York: Funk & 
Wagnalls, 1922), ix. 

7 Ibid, xvi, 

8 Emily Post, Etiquettein Society, inBusiness, inPolitics, 

and at Home (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1 922), 

3. 
» Emily Post, "Any Fork Will Do," Collier 's 83 (20 April 

1929): 21. 
10 Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, 1922, iii. 
" Ibid., 20 
n Ibid., 28. 
" Ibid., p. 33. 

14 Ibid, 60-61. 

15 Ibid., 65. 
14 Ibid, 288. 

17 Ibid., 289. 

18 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post (New York: Funk & 

Wagnalls, 1961), 66. 

19 Emily ?0&l, Etiquette in Society, 1922, 506. 
10 Ibid., 509. 

31 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post, 211. 

22 Gerald Carson, Volile Americans (New York: William 

Morrow, 1966), 238. 

23 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post, 213. 

24 Edmund Wilson, "Books of Etiquette and Emily Post," 

in Classics and Commercials (New York: Farrar, 
Straus, 1950), 374. 

25 Emily Post, Etiquette in Society 1922, 179-84. 
2 « "Post, Emily," Current Biography (194 1): 682. 

27 Hildegarde Dolson, "Ask Mrs, Post," Independent 

Woman 20 (April 1941); 104. 

28 Review of Etiquette in Society, in Business, inPolitics, 

and at Home, by Emily Post, Booklist 19 (April 
1923): 206. 

29 Gertrude Atherton, "A School for Better Manners in 

America," The Literary Digest-International Book 
Review 1 (March 1923): 10. 
3l> Review of Etiquette in Society, in Business, inPolitics, 
and at Home, by Emily Post, in New York Tribune, 
2 September 1922, 7, 

31 Review of Etiquette in Society, in Business, inPolitics, 

and at Home,by Emily Post, TheLiteraryDigestlA 
(19 August 1922): 33, 

32 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post, 2 15. 

" Margaret Case Harriman, "Dear Mrs. Post," in More 
Post Biographies (Athens, GA: University oFGeor- 
gia Press, 1947), 263. 

34 Emily Post, "Any Fork Will Do," 21. 



35 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post, 235-37. 

36 "Emily Post is Dead Here at 86/Wew York Times, 27 

September I960, sec. 1, p. 1. 

37 Hildegarde Dolson, "Ask Mrs. Post," 103. 

3 * Emily Post, Etiquette (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 
1927), 287. 

39 Emily Post, Etiquette: 1927, 646. 

40 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post, 226. 

41 Review of Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, 

by Emily Post (1937), Publishers Weekly 132 (18 
September 1937): 1102. 

42 Emily Post, Etiquette (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 

1937), 355. 

43 Ibid, 370. 

44 Ibid,, 375. 

45 Ibid., 547. 

46 Ibid., 69. 

47 Euphemia van Rensselaer Wyatt, "Courtesy First," The 

Commonweal 27 (26 November 1937): 135. 
4 " Review of Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, 
by Emily Post (1937), The New York Times Book 
Review, 10 October 1937, 23. 

49 Edwin Post, Truly Emily Post, 246. 

50 Emily Post, "Our Wounded Come Home: How to Treat 

Them," Reader 's Digest 44 (February 1944): 72- 
73. 

51 Emily Post, Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage 

(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1 945), 637. 

52 "Obituary Notes: Emily Vost,"Publishers Weekly 17S 

(3 October 1960): 41. 
" Emily Post, Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage 
(New York: Funk &. Wagnalls, 1955), 176. 

54 Geoffrey T. Hellman, "The Waning Oomph of Mrs. 

Toplofty," The New Yorker 31 (18 June 1955): 87. 

55 "Emily Post is Dead Here at 86," p. 37. 

i6 Emily Post, Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage 
(New York; Funk & Wagnalls, I960), 641. 

"Elizabeth L. Post, Emily Post's Etiquette, 1 1th rev. ed. 
(New York; Funk & Wagnalls, 1965), iii. 

58 Jerome Beatty, Jr., review of Emily Post 's Etiquette, by 

Elizabeth L. Post, Saturday Review 52(15 February 
1969): 22. 

59 Justin Kaplan, "A Rose far Emily," Harper's 238 

(March 1969): 106-09. 

60 Emily Post, Etiquette, 1922, S. 

61 Elizabeth L. Post, Emily Post's Etiquette, 12threv. ed. 

(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969), 10, 

62 Elizabeth L. Post, TheNew Emily Post 's Etiquette (New 

York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1975), 917. 

63 Charles Bunge, review of The New Emily Post's 

Etiquette, by Elizabeth L. Post, Wilson Library 

Bulletin 49 (June 1975): 757. 
44 Post, TheNew Emily Post's Etiquette, 1975, 937. 
* s P. J. O'Rourke, "Come Back, Mrs. Kindheart," House 

and Garden 157 (August 1985): 19. 



"Of Permanent Use and Usefulness": 
Granger's Index to Poetry 



Milton H. Crouch 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Granger 's Index to Poetry has been a standard 
reference work since its appearance in 1904 
and the purpose of the index has remained 
substantially unchanged: "to assist the reader 
in identifying and locating poems or selec- 
tions from poems which have appeared in the 
most generally accessible anthologies." 1 Ev- 
ery edition has been a long and heavy book. 
The first edition indexed 369 volumes and 
contained 30,000 titles; the second edition, 
460 volumes and 50,000 titles; the third, 592 
volumes and 75,000 titles. The most recent 
edition, the ninth, indexes 781 volumes con- 
taining 150,000 titles. 

The index is the outgrowth of work by 
employees in the poetry department of 
McClurg's retail book store in Chicago who 
needed information to help customers locate 
poetry and short prose works. P.W. Coussents 
prepared the manuscript that was subsequently 
edited by Edith Granger, an employee as- 
signed to McClurg's book publishing opera- 
tion. 2 Little more about this famous index's 
obscure namesake has been preserved for 
posterity. By the time McClurg and Company 
terminated publishing activities in the early 
1940s, Granger 's, along with the Tarzan books 
and the Hopalong Cassidy books, had become 
one of the company's most important publica- 
tions. 3 The Columbia University Press began 
editing and publishing the index in the early 
1940s, and the second supplement, published 
in 1945, was the first of the series it has 



published. Columbia University Press short- 
ened the title to Granger 's Index to Poetry and 
Recitations. 

Indexes 

After 1 945, some important changes were 
introduced. Recitations and all prose works 
were dropped from the listing, and the practice 
of having separate indexes for title and first 
lines ceased when the two indexes were com- 
bined into a single alphabetical list. A most 
important new feature was a subject index 
produced by Elizabeth J. Sherwood, which 
took the place of what had been termed an 
"Appendix" in earlier editions. These changes 
were made with the fourth edition, published 
in 1 953 , and arguably the watershed edition of 
the entire series. Combining the two major 
indexes (title and first line) eliminated dupli- 
cation of entries and served to cut "out the 
paralysis over which index to begin on.' M 

Prior to editor Sherwood's subject index 
in the fourth edition, users needed to study 
titles grouped under broad subject categories: 
"Special Days," "Charades, Dialogues, Drills, 
etc.," "Noted Personages," "Temperance Se- 
lections." Poems concerning temperance were 
dropped from the third edition and a substan- 
tial new subject entry — "Choral Reading," 
listing 170 selections — was added. The index 
was expanded for the fifth edition and by the 
sixth poems were itemized under approxi- 
mately 5,000 subject headings. 



i'A 




1 14 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Subject indexing of poetry is difficult and 
the better the poem, the more difficult the 
classification under an arbitrary subject head- 
ing. William James Smith, editor of the sixth 
edition, wrote: "We have tried to avoid the 
more obvious pitfalls of subject arrangement, 
but we have included a number of somewhat 
doubtful subject classifications on the theory 
that the individual can make his own judgment 
as to the suitability of our suggestions." 5 One 
reviewer of the sixth edition found the subject 
index an anomaly and complained that the 
editors had placed Robert Frost's "The Road 
Not Taken, 1 ' under "Roads." 6 

Expansion 

Edith Granger intended for the index to 
prosper. The first short preface promised that 
future editions would index more anthologies 
and invited librarians to take an interest in the 
work. Both of Granger 's publishers have used 
questionnaires to glean comments from refer- 
ence librarians and both have responded to 
these suggestions. 7 In addition to requesting 
more complete subject indexing, librarians 
expressed the need for the index to include 
more contemporary poets and to expand cov- 
erage to include poetry in translation. 

The third edition began to address these 
requests and indexed 3 5 titles by 14 of the best 
known contemporary poets. The sixth edition 
contained recent poetry written on such timely 
subjects as ecology and women's liberation. It 
also included a number of volumes devoted to 
Afro- American poetry. The seventh edition 
represented a major effort by the editors to 
include more contemporary poets. The num- 
ber of anthologies carried over from previous 
editions was limited in order to include 128 
new volumes of poetry. 

With the eighth edition, a major effort was 
made to include more poems by Asian Ameri- 
cans, Chicanos, and Native Americans; an 
anthology of poems written by American pris- 
oners was also included. The ninth edition, 
entitled Columbia Granger's 91 Index to Po- 



etry ; is perhaps more international than previ- 
ous editions, indexing more than 50 collec- 
tions of translated poetry. Its subject index 
leads users to English translations of hundreds 
of poems, including translations from Urdu, 
Hebrew, Gaelic, Yiddish, and Maori. 

Major British and American poets have 
always been well represented. All major or 
minor poets included in Donald E. Stanford's 
British Poets, 1 91 4-1945 (Detroit: Gale Re- 
search, 1983) are found in the early editions of 
Granger 's. Many winners of the Pulitzer Prize 
for poetry between 1922 and 1976 have been 
included in Granger 's prior to receiving the 
prize and those few who were not included in 
an earlier edition are to be found in the very 
next supplement or new edition. The index 
enables users to trace the disappearance of 
minor poets from recently published antholo- 
gies and to identify the ever popular minor 
poets, such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Edwin 
Arlington Robinson, and James Whitcomb 
Riley. 

Critical Reception 

Granger's has received little critical at- 
tention, but an enthusiastic reviewer of the 
first edition helped establish its status as a 
classic reference work: "This may fairly be 
said to be an indispensable reference work, 
and one assured of permanent use and useful- 
ness in large and small libraries." 8 The work 
reached its sixth edition before being reviewed 
by the American Library Association ' s Refer- 
ence and Subscription Books Reviews. 9 Com- 
ments gleaned from brief reviews in library 
publications center on production and format 
concerns. For example, reviewers complain 
of narrow inside margins, small print, lack of 
thumb indexing guides (which disappeared 
with the publication of the seventh edition), 
and point out that heavier paper stock should 
be used for "Keys to Symbols," a frequently 
consulted section of the index. 

The index has not had an exciting publica- 
tion history. However, as one of the first 



GRANGER'S INDEXTO POETRY 1 15 



indexes to composite books, it has been a 
major influence in the area of reference book 
publishing. The name "Granger's" has be- 
come synonymous with poetry indexing and is 
now a registered trademark. Two early ex- 
amples of indexes intended to supplement 
Granger's are Herbert Bruncken's Subject 
Index to Poetry; a Guide for Adult Readers 
(Chicago: American Library Association, 
1940) and John and Sara Brewton's Index to 
Children 's Poetry (New York: H.W. Wilson, 
1942). Herbert Hoffman compiled his index to 
Latin American poetry to serve as a non- 
English language complement to Granger J s. i0 
A new monographic series entitled Poetry 
Index Annual, published since 1 982 by Poetry 
Index Press, Great Neck, New York, provides 
access to anthologized poetry which is not 
indexed elsewhere. It is in effect a supplement 
to Granger 's since it functions as a kind of up- 
dating service between Granger's installments. 
The latest edition of Granger's has been 
joined by a volume briefly reviewing each of 
the anthologies it indexes. William and Linda 
Katz's The Columbia Granger's® Guide to 
Poetry Anthologies groups the anthologies by 
type (e.g., Afro- American poetry, ballads and 
songs, children's poetry, Finnish poetry, holi- 
day poetry, love poetry, Scottish poetry, vam- 
pire poetry) and describes the internal organi- 
zation of each. The Katzes also comment on 
the overall quality of each anthology's con- 
tents and single out examples of quality and 
representative poems. This book should help 



librarians whose budgets cannot support a full 
collection of the indexed anthologies decide 
which to buy. 

Since 1904, Granger's has had ten edi- 
tors. The illnesses and deaths of these men and 
women who have worked at the Columbia 
University Press are reported in various edi- 
tions of the index. However, no information is 
given in any of the editions concerning Edith 
Granger. None of the major library publica- 
tions have featured her or reported her death. 
Staff of the Chicago Public Library have been 
unable to locate information in indexes to 
local newspapers. We know from the prefaces 
to the first two editions that she completed 
university; we alsoknow she initiated an index 
that has enabled thousands to locate needed 
poems and to learn from poets what it is like to 
be alive. 

Although the history of its creator is un- 
known, the future of the index she created is 
assured. In 1991, the index will be released on 
CD-ROM. An inherent limitation of Granger 's 
has always been the need to search titles or 
first lines by their first significant words but 
not by other words. A CD-ROM Granger's 
will allow new avenues of access to poems 
that will make Granger's, always the most 
useful of poetry indexes, even more useful and 
versatile. One feature that will enhance its 
usefulness is the inclusion of the full texts of 
8,500 poems on the CD-ROM. 11 Whatever its 
medium, Granger 's will continue to grow and 
evolve. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



An Index to Poetry and Recitations; Being a Practi- 
calReferenceManualfartheLibrarian.Teacher, 
Bookseller, Elocutionist, etc., edited by Edith 
Granger. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 
1904. 970p. 

Granger's Index to Poetry and Recitations; Being a 
Practical Reference Manual for the Librarian, 
Teacher, Bookseller, Elocutionist, etc., edited 
by Edith Granger. Revised and enlarged edition 
[2nd ed.]. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 
1918. l,059p. 

A Supplement to Granger's Index (1919-1928). Chi- 
cago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 1929. 519p. 

Granger 's Index to Poetry and Recitations, edited by 
Helen Humphrey Bessey. 3rd ed., completely 



revised and enlarged, Chicago: A. C. McClurg 
and Co., 1940. l,525p. 

Granger's Index to Poetry and Recitations: Supple- 
ment, 1938-1944, edited by Elizabeth J. 
Sherwood and Gertrude Henderson. New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1945. 415p. 

Granger's Index to Poetry, edited by Raymond J. 
Dixon. 4th ed., completely revised and en- 
larged, indexing anthologies published through 
December 31, 1950. New York: Columbia Uni- 
versity Press, 1953. l,832p. 

Granger 's Index to Poetry: Supplement to the Fourth 
Edition, edited by Raymond J. Dixon. Indexing 
anthologies published from January 1, 1951 to 
December 31,1955. New York: Columbia Uni- 
versity Press, 1957. 458p. 



• i:l 



■tf I 



116 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 






Granger's Index to Poetry, edited by William F. 
Bernhardt, 5th ed., completely revised and en- 
larged, indexing anthologies published through 
June 30, 1 960. New York: Columbia University 
Press, 1962. 2,123p, 

Granger's Index to Poetry; Supplement to the Fifth 
Edition, edited by William F. Bernhardt and 
Kathryn W. Sewny. Indexing anthologies pub- 
lished from July 1 , 1 960 to December 31,1965. 
New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. 
416p. 

Granger's Indexto Poetry, edited by William James 
Smith. 6th ed., completely revised and en- 
larged, indexing anthologies published through 
December 31,1 970. New York: Columbia Uni- 
versity Press, 1973. 2,223p. 

Granger's Index to Poetry, 1970-1977, edited by 
William James Smith. New York: Columbia 
University Press, 1978, 63 5p. 



Granger 's Index to Poetry, edited by William James 
Smith and William F. Bernhardt. 7th ed., index- 
ing anthologies published from 1970 through 

1981. New York: Columbia University Press, 

1982. l,329p. 

Granger's® Index to Poetry, edited by William F. 
Bernhardt. 8th Edition, completely revised and 
enlarged, indexing anthologies published 
through June 30, 1985. New York: Columbia 
University Press, 1986. 2,014p. 

The Columbia Granger 's* Index to Poetry, edited by 
Edith P. Hazen, and Deborah J. Fryer. 9th ed., 
completely revised indexing anthologies pub- 
lished through June 30, 1989. New York: Co- 
lumbia University Press, 1990. 2,082p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



As noted, Granger '$ has received little 
critical or historical attention. The reviews 
listed below are the most significant. Baier 
offers historical information on A.C. McClurg 
and Co. Only time can tell whether or not a 
companion such as the Katzes ' book becomes 
a standard for future editions of Granger 's. 

Baier, Andrew, "Book Wholesaler to the Nation." 
Illinois Libraries 47 (September, 1965): 665- 
69. 

Breit, Harvey. "In and Out of Books." New York 
Times, April 26, 1953, sec. 7, p. 8. 



Katz, William, and Linda Sternberg Katz. The Co- 
lumbia Granger's* Guide to Poetry Antholo- 
gies. New York: Columbia University Press, 
1991. 

Review ofAn Index to Poetry and Recitations; Being 
a Practical Reference Manual for the Librar- 
ian, Teacher, Bookseller, Elocutionist, etc., 
edited by Edith Granger (1904 ed.). Library 
Journal 29 (September, 1904): 489. 

Review of Granger 's Index to Poetry, 6th ed. Booklist 
70 (April, 1974): 830. 

Review of Granger 's Index to Poetry, 6th ed. Choice 
10 (January, 1974): 1698. 

Tangorra, Joanne. "Granger' s World of Poetry Comes 
to CD-ROM." Publisher's Weekly (June 7, 
1991): 41. 



NOTES 



1 William James Smith and William F. Bernhardt, "Pref- 
ace," in Granger's Index to Poetry^ 6th ed. (New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1973): v. 

1 Edith Granger, "Preface," in An Index to Poetry and 
Recitations; Being a Practical Reference Manual 
for the Librarian, Teacher, Bookseller, Elocution- 
ist, e/c, (Chicago: McClurg and Co., 1604): 5. 

5 Andrew Baier, "Book Wholesaler to the Nation," Illi- 
nois Libraries 47 (September 1965): 666-67. 

4 Harvey Breit, "In and Out of Books," New York Times, 

26 April 1953, sec. 7, p. 8. 

5 Smith and Bernhardt, v. 

"Review of Granger 's Index to Poetry, 6th ed., Choice 1 
(January 1974): 1698. 

'Helen Humphrey Bessey, "Preface," in Granger's In- 
dex to Poetry and Recitations (Chicago, McClurg 
and Co,, 1940): vii. 



B Revicw of An Index to Poetry and Recitations; Being a 
Practical Reference Manual for the Librarian, 
Teacher, Bookseller, Elocutionist, etc., ed. by Edith 
Granger 1904, Library Journal 29 (September 
1904): 489. 

' Review of Granger 's Index to Poetry, 6th ed., Booklist 
70 (April 1974): 830. 

'"Herbert H. Hoffman, "Preface," in Hoffman 's Index to 
Poetry: European and Latin American Poetry in 
Anthologies (Metuchen; NJ: Scarecrow Press, 
1985): iv. 

11 Joanne Tangorra, "Granger's World of Poetry Comes 
to CD-ROM," Publisher's Weekly (7 June 1991): 
41. 



A Cornerstone of Musical 

Scholarship: Grovels Dictionary of 

Music and Musicians 



William S. Brockman 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

George Grove did not underestimate the size 
or the character of the audience for the first 
edition of his Dictionary; in the preface, he 
maintained that "this work is designed to 
supply a great and long acknowledged want 
.... It is designed for the use of Professional 
musicians and Amateurs alike." 1 The music 
industry had ballooned in the latter half of the 
nineteenth century, musical journals and soci- 
eties had proliferated, and despite the nine- 
teenth century's interest in encyclopedias and 
syntheses of knowledge, no one (in Great 
Britain, at least) had published anything like 
the Dictionary. 

It has become commonplace to assert that 
the quality of British music during the nine- 
teenth century was far inferior to that of the 
Continent. 2 Yet Great Britain's burgeoning 
economic power during the Victorian era cre- 
ated a mass market for music. 3 Higher in- 
comes and an increase in leisure time offered 
people the means to seek and to afford enter- 
tainment. Theaters, music halls, and other 
venues proliferated. The building of railroads 
made travel rapid and painless, encouraging 
the development of seaside resorts (with ac- 
companying theaters to provide evening en- 
tertainment), and providing work for an in- 
creasing number of itinerant musicians. De- 
cennial censuses in Great Britain identified 
1 1 ,200 music teachers in England and Wales 



in 1851; the number rose to 38,600 by 1901. 
An even more telling statistic identifies musi- 
cians per population of 10,000: 6.2 in 1851, 
and 12.1 in 1901. 4 Moreover, music was a 
status symbol for the middle class: 

In a society which was profoundly conscious 
of class yet offered chances of social mobility, 
it was necessary for the ambitious to recog- 
nize and exhibit appropriate symbols of aspi- 
ration and achievement. Some of the most 
potent badges were pinned to music, particu- 
larly in respectable settings: ownership of a 
piano; music lessons for daughters; atten- 
dance at the oratorio, the quintessentially Vic- 
torian socio-musical event; membership of a 
concert society, preferably exclusive like all 
good clubs; appearance at the theatre or ball, 
suitably clad and preferably bejewelled. 5 



George Grove 

George Grove himself, even before he 
began compiling the Dictionary, played no 
small part in the creation of this world. Bom 
August 13, 1820, in the London suburb of 
Clapham, the son of a fishmonger and venison 
dealer, Grove attended Clapham Grammar 
School from 1834 to 1835 and was appren- 
ticed to civil engineer Alexander Gordon in 
Westminster in January 1836. He was admit- 
ted a graduate of the Institution of Civil Engi- 
neers on February 26, 1839, and traveled to 
Jamaica in 1841 and to Bermuda in 1843 to 
erect lighthouses. His engineering career de- 



1 1 8 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



veloped steadily with his involvement in the 
construction of a railroad station at Chester 
from 1847 to 1 848 and in the Britannia Tubu- 
lar Bridge across the Menai straights in Wales 
from 1848 to 1 850. Grove had always been an 
avid aficionado of music. Biographer Percy 
Young relates that in 1837 he "invested" the 
first guinea ever given to him in a piano score 
of the Messiah? At about the same time, he 
began compiling the first of many common- 
place books he was to keep throughouthis life. 
These transcriptions of music that interested 
him served as his conservatory, the closest 
Grove ever approached to a formal study of 
music. 

Grove's appointment as joint secretary of 
the Society of Arts in February 1 850 could not 
have brought him to London at a more advan- 
tageous time. The Society was planning an 
exhibition "which could serve as a shop-win- 
dow for British industry." 7 The Great Exhibi- 
tion opened on May 1, 1851, in a newly 
constructed vast building of glass in Hyde 
Park, soon nicknamed "the Crystal Palace." In 
May 1852, Grove was appointed secretary to 
the Crystal Palace Company, which disas- 
sembled the entire structure and moved it to 
the London suburb of Sydenham where it 
remained until destroyed by fire in 1936. 

From its opening on June 1 0, 1 854, at 
which an orchestra of 1,700 vocalists and 
instrumentalists performed for the queen and 
prince consort, the Crystal Palace served as a 
major force in the popularization of music in 
London. On July 21, 1855, Grove offered the 
job of conductor of the Crystal Palace Band to 
German-born August Manns. Manns' s Satur- 
day Crystal Palace concerts along with Grove' s 
program notes became a most significant force 
in the musical life of London in the ensuing 
decades: "the combination of Manns and Grove 
was to prove formidable, and, perhaps, the 
true generator of modem British music." 8 

Grove's Preparation for Editorship 

In retrospect, one could see Grove's ca- 
reer over the next 20 years as a training ground 



for his work on the Dictionary, What Grove 
lacked in formal training in music and editing, 
he compensated for with hard work and judi- 
cious use of the plentiful acquaintances he had 
made in school and through his prominent 
position at the Crystal Palace. He became a 
central figure in London's musical life through 
his friendships with Clara Schumann and 
Johannes Brahms, and in his championing of 
the music of Franz Schubert and Robert 
Schumann at Crystal Palace concerts. He made 
one of the significant musical discoveries of 
the century when, on a trip with Arthur Sullivan 
to Vienna in 1 867, he located the complete 
manuscript of Schubert's Rosamunde in a 
cupboard. 

Grove was recommended through a mu- 
tual friend to edit A.P. Stanley's study of 
biblical geography, Sinai and Palestine (Lon- 
don: J. Murray, 1856). He edited William 
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (London: J. 
Murray, 1860-63) after a trip in 1858 to Pal- 
estine and Egypt, and, also for Smith, An Atlas 
of Ancient Geography, Biblical and Classical 
(London: Murray, 1874). Grove's friendship 
With Alexander Macmillan and, by 1866, his 
established experience in editing earned him a 
position as an assistant editor at Macmillan 's 
Magazine, one of the leading periodicals of 
the day. He became editor of Macmillan 's 
Magazine in 1868. 

The financial stability of the Macmillan 's 
editorship allowed Grove to resign the Crystal 
Palace appointment in 1 873 (although he con- 
tinued for nearly the rest of his life to write its 
program notes). He was already making plans 
for the Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In 
January 1 874, the Macmillan publishing firm 
issued a prospectus for a work intended to 
comprise two volumes: "Within [the last 25 
years] music in England has made immense 
progress and the number of persons who at- 
tend concerts and practise music has very 
largely increased, It is no longer regarded as 
mere idle amusement, but has taken, or is 
taking, its right place beside the other arts, as 
an object of study and investigation." 9 



GROVE'S DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AMD MUSICIANS 1 19 



That music had become "an object of 
study and investigation" during the previous 
two or three decades is certainly no exaggera- 
tion. The year 1874 marked the formation of 
the Musical Association (now Royal Musical 
Association) and of the first publication of its 
annual Proceedings. More significant in dem- 
onstrating interest in the study of music was 
the spectacular proliferation of its treatment in 
periodical literature, both in magazines de- 
voted to music (such as the Musical Times and 
Singing Class Circular, begun in 1 844 and still 
published as Musical Times; its circulation in 
1 873 was 1 5,000) and in magazines of general 
interest, such as Macmillan 's and Fortnightly 
Review.™ These periodicals could count on 
not only a broad, but also a sophisticated, 
audience: "Readers must have had an aware- 
ness of past and present trends in music, 
besides technical knowledge and a real musi- 
cal curiosity; otherwise, the printed music 
examples, considerations of formal symmetry 
and emotional meaning, and constant refer- 
ences to specific works, operas, opus num- 
bers, and keys would have been meaning- 
less." 11 Yet, while sophisticated, this was 
largely an audience of amateurs: "The image 
of the musical scholar in British life was not 
that of the professional musician, but rather of 
the gentleman amateur, best represented by 
the country clergyman quietly pursuing his 
own antiquarian interests, or by the semi- 
retired engineer or business man returning to 
an interest neglected since his youth." 12 Grove 
himself mighthave fit such a description. Seen 
from this perspective, he was the 
quintessentially appropriate editor of a musi- 
cal reference work. 

The First Edition 

A letter dated July 29, 1877, from Grove 
to George Craik (a partner in the Macmillan 
firm) setoutGrove's timetable for completing 
editorial work on the Dictionary at semian- 
nual intervals from 1 877 to December 1 880. ' J 
The first separate unbound parts of the Dictio- 



nary were published throughout 1878. The 
first volume gathered parts I-IV, and was 
published in April 1 879. Succeeding unbound 
parts appeared through 1889. These were gath- 
ered in volume 2 in 1880, volume 3 in 1883, 
and volume 4 in 1889. The full set was then 
reprinted with the index and an appendix in 
1890. 

What are some of the salient features of 
this first edition? First, the chronological bar- 
rier of the year 1450. It was not until years later 
that interest in music of the Middle Ages 
developed; so it was reasonable and not sur- 
prising for a latter-day Victorian work to set 
such a limit, just as it is not surprising to find 
Grove maintaining in the preface that "all 
investigations into the music of barbarous 
nations have been avoided, unless they have 
some direct bearing on European music." 14 
Grove similarly made clear that an English 
dictionary should pay special attention to En- 
glish music and musicians. The scope of the 
Dictionary in these and in other areas ex- 
panded considerably in succeeding editions. 

Articles in the Dictionary ranged in length 
from several sentences to dozens of pages. A 
majority of the articles were biographies of 
composers, performers, publishers, and in- 
strument makers. Those of major composers 
included bibliographies and lists of composi- 
tions. Other articles covered societies; instru- 
ments; ethnic musics of Europe (such as 
"Welsh Music"); musical works with distinc- 
tive titles (such as "Messiah"); forms of com- 
position ("Sonata"); theory ("Key"); schools, 
academies, and conservatories; and terms 
("Sharp"). Other articles were broad in scope 
and not easily classified, such as "Schools of 
Composition," "Musical Periodicals," or "Mu- 
sical Libraries." Grove himself wrote three 
major biographical articles, those on 
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert. Il- 
lustrations, including diagrams, music, and 
engraved portraits, were plentiful. The index 
volume was a significant feature that succeed- 
ing editions dropped; with it was a catalog of 
articles contributed by each writer, a feature 
also since dropped. 



120 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



m 



m 



Grove was concerned that the writing 
stylebe "anxiously divested of technicality." 15 
Certainly, as in the article on "Form," writers 
of technical articles had to presume a certain 
shared vocabulary between themselves and 
readers; outmost held to Grove's ideal. Infact, 
though the style was divested of technicality it 
was often clothed in pathos, as in Grove' s own 
description of Schubert on his deathbed: "Poor 
fellow! no wonder he was so depressed! ev- 
erything was against him, his weakness, his 
poverty, his dreary house, the long lonely 
hours, the cheerless future . . ." 

Critical tQactiontofhSi Dictionary was, on 
the whole, enthusiastic, Long reviews ap- 
peared in the leading periodicals. 16 Several 
harped on the profusion of minor errors which 
even Grove acknowledged in the preface to 
the first volume. 17 To remedy these, and to 
supplement some important material in the 
first half of the alphabet on which the Dictio- 
nary had skimped when it was still being 
planned at two volumes, the fourth volume 
included an appendix of some 300 pages giv- 
ing corrections, supplemental material, and 
additional articles. Grove was faulted for the 
disproportionate length of some of the bio- 
graphical articles. 18 The article on Mendels- 
sohn stretched to over 60 pages, longer even 
than the Beethoven article at 50 pages. A. 
Maczewski' s article on Bach was only 5 pages 
in length, andhis article onBrahms — although 
Maczewski asserted he was "one of the great- 
est living German composers" — only 2. 

The Dictionary made good use both of 
fledgling contributors and of established schol- 
ars. There were 1 1 8 in all, including Grove, by 
far the most prolific. Hubert Parry had studied 
music at Oxford and piano with Edward 
Dannreuther; he was to become one of the 
major figures of late-Victorian and Edwardian 
musical life, succeeding Grove as director of 
the Royal College of Music, and becoming 
professor at Oxford and president of the Mu- 
sical Association. William Baiclay Squire's 
article on "Music Libraries" presaged his ap- 
pointment to a post in the Department of 



Printed Books at the British Museum. J.A. 
Fuller Maitland became music critic for The 
Times, and edited the appendix to the first 
edition of the Dictionary and the entire second 
edition. Edward Hopkins ("Organ"); A.J. 
Hipkins ("Pianoforte," "Harpsichord," "Mu- 
sical Instruments, Collections of); and Carl 
Ferdinand Pohl, librarian of the Gesellschaft 
der Musikfreunde in Vienna ("Mozart," 
"Haydn"), all contributed articles in their ar- 
eas of established expertise. W.H. Husk, li- 
brarian of the Sacred Harmonic Society, was 
second only to Grove himself in number of 
articles contributed. William S. Rockstro, con- 
tributor of major articles on "Mass," "Nota- 
tion," "Opera," "Orchestra," and "Schools of 
Composition," was a successful teacher and 
arranger in London, but did not publish his 
biographies of Handel, Mendelssohn, and 
Jenny Lind and his works on music history and 
theory until after his Grove contributions, 
when he was well into his fifties. Women, 
suchas Mrs. Walter Carr,Mrs.JulianMarshall, 
Miss Middleton, and Mrs. Edmond 
Wodehouse (compiler of the index) contrib- 
uted significant portions of the Dictionary. 

Grove's Dictionary was the first of the 
modem generation of musical reference works. 
Such encyclopedic compilations are conser- 
vative in recognizing the maturity of a disci- 
pline — a maturity that is able to sum itself up 
and to present itself with confidence. They are 
also forward-looking in providing a spring- 
board from which the discipline can leap. As 
the first parts of the Dictionary were appear- 
ing, Hugo Riemann in Germany was publish- 
ing the first edition of whathas become through 
successive editions an equally venerable 
work — his Musik-Lexikon (Leipzig: Verlag 
des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1882). Rob- 
ert Eitner's Biographisch-bibliographisches 
Quellen-Lexikon der Musiker und Musik- 
gelehrten (Leipzig; Breitkopf & H3rtel, 1900- 
1904), whose short biographies and detailed 
lists of published works and manuscripts es- 
tablished primary bibliographical and source 
material in Europe from the Middle Ages to 



GROVE'S DICTIONARY OP MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 12 1 



the mid-nineteenth century, became an in- 
valuable complement to succeeding editions 
of the Dictionary. In the United States, 
Theodore Baker published his Dictionary of 
Musical Terms in 1895 and his Biographical 
Dictionary of Musicians in 1900 (both New 
York: G. Schirmer). The former has been 
reprinted numerous times, and the latter has 
been revised and expanded by Nicolas 
Slonimsky through an eighth edition due in 
late 1991 or early 1992. 

In 1883, Grove left Macmillan's to be- 
come director of the newly formed Royal 
College of Music, and remained in the posi- 
tion until 1894. He continued to gather mate- 
rial for a new edition of the Dictionary until 
his death on May 28, 1900. 

J.A. Fuller Maitland 

J. A. Fuller Maitland assumed the 
editorship of the second edition. Five volumes 
were published from 1904 to 1910. Fuller 
Maitland integrated the articles and correc- 
tions from the appendix to the first edition, 
added Grove's revisions to the three major 
biographies, and inserted bracketed additions 
into many of the original articles. Whereas the 
first edition had often drawn without attribu- 
tion on biographical material from other works , 
particularly F etis' Biographie universelle, the 
second edition credited such borrowings at the 
ends of articles. In accord with their subjects' 
importance, the Bach and Brahms articles 
were enlarged. Fuller Maitland's significant 
changes included enlarging the scope to in- 
clude music of the Middle Ages and of se- 
lected American musicians and societies, add- 
ing cross-references to the body of the text, 
and eliminating the index. A review of the first 
volume found it "not merely a revision of the 
Grove Dictionary but the beginning of a new 
dictionary." 19 

Recognition of the significance of Ameri- 
can music (including both the United States 
and Canada) came with the publication in 
1920 of $\q American Supplement. Its editor 
was Waldo Selden Pratt, a theologian, organ- 



ist, and music historian. The novelty of such a 
focus on a land in which music was seen less 
as a succession of the compositions of major 
composers but more as an intrinsic part of 
society led the editors to provide an unusual 
structure for the work. A^Historical Introduc- 
tion with Chronological Register of Names" 
occupying the first quarter of the volume was 
organized chronologically into sections giv- 
ing biographical data on 1,700 composers, 
performers, publishers, and other individuals 
of musical importance, and was interspersed 
with short narratives summarizing not only 
musical, but also social, political, and eco- 
nomical history. The main body of One Supple- 
ment, arranged in alphabetical order, gave 
fuller treatment of some 700 of the names, 
served as an index to the others, and included 
specialized articles, such as "Orchestras," 
which treated their subjects firom an American 
point of view. The Supplement also served to 
update the second edition of Grove through its 
inclusion of some 100 updated articles. Pratt 
went onto compile what was originally planned 
as a one- volume abridgement of the second 
edition and its supplement, but actually be- 
came a separate work inits ownright, TheNew 
Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (New 
York: Macmillan, 1924). 

Henry Cope Colles 

Henry Cope Colles succeeded Fuller 
Maitland as music editor of The Times in 1 9 1 1 , 
and became editor of the third edition of 
Grove, published from 1927 to 1928. Colles 
continued to employ the Dictionary's original 
text, but with some 50 years having intervened 
since the publication of the first parts of the 
first edition, he found it necessary to revise 
substantially or to replacemany of the articles. 
Grove's own articles on Beethoven, 
Mendelssohn, and Schubert remained, albeit 
with supplementary footnotes. 20 A number of 
the new contributors, such as Eric Blom, Ed- 
ward Dent, Alfred Einstein, E.H. Fellowes, 
Anselm Hughes, and Oscar Sonneck, were to 
become some of the century's major musico- 



m 



122 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Ha 



logical figures. Illustrations included 96 plates, 
some in color. The third edition included the 
American Supplement, reprinted without revi- 
sion from its 1 920 version, but with an appen- 
dix which updated and added articles. 

This third edition was reprinted numerous 
times, sometimes with minor revisions, well 
into the 1 940s. A fourth edition was published 
in London in 1940, hut revisions consisted 
primarily in the addition of dates of death and 
of bibliographical references. With irony, the 
editor acknowledged the beneficial proximity 
in England of such scholars as Egon Wellesz, 
Karl Geiringer, Hans Redlich, and Alfred 
Loewenberg who had fled the Holocaust. 21 
The most significant addition to Grove during 
this time was the Supplementary Volume dated 
1940, whose title page in the New York im- 
print identified it as part of the third edition, 
and in the London imprint as part of the fourth 
edition. It added many articles and updated 
biographies and lists of compositions. Articles 
in the supplement on "Broadcasting" and 
"Twelve Note Music" show Grove catching 
up with the twentieth century. Its short article 
on "Jazz" was regressive at best ("unrestrained 
Corybantic frenzy alternating with passive 
hopeless melancholy"), but undermined its 
derision by listing the major composers whom 
jazz had influenced — Igor Stravinsky, Paul 
Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Ernst Krenek, 
Kurt Weill, and Constant Lambert. 

The irregular publication of the Supple- 
mentary Volume signalled an uncertainty (un- 
doubtedly influenced by the war) as to the 
direction of Grove. A. Hyatt King seized upon 
this uncertainty in a 1946 article which at- 
tacked the fourth edition and the Supplemen- 
tary Volume for inaccuracies, outmost impor- 
tantly for the disproportionate amount of space 
allotted to Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, 
Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Weber, 
and Wagner, "a legacy from Grove's own 
predilection." 22 These sentiments undoubtedly 
influenced Eric Blom's extensive revision and 
expansion to nine volumes of Grove for its 
fifth, edition in 1954, which Macmillan of 



London, due to the severing of its relationship 
with its American office, published in New 
York through St. Martin's Press. 

Eric Blom 

Blom, a critic and editor, had published in 
1946 Everyman 's Dictionary of Music (Lon- 
don: Dent), which, through successive edi- 
tions into the 1970s, continued to be a most 
valuable, concise, andpopular reference work. 
His elegant and detailed preface shows the 
care he took in the selection of articles, the 
treatment of geographical names, the translit- 
eration of Russian words, the choice of termi- 
nology, and the physical appearance of the 
text. Negotiating between the amateurs and 
the increasingly influential musicologists, 
Blom addressed the fifth edition to "a user 
who possesses a general musical knowledge, 
or hopes to acquire one." 23 In all, half of the 
fifth edition was completely new material. 
The rest (including articles by original con- 
tributors Sir Hubert Parry and William S. 
Rockstro) was thoroughly revised. In striving 
for balance, one of Blom's most dramatic 
steps was to replace Grove's venerable ar- 
ticles on Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and 
Schubert with shorter, updated versions. 24 The 
"Jazz" article, expanded to 6 pages, was con- 
tributed by French jazz critic Hugues Panassie. 
New was a massive (some 240 pages) article 
by several contributors on "FolkMusic." Cross- 
references wereplentiful. Bibliographies were 
greatly expanded and typeset in a manner that 
distinguished them easily from the text; yet, 
citations were often scanty, and sometimes 
inaccurate. For the first time Grove took a 
serious interest in non-Western material in the 
form of surveys (such as "Arabian music") 
and in more specific articles on theoreticians, 
composers, and instruments. 

■ The fifth edition became notorious for 
toutingits British origin; Blom' spreface main- 
tained that "though Grove gives information 
on an international scale, it is in the first place 
an English work." 25 This national bias which 



GROVE'S DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 123 



developed from Blom's aversion to German- 
trained American musicologists was to work 
against his favor, particularly with the publi- 
cation by 1 954 of the first three volumes of the 
West German Die Musik in Geschichte und 
Gegen ww* (edited by FriedrichBlume [Kassel: 
Barenreiter- Verlag, 1 949-86] ; abbreviated as 
MGG), which rapidly became recognized as 
the major scholarly reference work in music. 
Any evaluation of Grove of necessity com- 
pared it to MGG, usually to Grove's detri- 
ment. In an editorial in The Musical Quarterly ; 
Paul Henry Lang complained of Grove's 
"somewhat belligerent British bias that is very 
different from the engaging parochialism of 
the old edition." 26 A review in Notes had 
similar objections, and concluded that MGG 
"is a far sounder publication on all counts." 27 
In a direct tabular comparison of a selection of 
articles from the two works, A. Hyatt King 
found MGG to be more thorough in its cover- 
age of historical topics, but Grove to be better 
in coverage of the twentieth century. 28 

The prominence of Grove and the appear- 
anceof other comprehensive works with which 
it could be compared made tempting the search 
for errors and omissions in its text. Musical 
Times published several hundred of these, 
collected from contributors, not long after the 
publication of the fifth edition. 29 To correct 
these, and to update and add articles, Blom 
compiled material for a Supplementary Vol- 
ume which was assembled by Denis Stevens 
in 1961 two years after Blom's death. 

Stanley Sadie 

Valid criticism of the fifth edition and the 
comparatively esoteric nature of MGG (not to 
mention its inaccessibility for those unable to 
read German) left an open field for a new 
Grove. Macmillan engaged scholar and critic 
Stanley Sadie, Musical Times editor and au- 
thor of, among other works, Mozart (London: 
CalderandBoyars, 1 965), Handel (London: J. 
Calder, 1966), andBeethoven (London: Faber 
and Faber, 1967). Sadie set out in 1969 to 



develop an entirely new work. He established 
a panel of consulting editors, each of whom 
was responsible for outlining a given topical 
area and for recruiting contributors. Seven 
national advisors were each responsible for a 
given geographical part of the world. In an 
article published in 1975 that whetted appe- 
tites for a work that did not appear until five 
years later, Sadie announced a rigorous at- 
tempt "to set ourselves a series of objectives 
and standards that will make the dictionary as 
useful as possible within itself." Furthermore, 
"it will not share the xenophobia of Grove 
5." 30 

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and 
Musicians, published in 1 980 by Macmillan in 
London and two subsidiaries, Grove's Dictio- 
naries of Music in New York and Peninsula 
Publishers in Hong Kong, reflected not only 
new standards but also the availability of a 
prodigious amount of additional information 
made available through the intensive efforts 
of scholars within the varied branches of mu- 
sicology that have flourishedthrough the twen- 
tieth century. The thousands of biographies in 
Riemann's and Baker's works, the identifica- 
tion of manuscript and printed original sources 
in the volumes of the RISM (Repertoire inter- 
national des sources musicales, or Interna- 
tional Inventory of Musical Sources) series, 
and the establishment of terminology in dic- 
tionaries such as the Harvard Dictionary of 
Music (edited by Willi Ape! [Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press, 1944]) indicated a 
breadth of material that was unavailable in the 
1 880s. Moreover, the growth of the field of 
ethnomusicology and the academic 
legitimatization of popular culture involved 
disciplines thathad henceforth had no place in 
musical studies. 

The New Grove could not reasonably be 
compared with earlier editions. In size alone, 
its 22,500 articles in 20 volumes made it more 
than twice as large as even the fifth edition. 
The nearly 2,500 contributors included most 
of the premier scholars throughout the world. 
Thirty-six percent of these were American, 20 



124 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



percent were British, and 12 percent were 
German. 31 More than half the articles (over 
1 1 ,000) were devoted to composers; those for 
the Viennese masters are nearly as long as 
George Grove's original essays. Other per- 
sons to whom it devoted individual entries 
include performers, musicologists, critics, li- 
brettists, dancers, patrons, publishers and print- 
ers, and instrument makers. Plentiful black 
and white illustrations were adequate to the 
task of showing persons, performance on in- 
struments, and manuscripts. Of particular in- 
terest to librarians and researchers were ex- 
tended articles supplemented by extensive 
lists on the materials andprocess of research — 
"Dictionaries and Encyclopedias/' "Editions," 
"Libraries," "Periodicals," and "Sources- 
Manuscript." 32 As a dictionary, The New Grove 
gave definitions for musical terminology. As 
a history, it covered genres and forms. As an 
encyclopedia, it explored broad issues in a 
range of survey articles, 

One of The New Grove's most notable 
features was the attention it gave to music on 
an international scale. Hundreds of articles 
surveyed the musics of countries and regions 
of the world, defined terms, examined instru- 
ments, and offered biographies from non- 
Western cultures. The articles on individual 
countries generally drew a distinction be- 
tween "Art" music and "Folk" music. In the 
last volume of The New Grove was an exten- 
sive index of ethnomusicological topics. 

Sadie and his staff paid extraordinary 
attention to the physical format of The New 
Grove. The introduction expanded on Blom' s 
with an even more detailed presentation of 
alphabetization, usage, and other items of 
format. Virtually every biography included 
references, and, in the case of composers, 
work lists. Although (especially in the case of 
major figures) these extended to hundreds of 
listings, the rigorous standards for style and 
the carefully planned typographical format 
eased their use. 



Critical Reception of The New 
Grove 

Reviewers of The New Grove tempered 
near-unanimous praise with several recurring 
complaints. The increased space devoted to 
popular music and jazz was still inadequate. 33 
Moreover, reviewers criticized the lack of 
space devoted to American music; Michael 
Tilson Thomas, for instance, regretted that "in 
general, American music takes a back seat." 34 
With electrical sound recording available in 
one form or another since the 1920s, The New 
Grove was faulted for its omission of thorough 
discographies, particularly in areas such as 
jazz or non- Western music in which standard 
musical notation is of limited use. 35 A more 
cutting criticism was that Grove had aban- 
doned its traditional audience of learned ama- 
teurs for a more select and literate coterie of 
musicologists. 36 A review essay by Leon 
Botstein brings to the fore this change in 
audience: "The New Grove is a monument to 
the fact that while the study of music has 
become more professionalized, the audience 
for music has suffered from waning passion 
and sophistication." 37 

Some of these criticisms undoubtedly 
spurred the well-tuned corporate editorial ap- 
paratus created for The New Grove to continue 
work on offshoots which in their own special- 
ized areas have dwarfed the parent work. The 
New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 
also under Sadie's direction, appeared in 1984. 
Its articles included some 10,000 non-West- 
ern instruments and delved into great detail 
regarding topics treated more briefly in The 
New Grove ("Violin," for example, extended 
to over 3 5 pages with a bibliography of several 
pages). The New Grove Dictionary of Ameri- 
can Music (1986) traversed a region that the 
Am erican Supplement had only peered at from 
afar — "a different cultural model, of a more 
pluralistic character than that of Europe, and 
without the same foundation in ecclesiastical, 
aristocratic, and state patronage." 38 Sadie drew 
as co-editor for this work noted American 



GROVE'S DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 125 



musicologist H. Wiley Hitchcock. Criticism 
of scanty coverage of jazz in the American 
volume presaged The New Grove Dictionary 
of Jazz (1988), edited by Barry Kernfeld. 3 * 
Jazz applied the critical vocabulary and rigor- 
ous historical standards of The New Grove 
itself to a music that previously had been 
served primarily by an anecdotal literature, 
and employed extensive discographies in the 
same way that The New Grove supplemented 
articles with bibliographies and lists of com- 
positions. 

Other Grove projects are presently under- 
way. 40 Most notable is a four-volume New 
Grove Dictionary of Opera edited by Sadie 
and scheduled for publication in late 1991. 
Most of its articles on maj or composers will be 
newly written, and it will include nearly 2,000 
entries on individual operas, as well as new 
articles on singers, librettists, and librettos. 
Copublished with W.W. Norton in New York 
are more modest spinoffs of The New Grove. 
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music (Lon- 
don: Macmillan Press, 1988; in the United 
States as The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclo- 
pedia of Music [New York: W.W. Norton, 
1 988]) is a one-volume abridgement and con- 
densation of its parent volume which, in def- 
erence to an audience of students and listen- 
ers, includes articles for individual works. 
Some two dozen volumes in the Composer 
Biography Series, such as The New Grove 
Mozart (London: Macmillan, 1982; New York: 
W.W. Norton, 1983), extract, revise, update, 
and index articles from the parent volume. 
Volumes in the Handbooks in Music Series 
derive in varying degrees from TheNew Grove; 
these include the History of Opera, edited by 



Stanley Sadie, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1 989; 
New York: Norton, 1990), and Music Printing 
and Publishing, edited by Sadie and D.W. 
Krummel (Basingstoke: Macmillan; New 
York: Norton, 1990). In Japan, the Kodansha 
publishing firm is translating The New Grove 
into Japanese. 41 Anew edition of Grove itself 
is presently "an active possibility ... but no 
firm plans are made as yet." 42 

Both George Grove and Stanley Sadie 
saw their work as being all-inclusive. Grove 's 
Dictionary covered "all the points ... on which 
those interested in the Art, and alive to its 
many and far-reaching associations, can de- 
sire to be informed.' ,4J TheNew Grove "seeks 
to discuss everything that can be reckoned to 
bear on music in history and on present-day 
musical life." 44 Rather than a progression of 
more fully developed editions, the Grove dic- 
tionaries should be seen as a series of indi- 
vidual works sharing a common heritage. Each 
was a product, not only of its editors and 
contributors, but also of its time. The avail- 
ability of the world's music through broad- 
casting and recording, the presence of MGG 
and other reference works, the increasing so- 
phistication of musicology, the upheaval of 
the Second World War, and the Victorian 
confidence of a musical amateur were only 
some of the social and intellectual factors that 
determined the substance of the various 
Groves. Taken together, the editions and their 
derived works nevertheless have been a col- 
lective cornerstone of musical scholarship — 
not the whole building, certainly, but an inte- 
gral part within which the edifice has been 
summarized and upon which it has been built. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 
1450-1889) by Eminent Writers, English 
and Foreign, edited by Sir George Grove 
with Appendix edited by J. A. Fuller Maitland 
and Index by Mrs. Edmond Wodehouse. 
London: Macmillan; New York: Macmillan, 



1879-1889, 1890. 4 vols, and index. Re- 
printed 1890-1898, 1900; Philadelphia: T. 
Presser, 189-?. 
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 
edited by J A. Fuller Maitland. [2nd edj 
London: Macmillan;New York: Macmillan, 



i! 

fcfi] 



1 26 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



1904-1910, 5 vols. Reprinted 1911; Phila- 
delphia: T. Presser, 1916. 

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: 
American Supplement, edited by Waldo 
Selden Pratt; associate editor, Charles N. 
Boyd. New York: Macmillan, 1920. 412p. 

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 
edited by H.C. Colles. 3rd ed. London: 
Macmillan; New York: Macmillan, 1927- 
1928. 5 vols. Reprinted 1929, 1932, 1948. 

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: 
American Supplement, edited by Waldo 
Selden Pratt; associate editor, Charles N. 
Boyd. New ed. New York: Macmillan, 
1928. 438p. Reprinted 1935. 

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 
edited by EC. Colles. 4th ed. London: 
Macmillan, 1940, 5 vols. 

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: 
Supplementary Volume, edited by H.C. 
Colles. London: Macmillan; New York: 
Macmillan, 1940. 688p. 

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 
edited by Eric Blom. 5th ed. London: 
Macmillan; New York: St, Martin's Press, 
1954. 9 vols. Reprinted 1961. 



Grove 's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: 
Supplementary Volume to the Fifth Edition, 
editedbyEricBlom; associate editor.Denis 
Stevens. London: Macmillan; New York: 
St. Martin's Press, 1961. 493p. 

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musi- 
cians, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: 
Macmillan Publishers; Washington, DC: 
Grove ' s Dictionaries of Music; Hong Kong: 
Peninsula Publishers, 1980, 20 vols. 

The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instru- 
ments, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: 
Macmillan Press; New York: Grove's Dic- 
tionaries of Music, 1984. 3 vols. 

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 
edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley 
Sadie. London; Macmillan Press; New 
York: Grove'sDictionariesofMusic, 1986. 
4 vols. 

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, edited by 
Barry Kernfeld. London: Macmillan Press; 
New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music, 
1988. 2 vols. 

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by 
Stanley Sadie. Forthcoming. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following is a selective list of works 
that examine individual Grove dictionaries or 
that offer background material on the devel- 
opment of the first edition. Percy Young's 
biography is invaluable in establishing the 
facts of George Grove's life and the details of 
publication of the Dictionary. Of special im- 
portance are articles by editors Blom, Sadie, 
and Hitchcock which set out their intentions. 
Peggy Daub's article in Reference Services 
Review is a history of the publication of the 
successive editions which benefits from her 
editorial involvement with the New Grove 
staff. Encore is a newsletter distributed to 
purchasers of The New Grove; it features 
articles on performers and on publishing ac- 
tivities of the Grove organization. Highly use- 
ful in evaluating changes between editions 
and in gauging overall response are reviews. 



While these have not been included in the 
bibliography, an attempt has been made to cite 
in the endnotes those that are most significant, 

Blom, Eric. "Grove V: A Task of Restoration." 
Musical Times 95 (June, 1954): 300-03. 

Daub, Peggy. "Grove 's Dictionary of Music and 
Musicians'. From George Grove to the 'New 
Grove'," Reference Services Review 10 
(Fall, 1982): 15-22. 

Duckies, Vincent. "Musicology." In The Ro- 
mantic Age, 1800-1914, edited by Nicho- 
las Temperley, 483-502. Athlone History 
of Music in Great Britain, vol. 5. London: 
Athlone Press, 1981. 

Ehrlich, Cyril. The Music Profession in Britain 
since the Eighteenth Century: A Social 
History. Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1985. 

Encore. The Grove Music Society, v. 1-, March 
1986- New York: Grove's Dictionaries of 
Music. 



GROVE'S DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 127 



Giddens, Gary. "The Grove of Academe." Vil- 
lage Voice 32 (January 13, 1987): 75-76. 

Graves, Charles L. The Life and Letters of Sir 
George Grove, C.B. London: Macmillan; 
New York: Macmillan, 1903. 

"Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians 
(Fifth Edition)." Musical Times 96 (No- 
vember, 1955): 591-96; (December, 1955): 
643-51. 

Hitchcock, H. Wiley. "On the Path to the U.S. 
Grove." Notes 41 (March, 1985): 467-70. 

Howes, Frank, and Dyneley Hussey. "Grove's 
Dictionary." Music and Letters 9 (April, 
1928): 98-110; (July, 1928): 195-210. 

King, A. Hyatt. "Grove V and MGG." Monthly 
Musical Record 85 (June 1955): 115-19; 
(July-August, 1955): 152-57; (September, 
1955): 183-85. 

King, A. Hyatt. "Grove: Some Suggestions and 
Reflections." Monthly Musical Record 76 
(June, 1946): 99-1 02; (July-August, 1946): 
132-34. 

Langley, Leanne. "The Musical Press in Nine- 
teenth-Century England." No tes 46 (March, 
1990); 583-92. 



"New SI 900 Grove Music Dictionary to be 
Distributed by St. Martin's," Publishers 
Weekly 218 (November 14, 1980): 40, 42. 

O'Meara, Eva Judd. "Marginal Notes to Grove's 
Dictionary." Music Library Association 
Notes no. 1 (1934): 1-7. 

Parry, Ann. "The Grove Years 1868-1883: A 
'new look' for Macmillan 's Magazine^" 
Victorian Periodicals Review 19 (Winter, 
1986): 149-56. 

Sadie, Stanley. "Ethnomusicology and the New 
Grove." Ethnomusicology 23 (January, 
1979): 95-102. 

Sadie, Stanley. "The New Grove." Notes 32 
(December, 1975): 259-68. 

Stevenson, Robert. "The Americas in European 
Music Encyclopedias." Inter-American 
Music Review 3 (Spring-Summer, 1981): 
159-207. 

Thompson, Kenneth L. "Grove and Dates." 
Musical Times 104 (July, 1963); 481-84. 

Young, Percy M. George Grove, 1820-1 900: A 
Biography. Washington, DC: Grove's Dic- 
tionaries of Music, 1980. 



NOTES 



1 "Preface," in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians 

(A.D. 1450-1889) by Eminent Writers, English and 
Foreign, ed, by Sir George Grove with Appendix 
ed. by J.A. Fuller Maitland and Index by Mrs. 
Edmond Wodehouse (London: Macmillan; New 
York: Macmillan, 1879-89, 1890), v. 

2 See, for example, H.C. Colles, The Oxford History of 

Music, Vol. VII: Symphony and Drama, 1 850-1 900 
(London; Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 445: 
"While the Continent was reaping its rich harvest of 
music, and incidentally exporting it across the 
channel, English music was represented only by 
some rather thin sowings in a soil, rich enough 
indeed, but very poorly tilled." 

3 Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the 

Eighteenth Century: A Social History (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1985), 54-59. 

4 Ibid., 236. 
5 Ibid„ 68. 

'Percy M. Young, George Grove, 1820-1900: A Biogra- 
phy (Washington, DC: Grove's Dictionaries of 
Music, 1980), 28. 

7 Ibid., 52. 

8 Ibid., 64. 

'Charles L. Graves, The Life and Letters of Sir George 
Grove, C.B. (London: Macmillan; New York: 
Macmillan, 1903), 205-06. 



l0 Learme Langley, "The Musical Press in Nineteenth- 
Century England," Notes 46 (March 1990): 585- 
86. 

"Ibid., 587, 

n Vincent Duckies, "Musicology," in The Romantic Age, 
1800-1914, ed. by Nicholas Temperley, Athlone 
History ofMusic in Britain, vol. 5. (London: Athlone 
Press, 1981), 483, 

13 Young, 140-41. Also in the letter, Grove emphasizes 
the time needed for the project — in terms with 
which any editor can sympathize: "To drive a team 
of contributors half of whom are amateurs, andhalf 
can get 3 times the pay we can give them elsewhere, 
takes a frightful amount of goading and coaxing 
and correspondence: and the editing and correcting 
and checking and completing — as I feel bound to do 
it — is a matter of great labour and incessant thought 
and occupation." 

M "Preface," Dictionary, vi. 

15 Ibid., v, 

"These included Edinburgh Review 153 (January 1881): 
212-40; Quarterly Review 148 (July 1879): 39-53; 
and Temple Bar 64 (April 1882): 541-56. 

17 "The body of the dictionary absolutely swarms with 
mistakes," Athenaeum 3221 (20 July 1889): 106. 

' s "What it has wanted has been a stronger guiding hand, 
a general and comprehensive editing," review in 
Edinburgh Review 153 (January 1881): 239. 




:■*. 



128 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



9' 



w George P. Upton, review of the second edition of 
Grove, Dial 38 (May 1905): 311, 

M Frank Howes and Dy neley Hussey look askance at "the 
Mendelssohn article, which stands a huge monu- 
ment to Victorian musical taste, like a sortof Albert 
Memorial in the very middle of the book," in Music 
an<! letters 9 (My 1928): 195. 

2 ' "Preface," ia Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musi- 
cians, ed. by H.C. Colles, 4th ed. (London: 
Macmillan, I WO), v. ■ 

23 A. Hyatt KJug, "'Grove': Some Suggestions and Re- 
flections," Monthly Musical Record 76 (July-Au- 
gust 1946): 132. 

""preface," Grove's Dictionary of Mush and Musi- 
cians, ed.byEricBlom, 5 th ed. (London; Macmillan; 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1954), v. 

"The original essays were reprinted in a separate vol- 
ume: George Grove, Beethoven, Schubert, 
Mendelssohn (London: Macmillan, 195 1), 

15 "Preface," Grove's Dictionary, 5th Ed., vi. 

76 Paul Henry lAt&Mwoal Quarterly 41 (April 1955): 
216. 

"Richard S.HiU,tfote 12 (December 1954): 91. 

3 A. Hyatt King, Monthly Musical Record 85 (July- 
August 19S5): 183-84. 

""Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Fifth 
Edition)," Musical Times 96 (November 1955): 
591-96; (December 1955): 643-51. 

30 Stanley Sadie, "The New Grove," Notes 32 (December 
1975): 260-63. 

31 Peggy Daub, "Grove 's Dictionary of Music and Musi- 
cians: From George Grove to the 'New Grove'," 
Reference Services Review 10 (Pall 1982): 20, 

31 See Ann Basart, ''An Index to the Manuscripts in the 
New Grove Articles on 'Sources'," Cum Nods 



Variorum nos. 117-34 (November 1987 — July- 
August 1989). 

33 See, for example, reviews by Billy Taylor regarding 

jazz and by Paul Wittke regarding American musi- 
cal theater in Musical Quarterly 68 (April 1982): 
27 1—73 and 274—82; the entire issue is devoted to 
individual reviews of The New Grove. 

34 Michael Tilson Thomas, Notes 38 (September 1981): 

55; Robert Stevenson examines in detail The New 
Grove's coverage of North and South American 
composers in "The Americas in European Music 
Encyclopedias," Inter-American Music Review 3 
(Spring-Summer 1981): 159-207. 
3! Joshua Rifkin, review ofTheNew Grove, Journal of the 
A merican Musicological Society 35 (Spring 1 982): 
188. 

36 Charles Rosen, review of The New Grove, New York 

Review of Books 28 (28 May 1981): 26-38. 

37 Leon Botstein, "Orpheus in Academe," Harper 's 262 

(June 1981): 74. 

38 "Preface," The New Grove Dictionary of American 

Music, ed. by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley 
Sadie (New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music; 
London: Macmillan Press, 1986), vii. 

39 Gary Giddens, "The Grove of Academe," Village Voice 

32 (13 January 1987): 75-76. 

40 Stanley Sadie summarized ongoing publication activi- 

ties related to the The New Grove in a letter to the 
author, 22 March 1990. 

41 Hiroko Kishimoto, "Grove in Japanese," Encore 3 

(March 1988): unpaged. 

42 Sadie, letter to author, 22 March 1990. 

43 "Preface," Dictionary, v. 

44 "Preface," The New Grove, viii, 



fefe 



Eument 95 : Guide to 
eference Books 



Stuart W. Miller 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

The names Kroeger, Mudge, Winchell, and 
Sheehy evoke nearly mythic and possibly 
even reverential thoughts in the minds of 
almost any librarian trained in the United 
States since 1902. In that year, the American 
Library Association (ALA) published what 
would become the first edition of the premier 
compendium of reference materials for North 
American libraries, a work that has endured 
down to the present day in the form of a tenth 
edition, with a supplement planned for March 
or April 1 992 and an eleventh edition sched- 
uled to appear sometime in 1995. 

In the nearly 90 years since the first edi- 
tion in 1902, only four librarians have acted as 
chief author/editor of the Guide to Reference 
Books. For almost 75 years of that period, 
three of those four librarians have all in turn 
served as head of the Reference Department 
of the Columbia University Libraries. Such 
continuity has created an almost worshipful 
atmosphere that continues to hover around the 
Guide down to the present day and represents 
both a strength and a weakness for those now 
charged with the task of keeping the Guide in 
the mainstream of library reference work. 

The individual circumstances surround- 
ing the inception and production of most of the 
ten editions and their interim supplements can 
probably never be known in their entirety. 
Other than reviews and news announcements, 
there appears to be virtually no secondary 
literature discussing any aspect of the Guide. 



Both Robert Balay (editor of the forthcoming 
supplement to the tenth edition) and Eugene 
Sheehy (compiler of the ninth and tenth edi- 
tions) report that they received almost no 
written materials or information when they 
accepted their responsibilities. 1 Furthermore, 
while Sheehy has some copies of his corre- 
spondence with ALA Publishing, most of the 
replies to his letters came via telephone, 2 When 
one talks with Sheehy, Balay, and Robert 
Michaelson (coordinator of the science sec- 
tion for the next supplement and also a con- 
tributorto the tenth edition), one receives the 
impression of an almost informal undertaking 
(from a business/operations point of view) 
with past practices and traditions handed down 
only orally, 3 This researcher may, therefore, 
be forgiven for suspecting that even with 
access to the repositories where remnants of 
earlier editors ' efforts may survive, little would 
be found, since little appears to have been 
preserved. 

Genesis and Characteristics 

One can speculate that Alice Bertha 
Kroeger, the originator of what would eventu- 
ally become the Guide, simply had an idea for 
a guide to reference works, convinced ALA to 
publish it, and she and her successors took it 
from there. Or, given the eventual size of the 
work, one cannot help but speculate that it was 
the Guide that really took hold of its compil- 
ers. 4 



M 



130 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



&/< 



Of course, some obvious facts can be 
ascertained about the history of the Guide. 
First, it has always been published by ALA. 
While this may seem a trivial point, it does in 
fact verify that the association has always 
recognized the professional value of the Guide 
and has undoubtedly also recognized its mon- 
etary value as well. The Guide is one of ALA' s 
best-selling titles of all time. ALA has sales 
figures readily available only for the last four 
editions: the total number of copies sold to 
date for the seventh through tenth editions is 
127,572, a very large number indeed when 
most reference books rarely exceed printing 
runs of 5,000 copies. 5 Since nearly every pub- 
lic, college, university, and even some school 
libraries can be expected to buy any new 
edition sight unseen, ALA Publishing has a 
virtually captive market to exploit. 

Second, it has always been compiled by 
working reference librarians and has consis- 
tently aimed to be a practical guide for every- 
day use. 

Third, the longevity of the work indicates 
a strong perception on the part of its intended 
audience that the Guide has always served and 
continues to serve a very useful purpose. While 
some have taken issue with the Guide's selec- 
tion criteria and unevenness of coverage, the 
overwhelming critical response to the Guide 
has been very positive, if not downright adu- 
latory. The perceived usefulness of the work 
is also reflected in the attempts to keep it up to 
date. 

Keeping Current 

There have been many schemes to keep 
the Guide current, an ongoing theme in its 
history and a recurring request from the re- 
viewing community. After the first edition 
appeared in 1902, supplemental listings ap- 
peared at least annually in issues of either 
Library Journal or the A.L.A. Booklist until 
1928. The second, third, and fourth editions 
appeared at irregular intervals in 1908, 1917, 
and 1923 with two supplements to the second 



edition in 191 1 and 1914. After the fifth edi- 
tion of 1929, ALA published three supple- 
ments in 1 930, 193 1 , and 1 934. After the sixth 
edition of 1 936, four supplements appeared in 
1939, 1941, 1944, and 1947. The seventh 
edition in 1951 was followed by four supple- 
ments in 1954, 1956, 1960, and 1963. The 
eighth edition came out in 1967 with supple- 
ments in 1968, 1970, and 1972, and the ninth 
edition was issued in 1976. A four-year hiatus 
then occurred until the first supplement to the 
ninth edition was published in 1 980, followed 
by a second in 1982. In 1986, ALA issued the 
tenth edition, keeping with the "pattern" es- 
tablished since the seventh edition, of issuing 
a new edition four years after the last supple- 
ment to the previous edition. This pattern is 
also discernible in the 40-year period 1936— 
1976: three or four supplements to an edition 
followed by a new edition. None of it really 
suggests a carefully planned approach from 
the publisher's point of view; on the other 
hand, this could be interpreted as an unsuc- 
cessful implementation of the intent to ob- 
serve a regular schedule. 

As any reference librarian will attest, sub- 
stitutes for a regular pattern of updating for the 
Guide have chiefly consisted of regular fea- 
ture articles in Wilson Library Bulletin and 
College & Research Libraries that have ap- 
peared over the years, edited by various people 
(among them, Charles Bunge, Frances Neel 
Cheney, and Eugene P. Sheeny), reviewing 
and/or annotating selected reference works 
issued in a specific time frame. And the same 
reference librarians will also attest that this 
coverage, while helpful, is no substitute for 
regular supplements or revised editions. 

A number of reasons have been suggested 
as to why the Guide has never successfully 
achieved a regular schedule of supplements 
and revisions. Certainly, the Great Depression 
and World War II interrupted many publish- 
ing operations for at least 15 years between 
1930-1 945 . 6 It speaks well of ALA that it saw 
fit to issue several supplements and a new 
edition during that period. Since 1945, the 



GUIDE TO REFERENCE BOOKS 13 i 



ever-growing scope of the compilation task 
occasioned by the enormous increase in the 
number of reference titles suitable for inclu- 
sion in the Guide> coupled with the absence of 
a computerized database for editing purposes, 
have made the preparation of each new edition 
an enormous task. (Indeed, the compilers 
working on the tenth edition received pages of 
the ninth edition with pasted-on additions cut 
out from the two supplements.) While reviews 
of the various editions of the Guide have 
generally complained about the lack of regu- 
lar updating, 7 not until very recently has ALA 
made a commitment to create a computerized 
database to allow for vastly easier updating 
and revising processes. As a matter of fact, 
ALA Publishing itself did not begin to move 
towards computerized processes until the late 
1970s. 

The Columbia Connection 

Another interesting fact about the Guide 
is that, despite the long association with refer- 
ence librarians at Columbia University and 
popular impressions to the contrary, no formal 
agreement has ever existed between ALA and 
Columbia University concerning compilation 
of the work. Whatever formal contractual 
agreements have existed have been between 
individuals and ALA, However, since most 
academic libraries recognize that work on a 
project such as the Guide is a legitimate use of 
staff time (presumably to an extent estab- 
lished by policy or custom), it is clear that at 
least some of the cost of compiling the Guide 
over the years has been subsidized by Colum- 
bia University. (How much can probably never 
be determined.) This in no way minimizes the 
extraordinary amounts of personal time de- 
voted to the compilation by the editors and 
their collaborators. 8 (Constance Winchell in 
fact took a year's leave of absence to work on 
the seventh edition. 9 ) 

Following completion of the tenth edi- 
tion, ALA Publishing and Columbia Univer- 
sity discussed the possibility of negotiating an 



agreement to establish a formal, contractual 
relationship for the production of a future 
edition with possible remuneration to the uni- 
versity; no agreement was reached. While 
Columbia University librarians are still in- 
volved with the planned supplement to the 
tenth edition, future editions of the Guide will 
probably no longer have the strong identifica- 
tion with Columbia University that has been a 
feature for almost 75 years. Under these new 
arrangements, the hidden costs of compiling 
the work will undoubtedly be spread among 
more institutions. 

Given the continuity of author/editorship 
over the years, the stated purposes of the 
Guide have remained consistent. The Guide 
has always served as a selection tool for refer- 
ence librarians and has also been meant to 
serve as a "reference manual for the library 
assistant, research worker, or other user of 
library resources who needs a finger post to 
point out the reference tools available for 
some particular investigation." 10 As Sheehy 
notes in the preface to the tenth edition, "the 
criterion of usefulness which governed Miss 
Kroeger's first edition remains salient," 11 

The Guide has always been compiled and 
edited by working reference librarians who 
have taken a very practical approach to deci- 
sions regarding inclusion or exclusion. Even 
by the time Sheehy began working on the 
Guide, no editor had articulated a policy on 
inclusion/exclusion. Sheehy avers that the only 
real guiding principle was whether or not a 
title was useful for the compiler's clientele. 
Robert Michaelson, one of the current section 
coordinators, agrees that selection criteria have 
always purposefully been left vague, leaving 
it to individual reference librarians to identify 
those works which have shown value in actual 
reference situations. 12 This goes a long way 
toward explaining phenomena such as the 
otherwise perplexing presence of standard 
topical texts in the Guide and, on the other 
hand, the omission of many titles viewed as 
vital in some libraries. 

At no time in its history has the Guide had 
an editorial advisory board in the sense of a 



132 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



group empowered to determine policy issues 
and develop guidelines on such matters as 
inclusion/exclusion criteria. Various ad hoc 
groups have met over the years, apparently 
either at the suggestion of the editor or of ALA 
Publishing; some were formed to advise on 
specific issues, Winchell describes one group 
in the "Preface" to the seventh edition. 13 None 
appears to have perpetuated itself. 

Critical Reception 

Even a cursory glance through the re- 
views of the various editions and supplements 
will show that the inevitable result of such an 
approach has been viewed as a weakness, 
particularly when editions one through eight 
were very much a reflection of reference work 
as performed in one (albeit very large and 
multi-disciplinary) reference department. 1 ' 1 Bill 
Katz remarked in a review of the ninth edition: 
"The Guide is beginning to suffer from lack of 
criticism. Since 1 902 it has been handed down 
from the American Library Association 
mountaintop via the Columbia University 
Reference Department. The superb work of 
Mudge and Winchell is in danger of being 
codified." 15 Katz was particularly concerned 
about the reuse of annotations from prior 
editions, the lack of timeliness, and the lack of 
truly critical annotations. While acknowledg- 
ing the overall worth of the Guide, Katz sug- 
gested that division of the compilation among 
more people and more libraries might be a 
solution — a strategy that in fact began to evolve 
with the seventh edition and continues today. l6 

On the other hand, the very practical 
nature of such an approach has been a strength 
as well, and the Guide, more often than not, 
has received extremely positive reviews. Some 
border on the embarrassingly effusive. The 
seventh edition in particular garnered almost 
fulsome evaluations: "It is a book for 
Everyman, for general reading, . . . this work 
is a great one; it deserves the confidence and 
the affection of librarians, scholars, and gen- 
eral readers;" 17 and". . . an accomplishment of 



the first magnitude , . . Miss Winchell has 
made the present work so much her own that 
it is fitting that her flag should fly from the 
masthead; only a sense of dedication of her 
profession, certainly not hope of pecuniary 
reward of which there is not likely to be a 
surfeit, could have inspired her to undergo the 
vast amount of labor required, even with the 
help of numerous collaborators whose assis- 
tance she so graciously acknowledges " J * 

Role as a Textbook 

In addition to being a tool for practicing 
reference librarians, the Guide was originally 
designed to be a textbook for the student who 
wished to pursue a systematic study of refer- 
ence works. This explains why earlier editions 
carry sections on the reference department in 
a library and suggestions on how to read a 
reference work. In the past several years, the 
use of the Guide as a textbook has, for the most 
part, been abandoned. However, a reviewer of 
the seventh edition concluded that its "pleas- 
ing format and readable style should recom- 
mend it to reference librarians for daily read- 
ing." 19 While one may wonder if any reference 
librarian has ever really read the Guide as part 
of a daily routine, such a statement suggests 
the authority that the work commands, (Even 
1 5 years ago in library school, it was suggested 
in an enumerative bibliography class that stu- 
dents forego purchasing the then current eighth 
edition, but only on the grounds that a new 
edition was expected shortly and, after all, the 
students could expect to find a copy in virtu- 
ally any library in which any would eventually 
work. 20 ) 

Earlier editions also attempted to define 
what good reference work really means. The 
"Introduction: Reference Department" was 
reprinted essentially unchanged in almost all 
of the earlier editions. The feature was not 
dropped until the tenth edition in 1986. An- 
other feature eventually abandoned was the 
"Suggestive List of 100 Reference Books" 
that appeared in the first through sixth edi- 



GUIDE TO REFERENCE BOOKS 1 33 



tions. Meant for the small to medium-sized 
public library, the concept obviously became 
unworkable once the number of titles included 
increased drastically. It also reflected the in- 
evitable fact that a work compiled in a univer- 
sity library will typically reflect the needs of 
an academic audience, although the compilers 
have always been fairly successful in incorpo- 
rating more general-interest titles as well as 
the more esoteric ones useful in an academic 
setting. However, the Guide is "essentially a 
working aid for larger libraries and serious 
research." 21 

Over the years other less comprehensive 
guides to reference works for other types of 
libraries and audiences have been issued, in- 
cluding the American Library Association's 
Reference Sources for Small and Medium- 
sized Libraries (4th ed., Chicago: American 
Library Association, 1984). The tenth edition 
of the Guide identifies more than 30 guides to 
reference material in the "Selection of Books" 
section (pp. 43-47); these guides typically 
focus on a particular kind of library or subject/ 
geographic area. Many of these works have 
obviously been patterned after the Guide, an- 
other indication of its far-reaching influence. 
Most are of fairly recent origin; some are 
review media. Their existence indicates a 
need for more selective guides consistent with 
the missions and budgets of smaller libraries, 
ongoing tracking and evaluation of new titles, 
and more in-depth coverage in certain topical 
areas. All of these titles offer their own 
strengths, but none can be said to supersede or 
replace the Guide. Plans for the future of the 
Guide (see below) suggest that the latter two 
needs are well within the scope of the Guide's 
purpose and its future capabilities; the first 
need probably falls outside the Guide's pur- 
pose, although perhaps there will someday be 
a "Concise Guide." 

Meanwhile, consistent growth has char- 
acterized the Guide. The increase in numbers 
of titles included in the Guide is certainly one 
of the most noticeable differences among the 
editions. The very modest 1 04 pages of the 



first edition has expanded to 1 ,560 pages in the 
tenth. The sixth edition in 1936 already listed 
4,000 items; the seventh increased the total to 
about 5,500; the eighth reached 7,500; the 
ninth expanded to approximately 10,000; and 
the tenth ended up with about 16,000 titles. It 
is thought that the tenth edition supplement 
will contain about 4500 titles. The numbers 
explain why the acknowledgments, even in 
the earlier editions, identify persons who pro- 
vided assistance, the numbers of which have 
increased significantly over the years. By the 
seventh edition, Winchell began acknowledg- 
ing assistance from librarians outside of Co- 
lumbia; and for the ninth edition, Sheehy had 
further expanded the coterie of assistant com- 
pilers to the point where title-page acknowl- 
edgment was made. 

The Future 

The current work on the suppl ement to the 
tenth edition has coordinators for the various 
sections from Syracuse University and North- 
western University as well as at Columbia. In 
addition, associate editors in charge of sub- 
sections now represent a broad range of librar- 
ies noted for various specializations, e.g., the 
Family History Library of the Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-Day Saints; the Yale Law 
Library; the Yale Divinity Library; the Ap- 
plied Life Sciences Library at the University 
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and the John 
Crerar Library of the University of Chicago. 
The ever expanding group of compilers from 
a variety of library settings should continue to 
broaden the scope of the Guide and perhaps 
address the criticisms of uneven coverage that 
inevitably resulted from a work compiled pri- 
marily in one institutional setting. And those 
concerned with tradition qua tradition, should 
recognize that such an approach was really 
begun long ago by Constance Winchell her- 
self and continued by Eugene Sheehy. 

After publication of the tenth edition, 
ALA Publishing sent out questionnaires to a 
variety of people asking for input about how 



i 



134 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



the Guide should be handled in the future — 
Sheehy had already announced that the tenth 
edition was his last — and also talked with 
Columbia about a formal arrangement, as 
noted above. Eventually, ALA decided to 
assign responsibility for the Guide to the 
Choice editorial office, certainly a logical 
enough decision based on Choice's role as a 
review medium for academic library collec- 
tion development. 22 Robert Balay, former head 
of the Reference Department at Yale Univer- 
sity and now an editor at Choice, took on the 
position of editor of the Guide. Balay cur- 
rently spends approximately 50 percent of his 
time each week working on the Guide. To 
assist him he has recruited many of the tenth 
edition's compilers as section and subsection 
compilers/editors for a supplement to that 
edition, scheduled to appear in 1 992. An elev- 
enth edition is scheduled for 1995 but, for 
now, efforts are focused on the supplement. 23 

Another very important project for the 
future is the creation of a machine-readable 
database to make the compilation process far 
easier than before. Even as late as the 1986 
tenth edition, Sheehy still used the 4-x-6" card 
file system that had been utilized by his prede- 
cessors. 24 Attempts to combine the computer 
tape used for production of the ninth edition 
with its two supplements to create a working 
tool for compilation of the tenth edition came 
to naught when the company hired for the task 
went bankrupt. For the tenth edition's supple- 
ment, LC-MARC tapes are being used to 
supply the bibliographic citations; this should 
also greatlyaidthe compilation process. Plans 
now call for the eventual availability of an 
online database or a CD-ROM product, up- 
dated at regular intervals, with a printed edi- 
tion produced at regular intervals. 

There is every reason to believe that the 
Guide will continue to be a useful work. Two 
of the most consistent and persistent criticisms 
of the Guide — lack of timeliness due to the 
irregular updating patterns and unevenness of 



content due to its singular compilation meth- 
ods — can be addressed by the creation of an 
online database and a broadening of the num- 
ber of compilers. Should the former become a 
reality and the latter trend continue, the Guide 
should remain a source to be reckoned with in 
the reference department. A greater number 
of compilers may also allow for more in-depth 
assessment of related titles, resulting in a more 
consistently critical rather than descriptive 
approach to the Guide's annotations. The ex- 
istence of a larger pool of compilers also 
suggests that more formal editorial policies 
will eventually have to be developed in order 
to provide for a more rigorously consistent 
approach regarding compilation criteria. Oth- 
erwise, quality may suffer as increasingly 
larger numbers of compilers incorporate their 
own decisions and approaches into the Guide. 
On the other hand, the commitment to using 
practicing reference librarians as compilers is 
surely the only way to insure the Guide's 
continuing appeal to the profession as a useful 
tool for everyday work. 

As one reads through the prefaces and 
introductions to the various editions of the 
Guide, change is a constant theme, whether it 
is the arrangement of the work itself, signifi- 
cant additions of titles in particular topical 
areas due to ever-shifting current events, or 
just concerns about maintaining adequate cov- 
erage, It is certain that none of the editors ever 
thought that any one edition of the Guide was 
a work for all time. The constant renewal 
through supplements and new editions proves 
the existence of a world in which demands for 
information grow and change constantly and 
the willingness of the Guide's compilers to 
change with it. The latest steps in the evolution 
of the Guide demonstrate, paradoxically, con- 
tinuity amidst change and a realization that the 
Guide can continue indefinitely if it continues 
to meet the needs of its audience. May we all 
be fortunate enough to see a centennial edition 
in 2002. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



GUIDE TO REFERENCE BOOKS 135 



Guide to the Study and Use of Reference Books: A 
Manual for Librarians, Teachers and Students, 
by Alice Bertha Kroeger. A.L.A. Annotated 
Lists. Boston: American Library Association, 
Publishing Board, 1902. 104p. 

Guide to the Study and Use of Reference Books, by 
Alice Bertha Rroeger. 2nd. ed., rev. and enl. 
Boston: American Library Association, Pub- 
lishing Board, 1908. 147p. 

Guide to the Study and Use of Reference Books, by 
Alice Bertha Kroeger. Supplement 1909-1910, 
by Isadore Gilbert Mudge. Chicago: American 
Library Association, Publishing Board, 1911. 
24p. 

Guide to the Study and Use of Reference Books, by 
Alice Bertha Kroeger. Supplement 1911-191 3, 
by Isadore Gilbert Mudge. Chicago: American 
Library Association, Publishing Board, 1914. 
48p. 

Guide to the Study and Use of Reference Books, by 
Alice Bertha Kroeger, Isadore Gilbert Mudge. 
3rd. ed., rev. and enl. Chicago: American Li- 
brary Association, Publishing Board, 1917. 
235p. 

New Guide to Reference Books, by Isadore Gilbert 
Mudge. [4th ed.] Chicago: American Library 
Association, 1923. 278p. "Based on the Third 
Edition of Guide to the Study and Use of Refer- 
ence Books by Alice Bertha Kroeger as Revised 
by I. G. Mudge." 

Guide to Reference Books, by Isadore Gilbert Mudge. 
5th ed. Chicago: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1929, 370p. 

Reference Books of 1929, by Isadore Gilbert Mudge, 
Doris M. Reed, Constance M. Winchell. Chi- 
cago: AmericanLibrary Association, 1930. 47p. 
"An informal supplement to Guide to Reference 
Books, Fifth Edition." 

Reference Books of 1930, by Isadore Gilbert Mudge, 
Doris M. Reed, Constance M. Winchell. Chi- 
cago: AmericanLibrary Association, 193 1 . 39p. 
"An informal supplement to Guide to Reference 
Books, Fifth Edition." 

Reference Books of 1931-1933: Third Informal 
Supplement to Guide to Reference Books, Fifth 
Edition, by Isadore Gilbert Mudge assisted by 
Constance M. Winchell. Chicago: American 
Library Association, 1934. 87p. 

Guide to Reference Books, by Isadore GilbertMudge. 
6th ed. Chicago: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1936. 504p. 

Reference Books ofl 935-193 7: An Informal Supple- 
ment to Guide to Reference Books, Sixth Edi- 
tion, by Isadore GilbertMudge. Chicago: Ameri- 
can Library Association, 1939. 69p, 

Reference Books of 1938-1940, by Constance M. 
Winchell. Chicago: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1941. 106p. "Second Informal Supple- 



ment to Guide to Reference Books, Sixth Edi- 
tion, by Isadore Gilbert Mudge." 

Reference Books of 1941-1943, by Constance M. 
Winchell, Chicago: AmericanLibrary Associa- 
tion, 1944. 1 15p. "Third Informal Supplement 
to Guide to Reference Books, Sixth Edition, by 
Isadore Gilbert Mudge." 

Reference Books of 1944-1946, by Constance M. 
Winchell. Chicago: AmericanLibrary Associa- 
tion, 1947. 94p. "Fourth Informal Supplement 
to Guide to Reference Books, Sixth Edition, by 
Isadore Gilbert Mudge." 

Guide to Reference Books, by Constance M. Winchell. 
7th ed. Chicago: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1951. 645p, 

Guide to Reference Books: Supplement, 1950-1952, 
by Constance M. Winchell and Olive A. John- 
son. Chicago: American Library Association, 
1954. 11 7p. 

Guide to ReferenceBooks: Second Supplement, 1953- 
1955, by Constance M. Winchell. Chicago: 
American Library Association, 1956. 134p. 

Guide to ReferenceBooks: Third Supplement, 1956- 
1958, by Constance M. Winchell assisted by 
John Neal Waddell and EleanorBuist. Chicago: 
American Library Association, 1960. 145p. 

Guide to Reference Books: Fourth Supplement, 1959- 
June 1962, by Constance M. Winchell assisted 
by John Neal Waddell, Eleanor Buist, Eugene P. 
Sheehy. Chicago: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1963. 15 lp. 

Guide to ReferenceBooks, by Constance M. Winchell. 
8th ed. Chicago: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1967. 741p. 

Guide to Reference Books: First Supplement 1965- 
1966, by EugeneP. Sheehy. Chicago: American 
Library Association, 1968. I22p. 

Guide to Reference Books: Second Supplement 1967- 
1968, compiled by Eugene P. Sheehy with the 
assistance of Rita G. Keckeissen. Chicago: 
American Library Association, 1970. 165p. 

Guide to Reference Books: Third Supplement 1969- 
1970, compiled by Eugene P. Sheehy with the 
assistance of Rita G. Keckeissen and Eileen 
Mcllvaine. Chicago: American Library Asso- 
ciation, 1972. 190p. 

Guide to Reference Books, compiled by Eugene P. 
Sheehy with the assistance of Rita G. Keckeissen 
and Eileen Mcllvaine. 9th ed. Chicago: Ameri- 
can Library Association, 1976, l,015p. 

Guide to Reference Books, Ninth Edition: Supple- 
ment, edited by Eugene P. Sheehy with the 
assistance of Rita G. Keckeissen, Eileen 
Mcllvaine, Diane K. Goon; Pure and Applied 
Sciences compiled by Richard J. Dionne, Eliza- 
beth E. Ferguson, Robert C Michaelson; Major 
Data Bases compiled by Martha E. Williams. 
Chicago: American Library Association, 1980. 
305p. 



* I*"- 






m 



136 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 




Guide to Reference Books, Ninth Edition: Second 
Supplement, edited by Eugene P. Sheehy with 
the assistance of Rita G. Keckeissen, Eileen 
Mcllvaine, Diane K. Goon; Pure and Applied 
Sciences compiled by Richard J, Dionne, Eliza- 
beth E. Ferguson, Robert C, Michaelson. Chi- 
cago: American Library Association, 1982, 243p. 



Guide to Reference Books, edited by Eugene P. 
Sheehy withtheassistance ofRitaG. Keckeissen, 
Eileen Mcllvaine, Diane K. Goon, Janet 
Schneider; Science, Technology, and Medicine 
compiled by Richard J. Dionne, Elizabeth E. 
Ferguson, Robert C. Michaelson, 10th ed. Chi- 
cago: American Library Association, 1986. 
l,560p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Other than the reviews and a very few 
news articles, the only secondary literature of 
any substance on the Guide is Plotnik' s article 
on the compilation of the ninth edition. Bio- 
graphical information on Kroeger and Mudge 
can be found in Grotzinger's and Waddell and 
Grotzinger's respective articles in the Dictio- 
nary of American Library Biography; on 
Winchell in Richards' s article in the Supple- 
ment to the Dictionary of American Library 
Biography and in her New York Times obitu- 
ary; and on Sheehy in The ALA Yearbook 
1978. Significant reviews are listed below; 
others can be found through standard book 
review indexes. However, since most of the 
reviews are basically descriptive and/or lau- 
datory, they are not particularly illuminating. 
Katz is probably correct in his assessment that 
rigorous criticism of the Guide has been rare. 

"Constance Mabel Winchell.'* New York Times, May 

25, 1983, p. A24, Obituary. 
Grotzinger, Laurel A. "Kroeger, Alice B ertha ( 1 864- 

1909)." In Dictionary of American Library Bi- 



ography, edited by Bohdan S. Wynar, 295-98. 

Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1978. 
Jensen, Joan W., et al. Review of Guide to Reference 

Books, 10th ed., by Eugene P. Sheehy. Choice 

24 (May, 1987): 1361-64. 
Katz, Bill. Review of Guide to Reference Books, 9th 

ed., by Eugene P. Sheehy. Journal of Academic 

Librarianship 3 (March, 1977): 37-38. 
Plotnik, Art. "From Winchell' s Sthto Sheehy' s 9th." 

American Libraries % (March, 1977); 129-32. 
Richards, Pamela Spence. "Winchell, Constance 

Mabel (IB96~\9^)" In Supplement to theDic- 

tionary of American Library Biography, edited 

by Wayne E. Wiegand, 163-65. Englewood, 

CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1990. 
"Sheehy, Eugene."^L4 Yearbook! (1978): 66-67. 
Tolley, C. W, Review of Guide to Reference Books, 

7th ed., by Constance M. Winchell. New Zealand 

Libraries 16 (April, 1953): 66-68 
Waddell, JohnN., and Laurel A. Grotzinger. "Mudge, 

Isadore Gilbert ( 1 875-1 957)." InDictionary of 

American Library Biography, edited by Bohdan 

S. Wynar, 377-79. Littleton, CO: Libraries 

Unlimited, 1978. 
"Winchell, Constance M[abel]." Current Biography 

(1967): 465-68. 
Wynar, Bohdan S. Review of Guide to Reference 

Books, 9th ed., by Eugene P. Sheehy. American 

Reference Books Annual % (1978): p. 3-7. 



NOTES 



! Robert Balay, Editor, Guide to Reference Books, Tenth 
Edition: Supplement, and Eugene Sheehy, (retired) 
Head, Reference Department, Columbia Univer- 
sity Libraries, telephone interviews with the author, 
April 1990. 

2 Sheehy, interview with the author, April 1990. 

3 Balay and Sheehy interviews with the author, April 

1990; and Robert G. Michaelson, Head Librarian, 
Seeley G. Mudd Library for Science and Engineer- 
ing, Northwestern University, personal interview 
with the author, April 1990. 

4 Asked by the author if he would do it again, Mr. Sheehy 

replied that he suspects he would, even given the 
"agony" that occasionally went with it. 
'Figures obtained from a telephone interview (March 
1991) with Robert Herschman, Manager, Sales & 
Operations, ALA Publishing. 



*The author thanks Eugene Sheehy for suggesting this 
fact, one that does not come naturally to a member 
of the post- World War II generation. 

7 Several reviews of the ninth edition make this point. 
Charles Bunge, writing in his "Current Reference 
Books" column (Wilson Library Bulletin 5 1 [Janu- 
ary 1977]; 442), noted that "because of the neces- 
sary time lag in publishing such a large work . . . this 
fine guide will need to be supplemented in day-to- 
day reference work by other specialized guides and 
by the librarian's own strategies for staying cur- 
rent." The review in Choice 14 (June 1977); 516 
observed that "The work was nearly two years in 
production, and the lists are already three years out 
of date." See also Bohdan S. Wynar' s review of the 
ninth edition, American Reference Books Annual 8 
(1977): 3-7. The tenth edition received somewhat 



GUIDE JO REFERENCE BOOKS 1 37 



better marks for currency, See, for example, Joan 
Jensen and others' review in Choice 24 (May 
1987): 1361-64, and Bohdan S. Wynar's review in 
American Reference Books Annual 18 (1987): 8-9. 

8 In Eugene Sheehy's conversation wilh the author, Mr. 
Sheehy spoke of the "all-consuming" nature of the 
task of editing the Guide, mentioning how he some- 
times felt almost guilty if he took an evening stroll 
after dinner instead of resuming work. 

* Constance M. Winchell, "Preface," Guide to Reference 
Books, 7th ed. (Chicago: American Library Asso- 
ciation, 1951), v-vi. 

10 Isadore Gilbert Mudge, "Preface," Guide to Reference 
Books, 6th ed. (Chicago: American Library Asso- 
ciation, 1936), iii. 

1 ' Eugene Sheehy, "Preface," Guide to Reference Books, 
10th ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 
1986), ix. 

12 Michaelson and Sheehy, interviews with the author, 

April 1990. 

13 Winchell, "Preface," v-vi. Sheehy states that he was 

invited to attend several meetings about the Guide 
organized by ALA Publishing at various ALA 
conferences that considered a variety of topics. He 
cannotclearly recall any particuiartopics discussed 
but is certain that none of the groups continued on 
a regular basis. 

14 For examples, see C. W. Tolley, review of Guide to 

Reference fioofa,7thed., by ConstanceM. Winchell, 
New Zealand Libraries 16 (April 1953): 66-68 and 
Bohdan S. Wynar, review of Guide to Reference 
Books, 9th ed., by Eugene P, Sheehy, American 
Reference Books Annual 8 (1978): p. 3-7. 
" Bill Katz, review of Guide to Reference Books, 9th ed., 
by Eugene P. Sheehy, Journal of Academic 
Librarianship 3 (March 1977): 37-38. 



16 Ibid. The preface to the seventh edition indicates that 
an advisory committce{withmernbers from. outside 
of the Columbia University libraries) reviewed 
parts of the work. The preface to the eighth edition 
identifies members of an advisory committee and 
special mention is made of the work on the science 
sections by the staff at the University of Wisconsin 
libraries. The number of other libraries involved 
has increased in each of the two subsequent edi- 
tions. 

" W.B. Ready, review of Guide to Reference Books, 7th 
ed., by Constance M. Winchell, Library Quarterly 
23 (January 1953): 64, 

18 Harold Russell, review of Guide to Reference Books, 
Seventh Edition, by Constance M. Winchell, in 
College and Research Libraries 13 (July 1952): 
274. 

19 Review of Guide to Reference Books, Seventh Edition, 
by Constance M. Winchell, in Library Journal 77 
(March 1, 1952): 419. 

20 Robert Herschman of ALA Publishing reported total 
number of copies sold for the last four editions as 
follows: Seventh edition (1951) 40,149; Eighth 
edition(1967)51,597>Ninthedition(1976) 24,030; 
Tenth edition (1986) 1 1,796. He believes the drop 
between the eighth and ninth editions is explained 
by the abandonment of the Guide as a textbook in 
reference classes. Herschman, interview with the 
author, 

21 Art Plotnik, "From Winchell's 8th to Sheehy's 9th," 

American Libraries 8 (March 1977): 132. 

22 Robert Balay, "Guide to Reference Books," Choice 27 

(November 1989): 433. 
"Balay, interview with the author, April 1990. 
24 Sheehy, interview with the author, April 1990. 



r*r2Hrs- 






h. IS 



"Unbeatable": The Guinness Book 

of Records 



Christine C. Whittington 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

The idea for publishing the record book that 
the New York Times once called "a wacky 
collection of superlatives" 1 originated with an 
argument among sportsmen hunting ducks 
and geese in the autumn of 195 1 near Wexford, 
in the southeast tip of the Irish Coast, After his 
shot at a golden plover missed its mark, Sir 
Hugh Beaver, managing director of the Anglo- 
Irish brewery Arthur Guinness, Son and Com- 
pany, Ltd., debated with his companions 
whether the golden plover was the fastest 
game bird in Europe. Sir Hugh consulted 
various encyclopedias and other reference 
sources, discovering that none provided infor- 
mation about records and extremes that would 
prove him correct He was surprised that such 
a source did not exist and felt that a book like 
this would be useful for settling bets and 
arguments, especially those taking place in 
pubs or bars where Guinness's famous lager 
and stout were consumed. Several years later, 
thinking that it might be a good business 
undertaking for Guinness to publish a book 
that would be popular in pubs, Sir Hugh asked 
Guinness executive Christopher Chataway, 
holder of the world 5000-meter track record, 
if he knew of anyone who would be able to 
compile a book of superlatives. Chataway 
recommended his friends from Oxford, the 
twins Norris and Ross McWhirter, "a pair of 
track fanatics," and owners of a fact-finding 
enterprise, 2 



The McWhirter Brothers 

The McWhirters were born in London, 20 
minutes apart, on August 12, 1925. Their 
father was the editor of three national newspa- 
pers — the Sunday Pictorial, Daily Mail, and 
Sunday Dispatch — and eventually became the 
managing director of Associated Newspa- 
pers. 3 The twins grew up in a home full of 
reference books "devoted to the establishment 
of facts." 4 According to J. A. Maxtone 
Graham's article in Sports Illustrated, the 
young McWhirter twins asked so many ques- 
tions that their mother complained to their 
father, who advised her to "tell them to look it 
up for themselves." 5 They kept a file of news- 
paper clippings containing unusual informa- 
tion, including lists of the largest buildings, 
and memorized every important date in Brit- 
ish history, the names of every river, mountain 
range, and nation's capital. 6 They insisted 
upon checking everything they were told 
against reference books, causing their teach- 
ers to call them the "McWhitakers" 7 in refer- 
ence to the famous British almanac. 

The McWhirters were already supplying 
information on extraordinary record-setters 
and unusual topics when Sir Hugh Beaver 
began to search for someone to write a book of 
superlatives. After study at Oxford and war- 
time service with the Royal Navy, the 
McWhirters returned to London in 1 95 1 , where 
they set up and registered McWhirter Twins, 
Ltd., a "press and periodicals features ser- 



GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS 1 39 



vice" for supplying facts and figures to news- 
papers, publishers, and advertisers. 8 The 
McWhirters were also involved in 
sports writing and sportscasting. Norris 
McWhirter was commenting on an Iffley Road, 
Oxford, track meet for the BBC and Ross was 
reporting for the Star on May 6, 1954, when 
their friend Roger Bannister broke the four- 
minute mile. 9 

On September 12, 1954, the McWhirters 
attended a lunch with Sir Hugh Beaver and 
other Guinness executives to discuss Beaver' s 
plan to publish a book of superlatives. The 
Guinness representatives quizzed the 
McWhirters about records, including those 
for the longest river that has ever frozen and 
the longest time a human squatted on top of a 
pole. 10 When Norris revealed that he knew 
that the Turkish language had only one irregu- 
lar verb, not because he knew Turkish but 
because he had made an effort to discover 
which language had the fewest, Sir Hugh 
Beaver "seemed to decide that he had discov- 
ered people with the right kind of quirkish 
mind for producing the book."' l It was agreed 
that the McWhirters would write it and that 
Guinness Superlatives, Inc., a Guinness sub- 
sidiary, would publish it. 12 

From an office at 107 Fleet Street, the 
McWhirters began the enormous task of com- 
piling a collection of superlatives, "extracting 
the 'ests' (highest, lowest, smallest, oldest, 
fastest, heaviest, etc.) from the 'ists' (ichthy- 
ologists, paleontologists, dendrochronologists, 
etc.)" 13 They wrote thousands of letters to 
governments officials, university professors, 
various experts, museums, and libraries in 11 
countries. 14 The twins compiled entries as 
they received responses to their queries and 
arranged for the printing and binding of the 
book. The first printing of 5 0,000 copies of the 
Guinness Book of Records was finished on 
August 27, 1955. 15 The book contained 198 
pages, cost $35,000 to publish, and sold for 
about 75 cents. 16 Its green cover was em- 
bossed with the Guinness trademark, a gold 
Brian Boru harp. It contained a foreword by 



Guinness chairman Rupert Guinness, the Earl 
of Iveagh, introducing the book as a tool for 
settling arguments. Among the 96 agencies, 
businesses, and organizations listed in the 
acknowledgments are the British Speleologi- 
cal Association, the United States Coast Guard, 
and the Embassy of Japan. The McWhirters 
were not listed by name but identified only 
anonymously as "the compilers." 

The First Edition 

The book contained sections on the hu- 
man being, the animal kingdom, the natural 
world, the universe, the scientific world, the 
human world, the business world, the world's 
structures, the mechanical world, accidents 
and disasters, human achievements, and sport. 
Each chapter was further divided. For ex- 
ample, the chapter on the human being in- 
cluded sections on dimensions, longevity, 
reproductivity, and physiology. The longest 
chapter was that on sports, including records 
for more than 60 activities. Each section in- 
cluded individual records. For example, the 
section on dogs included entries for age, larg- 
est litter, highestprice, mostpopular, andmost 
dogs in a single team. Superlatives included 
"earliest," "tallest," "shortest," "heaviest," 
"thinnest," "oldest," "largest," "smallest," 
"most," "lowest," "highest," "rarest," plus 
other less common "-ests" such as "busiest" 
(junction), "remotest" (island), "bloodiest" 
(assize), and "brightest" (planet). The book 
included black and white photographs and an 
index. For many categories, world records 
were listed first, followed by those for En- 
gland, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. For ex- 
ample, the chapter on the world's structures 
includes entries for the Great Britain's tallest 
structure (the General Post Office radio masts 
near Rugby) as well as the world's (the televi- 
sion transmitting tower of station KWTV in 
Oklahoma City). Many of the world records 
included in the Guinness Book of Records 
were American, including the largest mail 
order house (Sears Roebuck), the fastest sell- 




140 DISTINGUISHED CLASSfCS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



£*] 



ingrecording ("The Ballad of Davy Crockett"), 
the largest insurance company (Metropolitan 
Life), the country with greatest number of 
telephones (the United States, with 50 mil- 
lion), and the most expensive hotel 
(Fountainebleu, Miami Beach). 

Within four months, the Guinness Bookof 
Records was the bestselling book in England, 
with approximately 187,000 copies sold. The 
McWhirters each earned about $10,000 in 
royalties from the sale of the book. 17 

A second, enlarged edition of the Guinness 
Book of Records was published in England in 
1956. This edition contained more photo- 
graphs, new material from the United States 
and the Soviet Union, which the McWhirters 
had visited, and new records. The tallest tree 
in the British Isles, for example, had grown 
eight feet, six inches since last measured, and 
73 new records were added to track and field 
athletics. 18 Other records changed as a result 
of technological advances, such as new mea- 
surements for the deepest Atlantic sounding, 
the diameter of the Earth, and the speed of 
light, 19 

First American Edition 

An American edition of 50,000 copies 
was produced in 1956, entitled The Guinness 
Book of Superlatives . Although the book in- 
cluded the same categories as the British edi- 
tion, the content was adjusted to appeal to the 
American audience. The 1956 British edition 
contained records for fox hunting, snooker, 
polo, public houses, the largest and fastest 
British motorcycles, a lengthy section on 
cricket, and the London Stock Exchange. The 
American edition of the same year contained 
much longer sections on baseball, basketball, 
and American football, and entries for harness 
racing, rodeo, ranches, and grain elevators, 
none of which were included in the British 
edition. 

At first, the Guinness Book of Superla- 
tives did not sell rapidly and distribution was 
not well organized. Then, a copy of this Ameri- 



can edition on the shelves of the De Wolfe and 
Fiske bookstore in Boston drew the attention 
of David Boehm. Boehm had founded Ster- 
ling Books in 1949 with six titles, mostly how- 
to books. Intrigued by the book, Boehm of- 
fered to take over the distribution of the 32,000 
copies remaining to be sold in the United 
States. Sterling re-titled the American edition 
the Guinness Book of World Records, pack- 
aged it with a new cover, and spent four years 
selling the excess copies. In 1 960, Boehm and 
Norris McWhirter agreed that Sterling would 
produce a paperback version of the book i n the 
United States with only world, not national, 
records, using proofs of the British edition. 
The success of the paperback version in Ameri- 
can bookstores and the requests of bookstore 
owners convinced Sterling to publish a hard- 
cover edition in 1961. In that year, Sterling 
sold paperback rights to Bantam Books. Until 

1 973, the book was not published annually in 
the United States as it was in Great Britain, but 
only as supplies were exhausted. 20 

Enduring Popularity 

Thirty-five years after it was first pub- 
lished, the Guinness Book of Records contin- 
ues to be immensely popular. In December 

1974, it became the fastest selling nonaction 
book in history, excluding versions of the 
Bible. It surpassed Dr. Benjamin Spock'sifa^y 
and Child Care to reach total sales of 24 
million and achieve its own record in the book. 
Hardcover sales have averaged 100,000 cop- 
ies per year and paperback sales two to three 
million per year; an additional 250,000 to 
400,000 are sold per year through premium 
sales. 21 By October 1989, 61 million copies 
had been sold in 262 editions in 35 languages, 
including Icelandic, Tamil, Malayalam, and 
Telugu. 22 Arrangements for compiling the first 
Russian edition were completed in 1989. 23 
Sales of the Finnish and Serbo-Croatian edi- 
tions have been credited with boosting the 
sales to the record. 24 In his introduction to the 
1990 edition, Benjamin Guinness points out 



GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS 141 



that the book was "No. 1 on the best sellers list 
. . . every year except 1957 and 1959, when it 
was not published, and that the global sales to 
date would equal 171 stacks, each as high as 
Mount Everest." 25 

There have been many attempts to ex- 
plain the fascination Guinness holds for its 
readers. McWhirter believes that "People are 
fascinated by extremes. People crave delinea- 
tion and points of reference. It's a matter of 
orientation, but it's also part of the natural 
competitiveness that most of us have." 26 The 
United States provides the largest market for 
Guinness. In an interview with Digby Diehl 
for the Los Angeles Times, Ross McWhirter 
stated that "This curious American dedication 
to the fact, as well as your competitive spirit, 
your betting sense, seems to account for our 
book's popularity," but added that worldwide 
commitment to literacy has aided expansion 
of the market for paperback books, including 
the paperback version of Guinness. 2 '' Promo- 
tions and product licensing, including "Oddball 
Olympics" in various cities, seven Guinness 
World Records exhibition halls, a comic strip, 
greeting cards, t-shirts, and television shows 
have increased the book's exposure. 18 Fund- 
raising events have attracted attention and 
publicity through attempts to break records 
listed in Guinness. 

Guinness has also increased its exposure 
through the numerous spinoffs that have been 
published under its name. Many of these ex- 
pand upon the numerous sports records found 
in the parent book. These include The Guinness 
Book of World Championship Boxing (Lon- 
don: Guinness Superlatives, 1990); The 
Guinness Book of Olympic Records: 1988 
(New York: Bantam, 1988); and the annual 
Guinness Sports Record Book (New York: 
Sterling, 1972-1990; New York: Facts On 
File, 199 1- ). Other spinoffs appeal to teenag- 
ers, young adults, and trivia fans who also 
enjoy the parent book. These include titles in 
the Guinness Oddfax Series such as The 
Guinness Book of Almost Everything You 
Didn 7 Need to Know About Dogs (London: 



Guinness Superlatives, 1987) and The 
Guinness Book of Almost Everything You 
Didn 't Need to Know About the Movies (Lon- 
don: Guinness Superlatives, 1987). 

Critical Reception 

Reviewers have mentioned the book's 
use of "deadpan humor," "arcane erudition," 
and "air of indisputable authority." 29 In a 
single sentence, another reviewer noted both 
the book's "useless information" and its abil- 
ity to "captivate all ages." 30 Curiosity about 
the grotesque no doubt plays a role. One 
reviewer wrote that the book offered a "chance 
to peep behind the curtain concealing life's 
freak show" to find gruesome records for 
obesity, gluttony, deformity, and inhuman- 
ity. 31 Most reviewers, even one who surmised 
that "the Guinness Book of World Records 
includes more useless information than any 
other book in the world," 12 cannot resist listing 
the records they find most fascinating. The 
Village Voice gave Guinness a one word re- 
view: "Unbeatable." 33 

Types of Records 

Teachers have found that the Guinness 
Book of World Records can be used to tempt 
children and young adults to read. 34 School 
classes and other children's groups have turned 
breaking a "Guinness record" into a learning 
experience. A fifth grade class researched and 
measured the 201-foot Roe River in Montana 
and submitted evidence that earned it a place 
in the 1 989 Guinness as holding the record for 
the world's shortest river. 35 

While most records included in earlier 
editions of the book were for naturally occur- 
ring phenomena (the fastest snake); athletic 
(most lawn bowling titles); or unintentional 
(the youngest vice president); many of the 
records in the more recent editions reflect an 
activity J. Kirshenbaum has dubbed 
"Guinnessport." 36 The book's popularity has 
resulted in campaigns all over the world, ex- 




142 DISTINGUISHED CLAS SICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



treme in themselves, to set new "Guinness 
records" or "get into Guinness." Norris 
McWhirterbelieves that because "Americans 
have such a high level of achievement. The 
underachievcrs are driven into zanier out- 
lets." 37 Perusing newspaper and periodical 
indexes turns up many accounts of record- 
breaking activities such as eating a tree, 38 
catching in one's mouth a grape dropped from 
a 60-story building, 39 making the world's long- 
est pasta nood le, 40 or stacking bowling balls. 41 
Individuals have attempted not only to break 
records in order to have them listed in the 
book, buthave attempted to achieve the record 
for holding the most "Guinness" records. 
Ashrita Furman of New York City holds the 
record for the most records in diverse catego- 
ries/ 2 including squats done in one hour, skip 
running, and pogo stick jumping in the Ama- 
zon River. Peter Dowdeswell of London holds 
many eating records, including those for raw 
eggs (13 in one second), eels (1,300 in 13.7 
seconds), and sushi (1.5 pounds in 1 minute, 
13.5 seconds). South Korea is attempting to 
achieve the mostrecords in the GuinnessBook 
of Records, hoping by the mid-1990s to sur- 
pass the30percentheldby Americans. Records 
already held by South Korea include those for 
shipbuilding, the largest drydock, and the most 
sets of twins within a single community. 43 

In response to the popularity of record- 
setting, each edition of the book includes 
guidelines for determining whether an activ- 
ity will be considered a record, rules and 
procedures, and documentation and verifica- 
tion. The guidelines state that thebook is likely 
to publish "only those records which improve 
upon previously published records or which 
are newly significant in having become the 
subject of widespread and, preferably, world- 
wide competition.'"' 4 Hence one wonders why 
pogo stick jumping in the Amazon river, mak- 
ing a jumpsuit out of pennies, or catching 
grapes in the mouth from greatheights qualify. 
The book no longer publishes any records in 
the "gratuitously hazardous categories, such 
as the lowest starting height for a handcuffed, 
free-fall parachute jump" 45 or new records for 



other "extremely inadvisable" activities, such 
as those for sword swallowing 46 or "glut- 
tony." 47 

Guinness Book of World Records has a 
reputation for excluding morally questionable 
records. Robert Lacey in the London's Sun- 
day Times Magazine noted that the Guinness 
Book of Records included records for the 
oldest and most prolific mothers, but not the 
youngest mothers, unwed mothers, or abor- 
tions, 48 while Peter Buckman in Punch found 
Ripley's Believe It or Not (described by Norris 
McWhirter as "cynical, successful, and thor- 
oughly unreliable") 49 a better source of infor- 
mation on sexual feats, 50 and a reviewer for the 
Listener noted that "sex scarcely enters the 
Guinness Book of Records " i{ 

Format and Organization 

The purpose and format of the Guinness 
Book of Records, if not the records them- 
selves, remain similar to that of the early 
editions. Like the first edition, the 1990 edi- 
tion began with an introduction by the Earl of 
Iveagh, President of Arthur Guinness & Sons. 
In his foreword to the first American edition, 
Rupert Guinness, the current Earl of Iveagh, 
defined the purpose of the book, adapted for 
the American audience: 

Wherever people congregate to talk, they will 
argue, and sometimes the joy lies in the argu- 
ing and would be lost if there were any definite 
answer. But more often the argument takes 
place on a dispute of fact, and it can be very 
exasperating if there is no immediate means of 
settling the discussion. Who was the tallest 
President? Who is the richest man and the 
most married woman? Where is the highest 
point in our state? How many died in the 
world's worst earthquake? Who hit the long- 
est measured home run? Who holds the corn- 
husking record? And sd on. How much heat 
these innocent questions can raise! The House 
of Guinness in producing this book hopes that 
it may assist in resolving many such disputes 
and may, we hope, turn heat into light. 52 

In their preface, the McWhirters defined 
the scope of the book as "... a collection of 






GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS 143 



facts — finite facts expressed in quantitative 
terms predominantly those which by mea- 
surement are superlative or are records in their 
respective fields. The world's greatest man is, 
for this book, the man with the greatest girth 
rather than the man with the greatest intel- 
lect." 53 The book continues to be divided into 
sections similar to those of the early editions, 
with sections on the arts and entertainment, 
newly verified records, and sports games and 
endurance marathons (e.g., playing Monopoly 
for 600 hours) the only added categories. The 
index of the American edition includes entries 
for the superlatives themselves, e.g., "fast- 
est," "longest," "earliest," followed by the 
subject. About one quarter of the book's 
records change each year. Obviously, many 
records have changed because of technologi- 
cal advances, such as the record for the fastest 
aircraft. Also many athletic records, such as 
those for speed skating or bicycle racing, were 
set in recent years. 

Ways to Use Guinness 

In the library reference environment, the 
Guinness Book of World Records can supply 
information not easily available in any other 
source. Sir Hugh Beaver was correct in his 
assumption that there was no comprehensive 
book of superlatives when he conceived his 
idea for a record book, and no competitor has 
been published since. It is easy to locate infor- 
mation about museums in directories, for ex- 
ample, but no other single source lists the 
oldest museum (Ashmolean, Oxford), largest 
single museum (American Museum of Natu- 
ral History), or the most popular museum (the 
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Mu- 
seum). The charts included in recent editions 
are especially useful for those who want infor- 
mation in one place; for example, a chart in the 
1 990 American edition entitled "Worst Acci- 
dents and Disasters in the World" ranks by 
number of deaths disasters resulting from 
causes as diverse as the Black Death (75 
million deaths); panic in an air raid shelter 



(4,000 deaths); and the mass suicide at the 
People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana (913 
deaths). Guinness is often used as a first step, 
providing enough information about a ques- 
tion to enable a librarian or library patron to 
identify appropriate sources for further infor- 
mation. For example, a person investigating 
the popularity of motion pictures could use 
Guinness to identify the films with the highest 
box office gross, highest film rentals, the most 
expensive film, the highest earnings by actors, 
and the largest number of Academy Awards 
before looking for information on the indi- 
vidual films in sources devoted to film. 

A New American Publisher, A New 
American Title 

Sterling Books' involvement with the 
Guinness Book of World Records ended with 
publication of the 1 990 edition. Beginning 
with the 1 99 1 edition, the American edition of 
Guinness has been published by Facts On File . 
Facts On File is best known as the publisher of 
the weekly news digest entitled Facts On File, 
Facts On File has brought the American edi- 
tion closer to the currentBritish edition in size, 
format, and appearance. The book is larger (9" 
x 12"), the photographs are larger and in color, 
and the book contains color charts and other 
graphics. Like the British edition, the new 
American edition lists both world andnational 
records for many categories, To reflect this 
change, the title has officially been changed to 
Guinness Book of Records* the same title used 
for the British edition. Facts On File plans to 
maintain strong editorial involvement and com- 
munication with Guinness, Ltd., the publisher 
of the British edition. Two editors are working 
full time on the American edition — one for 
Facts On File in New York and the other for 
Guinness Ltd. in London. The Facts On File 
editor, Mark Young, is responsible for "Ameri- 
canizing" Guinness. He tracks down records 
in much the same way the McWhirters did for 
the first edition. He screens numerous letters 
(including one containing a cockroach that 



m 






if 






144 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



fell short of the record length) and telephone 
calls (Facts On File has installed a separate 
telephone line and answering machine for this 
purpose); consults other reference sources; 
and has tapped into networks of experts. Un- 
like the McWhirters as they compiled the first 
edition, Young uses computer files to keep 
track of Tecords and update information. 
Donald McFarlan is the present editor of the 
British Guinness Book of Records, Norris 
McWhirter maintains his involvement with 
the book he created by serving as editorial 
adviser. Ross McWhirter, who participated 
actively in conservative politics and litigation, 
was shot to death at his home onNovember 27, 
1975. Fifteen months later, Irish Republican 
Army members were convicted for his mur- 
der. 54 

Facts On File has enhanced the reference 
quality of the Guinness Book of Records by 
increasing the number of substantive records 
and weeding out those of less interest while 
maintaining many of those that appeal to ca- 
sual readers, especially children and adoles- 
cents. To correspond to this more authorita- 
tive approach, copies of the book are not to be 
offered at discount prices. The Facts On File 



editions will retain the introductory material 
regarding rules and verification for record- 
setting; acceptance of records will be deter- 
mined by the editors. A mass market paper- 
back edition will continue to be produced by 
Bantam, using material purchased from Facts 
on File, but with black and white photographs ." 

A CD-ROM, the Guinness Disc of 
Records, has been produced by Pergamon 
Compact Solution of London. It contains ani- 
mation and music as well as photographs and 
text. Each word is searchable, so a user can 
retrieve all the records set by a particular 
person or find out why the Mississippi Queen 
is famous. 

The Guinness Book of Records is not only 
one of the best selling books in the world, but 
a reference source that is indeed "unbeatable" 
for finding superlatives throughout the years. 
It is up to Facts On File to set the future 
direction for the American edition. If the com- 
pany continues to increase the book's visual 
appeal and to enrich its authority while still 
retaining enough trivia records to attract ca- 
sual readers, the recently retitled Guinness 
Book of Records should become an even more 
effective reference tool. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

Guinness Book of World Records, 1956-1990. An- 
nual. Published irregularly in the United States 
until 1973 (1st ed., 1956, 2nd ed., 1961, etc.) 
First edition entitled The Guinness Book of 



Superlatives. Issued as Guinness Book of 
Records, 199 1-. Annual. Also issued in a Brit- 
ish edition, Guinness Book of Records 1955— 
Annual. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



There has been no comprehensive, schol- 
arly investigation into the origin, develop- 
ment, influence, or social impact of the 
Guinness Book of World Records. The most 
detailed information about its genesis appears 
inNorris McWhirter >s biography of his brother, 
Ross: The Story of a Shared Life. This book 
also addresses the twins' personal and profes- 
sional lives apart from their involvement with 
Guinness. Guinness: The Stories Behind the 
Records devotes more space than the Guinness 
Book of Records can to some of the more 



interesting record-setters, including a female 
powerlifting champion and the 1980 eruption 
of Mt. St. Helens (largest volcanic eruption in 
U.S. history). It also contains brief chapters 
entitled "How Guinness Came to America," 
the latter written by Sterling editor David 
Boehm, The book also includes a section of 
some of the stranger letters sent to Guinness 
("Dear Guinness: I believe I have the longest 
eyelash in the world . . ."). Reference librar- 
ians may find it most useful for its section on 
"Answers to Some Commonly Asked Ques- 



GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS 145 



tions " ("What are the rules for rest breaks?"), 
Each edition of the Guinness contains the most 
recent information on categories, rules and 
procedures, documentation and verification, 
and revision, and should be consulted by po- 
tential record-breakers. Readers seeking brief, 
entertaining introductions to the origin and 
development of Guinness will enjoy the two 
articles \n Sports Illustrated, The biographical 
sources provide summaries of theMcWhirters' 
lives. Maria Simson's article in Publishers 
Weekly covers the current editorial and publi- 
cation status of The Guinness Book of World 
Records. 

Graham, J. A. Maxtone. "Here is the Odd Paradise of 
the Record Maniac." Sports Illustrated 22 (Feb- 
ruarys, 1965): 54-62. 



Kirshenbaum, Jerry. "There's Music in the Where?" 
Sports Illustrated 51 (My 30, 1979); 56-70. 

Lacey, Robert. "Superlatives, Ltd." Sunday Times 
Magazine (London), January 16, 1972, pp. 22- 
27. 

McWhirter, Norris [Dewar] . "Facts and How to Find 
Them" [text of an address given to the Society 
of Indexers]. Inducer 12 (April 1981): 125-27. 

. Ross: The Story of a Shared Life, London: 

Churchill Press, Ltd., 1976. 

McWhirter, Norris [Dewar] et al. Guinness: The 
Stories Behind the Records. New York: Ster- 
ling, 1981. 

"McWhirter, Norris [Dewar]," Current Biography 
Yearbook (1979), 247^50. 

"McWhirter, Norris [Dewar]," Contemporary Au- 
thors 13 (1965), s.v. 

"McWhirter, Ross," Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy, 1971-80 supplement, s.v. 

Simson, Maria. "Guinness Goes to Facts on File 
After 30 Years at Sterling." Publishers Weekly 
237 (February 16, 1990): 49-50. 



NOTES 



1 Robert Lasson, review of Guinness Book of World 

Records, 11th ed,, 1973, New York Times Book 
Review, 29 April 1973, p. 22. 

2 J.A. Maxtone Graham, "Here is the Odd Paradise of the 

Record Maniac," Sports Illustrated 22 (8 February 
1965): 56. The story of the idea for the Guinness 
Book of Records originating with Sir Hugh Beaver's 
hunting party has appeared, with some variation, in 
Norris [Dewar] McWhirter, Ross: The Story of a 
Shared Life (London: Churchill Press, 1976), 141- 
44;Norris [Dewar] McWhirterand others, Guinness: 
The Stories Behind the Records (New York: Ster- 
ling, 1981), 113; Jerry Kirshenbaum, "There's 
Music in the Where?" Sports illustrated 5 1 (30 July 
1 979): 66; Robert Lacey, "Superlatives, Ltd.," Sun- 
day Times Magazine (London), 16 January 1972, 
27; Christopher Booker, "The Speed of a Golden 
Plover," Spectator 250 (1 9 February 1983): 1 9. 

3 Lacey, 27. 

A Norris [Dewar] McWhirter, "Facts and How to Find 
Them," [text of the address given to the Society of 
Indexers, 11 July 1980], Indexer 12 (April 1981): 
127. 

5 Graham, 56. 

* McWhirter and others, 1 12. 

7 Lacey, 27; McWhirter, 21. 

8 McWhirter, 101. 

9 Kenny Moore, "4 Minutes and 20 Years," Sports 

Illustrated Al (15 July 1974): 64; McWhirter, 128— 
44. 

10 McWhirter, 143; McWhirter and others, 1 13. 
" Ibid. 

12 Graham, 57; McWhirter, 149. 

13 McWhirter and others, 114. 

14 Graham, 57. 



15 McWhirter and others, 1 14. 

16 Graham, 57; McWhirter and others, 1 14. 

17 Graham, 57-58. 

18 Guinness Book of World Records, 2nd ed. (London: 

Guinness Superlatives, Ltd., 1956), 4. 

19 Ibid. 

20 See David Boehm's chapter entitled "Guinness Comes 

to America," in Norris McWhirter and others, 
Guinness: The Stories Behind the Records, 1 14—17. 
The American Guinness edition was published in 
October 1956. Sterling editions were published in 
October I960, April 1962, September 1963, Octo- 
ber 1 965 , June 1 966, March 1968, September 1 969, 
May 1970, April 1971, November 1972, and annu- 
ally since October 1 973. Bantam paperback edi- 
tions were published in October 1963, April 1964, 
June 1966,March 1968, May 1970, April 1971, and 
annually since March 1973, 

21 Maria Simson, "Guinness Goes to Facts on File after 30 

Years at Sterling," Publishers Weekly 237 (16 
February 1990): 43. 

22 Benj amin Guinness, Earl of Iveagh, "The Story Behind 

the Guinness Book" in Guinness Book of World 
Records (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), vii. 

23 Ibid. 

2 * Digby Diehl, "McWhirters: Matter-of-Fact Twins," 
Los AngehsTimes, 9 December 1974, sec. 4, 1. 

25 Guinness, vii. 

26 Kirshenbaum, 59. 

27 Diehl, sec 4, 1. 

28 N. R. Kleinfield, "Guinness Pace: A Record?" New 

York Times, 14 June 1980, 29; Kirshenbaum, 60. 
39 Peter Buckman, "The Biggest, the Fastest, the Most 
Fatuous," Punch 271 (17 November 1976): 942- 
43. 




146 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



30 Elizabeth Minot Graves, "Children's Books: A Se- 

lected List," Commonweal 93 (November 1970): 
207. 

51 Laurence Ulster, "The Bore's Bible" Listener 118 (17 
December 1987): 51. 

32 Guernsey Le Pelley, "Chandelier Munching," Chris- 
tian Science Monitor, 8 November 1988, 13, 

3J Review of Guinness Book of World Records, 13th ed. 
1975, Village Voice 20 (15 September 1975): 52. 
The Koiceagain called Guinness "unbeatable" three 
months later. Village Voice 20 (22 December 1975): 
59. 

34 Karin Agosta, "For Reinforcing Basic Skills, There's 

No Place Like Home," Instructor 9 1 (November 
1981): 80; Review of Review of Guinness Book of 
World Records, 9th ed. 1970 Grade Teacher 89 
(September 1971) 15 7; review aiReviewof Guinness 
Book of World Records, 10th ed., 1971, Library 
Journal^ (1 5 May 1 97 1): 1 834; review of Review 
of Guinness Book of World Records, I2thed., 1974, 
Library Journal 98 (15 December 1973): 3730. 

35 "5th Graders Zap Town's Claim to World's Shortest 

River," Chicago Tribune, 1 3 August 1988, sec. I, p. 
4. 
1S Kirshenbaum, 68. 

31 Ibid. 

31 Le Pelley, 13, 

3> '*Arlington Man Raisin' Record for Catching Grapes in 

His Mouth," Boston Globe, 4 September 1988, p. 

23. 



40 "Pasta Heights," Chicago Tribune, 5 October 1989, 
sec, 7, p. 5. 

4 ' "For David Kremer, Stacked Bowling Balls Are Right 
Up His Alley," People Weekly 30 (18 July 1988): 
91, 

«"Not Explainable," New Yorker65 (27 February 1989): 
25, 

■^"Just fortheRecord: South Korea'sMakingltsMove," 
Boston Globe, 7 July 1989, p, 2. 

44 Guinness Book of World Records (New York: Ban- 
tam, 1990), viii. 

« 5 Ibid. 

46 Ibid., 30. 

" ? Ibid., 463. 

48 Lacey, 27. 

49 McWhirter, "Facts and How to Find Them," 127. 
so Buckman, 942. 

5 ' E. S. Turner, "Cod and Blod," Listener 84 (26 Novem- 
ber 1970): 747. Kirshenbaum, 64, notes that the 
editors rule out gore, sexual feats, and stunts deemed 
unseemly. 

" Rupert Guinness, Earl of Iveagh, foreword to Guinness 
Book of World Records (New York: Superlatives, 
Inc., 1956), iii. 

53 "Preface" to Guinness Book of World Records (New 
York: Superlatives, Inc., 1956), v. 

M rCirshenbaurn, 67, 

55 Simson, 49-50; Rachel Ginsberg and Gerard Helferich. 
of Facts On File, conversation with the author, 9 
May 1990. 



A Household Word for Four 
Generations: Moody's 



Elizabeth J. Wood 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Now comprised of eight separate manuals 
providing annual in-depth coverage of com- 
panies and other entities whose stock and/or 
bonds are available for public investment, the 
Moody's manuals started nearly a century ago 
in 1900 with a single volume entitled The 
Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Cor- 
poration Securities. After each day's work as 
a statistician in the banking firm of Spenser 
Trask, John Moody produced his manual at 
home with the help of a single assistant editor/ 
compiler and John's wife, Anna, as typist. 
Financing for the venture was a crazy quilt of 
advertising revenues, money borrowed from 
two friends, and promises of deferred billing 
from the printer. Although eager for a better 
income and more influence on Wall Street, 
Moody was not motivated solely by self- 
interest. His autobiography portrays a family 
at the mercy of the father's flyers on the stock 
market, moving annually to a drab, cramped 
rented house during bad times or to rather 
grand (albeit temporary) premises when for- 
tune smiled — ample motivation for a life's 
work of providing timely, uniform, reliable 
information for investors. A bright, venture- 
some lad, John had to leave school at the age 
of 15 to begin contributing to the family's 
income. Eventually achieving popularity as a 
writer of financial and autobiographical books 
as well as prominence in publishing annual 
financial manuals, he educated himself by dint 



of voracious reading on self-selected topics 
and a loosely structured home-study course in 
accordance with Chautauqua guidelines. Yarn- 
ing about his first job, Moody remembered the 
irony of his boss's comment at discovering 
that John was lending money on company 
premises at exorbitant rates: "You belong in 
Wall Street, you do." 1 

Henry Varnum Poor 

There could hardly have been a greater 
contrast to Moody 's background than the situ- 
ation of Henry Varnum Poor, founder of 
Moody's chief competitor in financial and 
investment publishing. A lawyer, Poor was 
editor of theAmerican Railroa d Jo urnal when 
he started the first of a projected three-volume 
set that became the progenitor of Poor's 
Manual. In an era when big business was king 
in this country, Henry Poor was the lone 
advocate of disclosure of company financial 
and operating information by railroads offer- 
ing their stock and bonds for public sale. To 
compile this manual, Poor wrung information 
from reluctant companies by virtue of his 
influence as editor of the leading trade jour- 
nal — goodwill and tact by themselves having 
failed with a number of firms. By 1 860 he had 
gleaned enough information to publish/! His- 
tory of the Railroads and Canals of the United 
States (New York: J.H. Schultz, 1860), a 200- 
page book providing operating and financial 
statistics about more than 120 railroad and 



148 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



canal companies. Although the other two vol- 
umes never were written, the first is now 
regarded as the "grandfather of all investment 
publications." 2 

In 1 868 (the year John Moody was born), 
Poor andhis son Henry WilliamPoorresumed 
publishing after a hiatus caused by the Civil 
War, this time calling the work The Manual of 
the Railroads of the United States (New York: 
H.V. andH.W. Poor, 1868), Lacking either an 
industry tradition or a legal requirement for 
uniform reporting of railway statistics, data 
was not comparable across companies. Be- 
fore the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, 
railway regulation was the province of state 
governments, and the only common operating 
principle was "practically unrestricted com- 
petition," 3 Undeniably the Manual of the Rail- 
roads of the United States reflected this flaw. 
But like Poor's earlier work, in all other re- 
spects it was a godsend to the hapless indi- 
vidual investor. 

Poor's early manuals were a curious ad- 
mixture of facts and advertising. For example, 
the 1891 manual devoted 219 initial and con- 
cluding pages as well as all four sides of the 
front and back covers to advertising; sand- 
wiched in between were directory informa- 
tion and financial statistics. The scope was 
eclectic, ranging from extensive coverage of 
larger systems such as the Southern Pacific to 
basic information aboutlinescovering asingle 
town and environs or even a section of a town. 
Besides the general index of companies, there 
were separate listings for advertisers and vari- 
ous railroad company officials, ranging from 
president to such lower echelon positions as 
assistant engineer or master mechanic. Stan- 
dard elements of entries for prominent compa- 
nies included a physical description of the 
railroad (weight and gauge of track, miles of 
track owned, etc.); a one-paragraph company 
history; a description of equipment owned 
("rolling stock"); a summary of activities both 
in volume (tons of freight and number of 
passengers) and in dollars; and the latest avail- 
able statements of income, expense, financial 



backing, and debts. Entries for smaller lines 
included a bare-bones paragraph giving char- 
ter date, officers, weight and gauge of rails, 
carfare, date of annual meeting, and brief 
description of outstanding debt. 

Although Poor 's Manual continued to be 
published through 1917, H.V. Poor's associa- 
tion with it declined after his retirement in 
1886 and ceased altogether with his death in 
1905. Poor's son continued to publish an an- 
nual directory of American railroad officials 
and a handbook of investment securities until 
1906 and 1893, respectively. However such 
efforts presented no real obstacle to Moody's 
entry into financial publishing. In his autobi- 
ography and in A Fifty Year Review of Moody's 
Investors Service (New York: Moody's In- 
vestors Service, [1949]), a personal reminis- 
cence about his early entrepreneurial activi- 
ties, Moody credited a Wall Street Journal 
editor with encouraging him to pursue the 
venture that ultimately made the manuals a 
household word. Clearly a large part of his 
inspiration must also have come from the 
founding father of financial publishing, Henry 
V. Poor. 

Moody's First Manual 

Moody's first Manual of Industrial and 
Miscellaneous Corporation Securities was a 
modest volume of 1,086 pages listing only 
1 ,800 companies (the majority of them newly 
incorporated) along with some 200 domestic 
and foreign bond issues. Described in a news- 
paper article as "largely a directory/'Wooc/y 's 
Manual in most respects represents an evolu- 
tionary stage in financial publishing rather 
than aradical departure fmmPoor 's; although 
Moody's inclusion of industrial companies 
together with the railroads and utilities cov- 
ered by Poor was a real breakthrough. More- 
over this first effort had the same sort of broad 
coverage that is the hallmark of today's 
Moody's manuals — including not only indus- 
trial companies but also banks and financial 
entities, and even U.S. and foreign govern- 



MOODY'S MANUALS 149 



ment securities, in addition to utilities and 
railroads. The most complete company de- 
scriptions included type of business, financial 
condition of the firm, and a list of management 
personnel. Less important companies were 
accorded a cursory description. Coverage 
spanned "practically all" securities traded on 
the New York Stock Market; important com- 
panies from Boston, Philadelphia, and Chi- 
cago markets; and the larger companies from 
St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati. 5 The 
collective capitalization (i.e., funds invested 
in firms listed) amounted to over $9,325,000, 
quite a sum for that time. Another harbinger of 
things to come was a section devoted to laws 
of incorporation in three eastern states and 
West Virginia, material typically included in 
either introductions or special features sec- 
tions of later manuals. Despite subsequent 
fulminations about advertisements jeopardiz- 
ingthe objectivity of financial reports, in 1900 
John Moody placed ads on the cover and on 
the 16 pages preceding the manual's title 
page. (In what Moody's Investor's Service 
calls the "modern manuals" published from 
1909 onward, a stronger financial position 
allowed the company to drop this practice.) As 
H. V . Poor had before him, Moody found data- 
gathering difficult. The magnitude of the task 
can be inferred from a statement in the preface 
that except for the 5 percent returning mailed 
questionnaires (some 100 companies), most 
firms required a "house to house canvass" and 
some took 12 to 15 visits before they re- 
sponded, 6 

The soul of honesty, Moody acknowl- 
edged that the first manual "of necessity con- 
tains both errors and omissions" while assert- 
ing that in no other single publication was 
"more than ten percent of the information 
embraced in this volume" available. 7 How- 
ever his early frankness was gradually diluted 
by the increasingly litigious nature of Ameri- 
can society. In 1915 the disciaimer-cum- de- 
fense of the publication's value read: "we do 
not guarantee the correctness of every figure," 
yet steadfastly maintained that it had "a much 
smaller percentage of errors than any other 



financial publication in existence." 8 In 1927 
Moody wrote that, while the magnitude and 
complexity of the compilation task precluded 
guarantees of the "absolute accuracy of the 
statements ... it is not likely that any serious 
inaccuracies will be found" and promised in 
subsequent editions to correct "any errors 
brought to his attention." 9 In I960 evidently it 
was dangerous to concede more than that 
Moody's sources were reputable but not infal- 
lible and that opinions expressed were inde- 
pendent and unbiased. And by the 1970s the 
standard disclaimer had become a note that 
Moody's could not assume liability for cor- 
rectness of reports, ratings, or data in the 
manuals. 

In the virtually total blackout of public 
information regarding securities, investors ap- 
parently greeted both Poor's and Moody's 
early efforts with nearly unanimous approval. 
The first editions of both titles were sold out 
just months after being released. A 
prepublication announcement for Moody's 
first manual is purely descriptive, 10 but four 
years later political science scholars would 
express approbation of another Moody book, 
The Truth About the Trusts (New York: Moody 
Publishing, 1904). These scholars' reviews 
are important because they bolstered the repu- 
tation of his yearly manual considerably and 
because one mentioned the manual as well as 
the monograph. The first reviewer praised the 
Truth About the Trusts for its "succinct analy- 
ses of . . , elements of strength or weakness" of 
the corporations, corroboratedMoody's claim 
of providing "the most thorough and accurate 
list of industrial trusts ever published in this 
country," and proclaimed the data to be "of 
the greatest interest and importance to every 
student of the trust problem "' ' A second gentle- 
man (albeit not totally uncritical of The Truth 
About the Trusts) echoed students' gratitude 
for the monograph and commented on the 
Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Cor- 
poration Securities saying that it had "within 
the short space of four years come to fill a 
useful place in the current literature regarding 
corporations." 12 



150 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Riding a tide of critical and financial 
success with his publishing ventures and en- 
joying huge success with his own extensive 
investments, Moody suffered the loss of his 
personal and professional fortunes with the 
stock market downturn of 1907. After a short 
while in receivership, the company reorga- 
nized; and in 1908 the new Moody Manual 
Company (forerunner of Standard <& Poor's 
Corporation) published a manual with Louis 
Holschuh (former treasurer of the old com- 
pany and future president of Moody's Inves- 
tors Service) as editor and with Roger W. 
Babson (John Moody's competitor, founder 
of a stock andbond statistical service dissemi- 
nated on index cards) as owner. A third former 
Moody's employee, George Hoskins, became 
an editor with the new firm in 1909. From this 
time until 1924 (when he bought back the 
copyright) Moody was obliged to suffer his 
name being onPoor' s publication. Roy Porter, 
who bought the Moody Manual Company in 
1914 and changed its name to Poor's Publish- 
ing Company in 191 9 after buying the Poor's 
Railroad Manual Company, cheerfully admit- 
ted using both names on the manual cover 
from 1915-1924 because of the "nuisance 
value," 13 the chance to annoy John Moody. 
(The cover title for the 1922 edition, for ex- 
ample, was Poor 's and Moody 's Manual Con- 
solidated.) Another practice that was prob- 
ably salt in Moody's wounds was incorpora- 
tion of one-inch ads — not in the front and end 
matter- — but on the very page where a 
company's securities were described and 
evaluated, pulling in additional revenue to the 
tune of $20,000 a year. 

Because John Moody began publishing 
his own manuals again in 1909, confusion 
about which was the "real" Moody's manual 
reigned for years. A 1911 New York Times 
article announced the twelfth annual Moody 's 
Manual which was, in fact, not John Moody's 
manual, but the publication of his namesake 
competitor. 14 In appearance and content, the 
competing publication resembled early Poor' s 
manuals much more than Moody's manuals. 



In 1921, on the occasion of a Moody speech, 
the same newspaper erroneously identified 
him as the editor of the Moody's Manuals, 
Moody requested and received a retraction of 
the statement. 15 The stalemate was not to be 
resolved until a lawsuit in 1924 resulted in an 
out-of-court settlement wherein Moody re- 
purchased copyright to the name "Moody's" 
from Poor's Publishing Company. 16 



Moody's Modern Manuals 

The modernmanuals began withMoody's 
1909 reentry into publishing financial manu- 
als. Allegedly barred from engaging in such 
activity by the terms of the 1907-1908 bank- 
ruptcy and company reorganization,' 7 Moody 
nevertheless came out with a new railroad 
manual. As he later admitted, it covered "only 
a portion of the American steam railroad field" 
and lacked the "ordinary statistical facts found 
in the old-style railroad manuals" 18 He nar- 
rowly escaped being prevented from even this 
modest venture. In 1937, Roy Porter remi- 
nisced about the split vote of Moody Manual 
Company officials in the early 1900s which 
narrowly defeated a motion to convert a tem- 
porary injunction against John Moody's re- 
newed publishing activity into a permanent 
one, 19 

Moody's passion to excel in this field and 
his bitterness at having lost his old company 
are evident in introductory comments berat- 
ing "the average imitator" who "like any other 
robber of an idea, never permanently gets the 
confidence of the public" despite, as Moody 
saw it, having appropriated his ideas to "foist 
them on the public as the genuine article." 20 
On the same page he referred to "some publi- 
cation which, because of its name or method 
of promotion, conveys the false impression 
that Mr. Moody is identified with it;" 21 and 
having persuaded himself, he attempted to 
convince thereaderthat*'Nootherpublication 
of any financial character has any authority or 
right to the use of Mr. John Moody's name, 



MOODY'S MANUALS 1 5 1 



either directly or indirectly." 22 Having been 
sued for libel in a brief youthful fling at 
newspaper publishing, he scrupulously 
avoided naming names. 

Careful not to use the term "manual* 1 in 
the work's title, Moody further differentiated 
Moody 's Analysis of Railroad Investments 
from the old manuals by introducing a totally 
new feature — a stock and bond rating system 
similar to company credit ratings issued by 
Dun & Bradstreet. (Like the founder of IBM, 
throughout his career John Moody was more 
the master of extending and refining a concept 
with popular appeal than a brilliant innova- 
tor.) Presenting his scale of ratings levels 
(from Aaa to E) to assess investment risk in 
terms of safety and resaleability of securities, 
Moody cautioned, "It must not be forgotten 
that arbitrary judgement is used to a large 
degree;" and he counseled the reader to use the 
ratings as indications of the security issue's 
investment quality but not as "specific opin- 
ion" or a "recommendation to buy." 23 Not 
surprisingly, some of the companies rated — 
none of which had even been obliged to pro- 
vide the public with information a decade or 
two earlier — balked at the assignment of rat- 
ings. They were displeased. with the whole 
idea and especially with the practice of rating 
pessimistically in the absence of complete and 
current information and giving the benefit of 
the doubt to the investor. The reluctant compa- 
nies raised "a storm of opposition, not to 
mention ridicule," 24 according to Moody. In 
contrast, a political scientist summed up what 
probably was the predominant reaction out- 
side the railroad industry: "The volume is 
indeed of high merit. ... It will doubtless be 
appreciated by both individual investors and 
. . , others . . . interested in railroad values." 25 

In 1914 Moody expanded the work's 
scope by adding a second volume to cover 
public utilities and industrials. Like previous 
editions, Part I: Steam Railroads covered 
Mexican and Canadian steam railroads as well 
as U.S. lines; in 1915 Cuban companies were 
added. Dissatisfied with just analyzing com- 



panies' investment offerings, Moody used 
this two-part 1914 edition to re-stake his claim 
to providing accurate and complete statistics 
instead of merely predigested "deductions 
and conclusions." 26 Both parts included di- 
gests of company annual reports adjusted to be 
more comparable than heretofore — no mean 
feat, since neither utilities nor railroads (un- 
less engaged in interstate business) were as yet 
required to report information in a uniform 
manner. Railro ad entrie s inc luded no t only ten 
years of annual income statements and bal- 
ance sheet data expressed in the common 
standard of dollars per mile, but also com- 
ments on strong and weak points in company 
operations. Physical characteristics of each 
"road" were given together with comments on 
the significance of various figures. Finally, a 
complete description of the public stock and 
bond offerings was shown along with their 
respective ratings and each rating's rationale. 
The preface pointed out that an expanded 
version of the railroad manual's introduction 
(published in 1912 by Analyses Publishing 
Company as a book entitled How to Analyze 
Railroad Reports) had been adopted as a text 
by many universities and colleges. A reviewer 
of that work commented that the textbook 
"deserves its well-earned success" and added 
that Moody's "well known manual . . . has 
been of service to investors as well as stu- 
dents." 27 

Six years after stock and bond ratings had 
been introduced, the 1915 edition ofthepublic 
utilities/industrials manual also assigned rat- 
ings to companies other than railroads. In 
addition to the ratings, the following salient 
facts regarding utilities were disclosed in the 
manual: physical condition; earning power (a 
combination of geographic location, popula- 
tion and its growth, quality of management, 
availability of "franchise" — meaning mo- 
nopoly, — and rates charged); strength of fi- 
nancial resources; and general credit-worthi- 
ness. Two additional factors especially ger- 
mane to industrial corporations — the regula- 
tory climate and the degree of their depen- 



152 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



dence on the country's general prosperity — 
were included in industrial manual entries. 
Never content to rest on his laurels for long, 
Moody upgraded the manuals within the next 
three years as follows: adding to the railroad 
manual complete five-year financial figures 
for smaller companies and issuing a monthly 
updating publication; augmenting the securi- 
ties rating system by three more categories at 
the low end of the scale; and increasing indus- 
trial/public utility coverage by more than 1 ,000 
additional companies. 

The next quantum leap in scope came 
with the issuance in 1 9 1 8 of a separate govern- 
ment securities manual. Covering more than 
30,000 bond issues, 25,000 of them issued by 
the U.S. government and its political subdivi- 
sions, themanual carried the subtitle "Founded 
to endure and Investors make secure." The 
fourrespective main sections were the federal 
government and U.S. dependencies (includ- 
ing Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the 
Philippine Islands); American states and mu- 
nicipalities; the Dominion of Canada together 
with its provinces and municipalities; and 
some 127 pages of data for foreign govern- 
ments and cities. By now the rating scale had 
been simplified to five grades ranging from 
Aaa to Ba plus a sixth category consolidating 
all lower ratings. 

Moody attributed the expanded scope to 
World War I activity in government securi- 
ties — not only U.S. liberty bonds but also 
European bonds payable in dollars, particu- 
larly those issued by Great Britain, France, 
and Belgium — and noted that both then and 
for years afterwards his was the only manual 
with extensive international coverage. Many 
U.S. allies supplied enough information to 
receive a rating; but to no one's surprise, 
Germany, Austria, and Russia did not. In 
1922, to gain depth of background and expe- 
rience in the international field, Moody's hired 
Max Winkler, Ph.D. "a walking statistical 
table of European affairs ," 28 After the war 
Moody announced his intention of consider- 
ably broadening the scope of the government 



and municipal volume since he felt "a large 
amount of American capital must necessarily 
be provided for government purposes in all 
parts of the world." 29 

In 1920 when industrials and public utili- 
ties were split into two volumes, the Moody's 
manuals became four in number. The "ampli- 
fied and enlarged" Public Utility Investments 
included a larger number of companies than 
ever before, particularly small companies. An 
18- page introductory essay about the industry 
included such details as a prediction that the 
"jitney bus" (a sort of unlicensed taxi) would 
be a short-lived phenomenon because its op- 
erators were "a comparatively irresponsible 
class of people." 30 There were 1,426 pages of 
company coverage plus a section giving ten- 
year price ranges for public utility stocks and 
bonds. 

Shortly after the war Major Maurice N. 
Blakemore was hired to get compilation of the 
manuals back on schedule. Unlike two prede- 
cessors, one who ended up in a "lunatic asy- 
lum" and a second who quit to take up chicken 
farming, Blakemore succeeded and served as 
managing editor from 1922 to 1924. 31 Soon 
put in charge of sales as well, he proved 
unsatisfactory at the dual responsibilities. At 
this juncture (1925) John Sherman Porter, an 
employee since 1916 and an experienced edi- 
torial board member, was promoted to editor- 
in-chief. 

John Sherman Porter's Tenure 

It is difficult to determine how much any 
one individual influenced development of the 
Moody's manuals, because from the begin- 
ning editing has been the joint responsibility 
of the editor-in-chief, the editorial board, and 
the administrator titled "sales manager" in 
Moody's day and "publisher" since 1954. 
Although he yielded to others the title of 
"editor" (and from Blakemore 's tenure on, 
permitted their respective names to be embla- 
zoned on the title page), for years Moody 
retained ultimate control and stated in the 



m 



MOODY'S MANUALS 153 



front matter that the manuals were prepared 
under his general supervision. Nevertheless, 
Porter, who served as editor-in-chief for 38 
years, seems to have guided the Moody's 
manuals more than any other single person 
except John Moody himself. When Porter 
started, steam-powered engines held sway on 
land and sea with scant competition from any 
other form of transportation; in 1 962, when 
Dun & Bradstreet bought out the original 
stockholders and Porter resigned, advances in 
aerospace technology seemed about to prom- 
ise humankind mastery of the whole universe. 

Porter's first major project was adding a 
separate banking and finance manual in 1 928. 
The introduction gave an overview of such 
topics as banking in the U.S. and Canada, the 
Federal Reserve Banking System, and the 
potential importance of insurance stocks and 
real estate mortgage bonds to the investor. 
Coverage included American and foreign com- 
panies in the following categories, most previ- 
ously covered although less extensively in the 
industrial manual: banks and trusts; mortgage 
and finance; and insurance (fire, casualty, and 
miscellaneous). In addition, 11 pages dealt 
with federal reserve banks and some 57 pages 
presented information about various entities 
within the federal farm loan system. Unlike 
other manuals, this one carried no ratings. 
Porter instituted use of the subtitle "American 
and Foreign" on all manuals to emphasize 
Moody's foreign coverage, a significant 
change that remained in effect through 1 970. 

In the speculative boom of the late 1920s 
the company went public in a modest way, 
floating an issue of non- voting preferred stock 
with Moody and company old-timers 
Holschuh, McCruden, Shea, Leavitt, and Por- 
ter as company directors and majority stock- 
holders. For Moody's Investors Service, as for 
all U.S. businesses, the 1930s were difficult. 
As Moody remembered it, the firm survived 
only by cutting some staff and slashing sala- 
ries for the rest (including company directors) 
20 percent or more. 32 Apparently Poor's Pub- 
lishing Company fared even worse. Accord- 



ing to Moody, "Poor's was forced to give up 
the ghost in 1940;" and when Moody's took 
over the Poor 's Manual subscription list, total 
circulation had dropped to fewer than 7,000 
copies. 33 

During the pre-war years and World War 
II, financial publishing did not change a great 
deal except that, like other sectors of the 
economy, it occasionally was hampered by 
rationing of such essential commodities as 
paper. In 1935, under Porter's leadership, the 
company discontinued rating stocks (securi- 
ties reflecting equity or a share of ownership 
in a company) to concentrate on debt securi- 
ties (bonds). Critical reception remained fa- 
vorable. One reviewer praised the Moody's 
manuals handsomely for documenting not only 
business and economic conditions in Latin 
America atthe beginning of the Second World 
War, but also circumstances leading up to the 
war. 34 

During the 1 950s Porter continued to re- 
fine the manuals, In 1950 an explanation of 
bank examination procedures and federal in- 
vestment regulations became a regular feature 
of each manual's front matter, a practice con- 
tinued until 1975 (when, first, investors were 
assumed to be conversant with basic facts and, 
second, this short feature had become insuffi- 
cient for explaining the intricacies of the body 
of securities regulations by then in force). In 
1952, the railroad manual (still covering more 
than 1,000 railroad companies) expanded to 
include all commercial forms of transporta- 
tion and was retitled Moody's Manual of In- 
vestments. American and Foreign. Transpor- 
tation. Railroads-Airlines-Shipping Traction, 
Bus and Truck Lines. In 1954 and 1955 the 
subtitle "American and Foreign" was relegated 
to very small type on the title page and all titles 
were changed so that the industry classifica- 
tion would be the second word in the title (e.g., 
instead of Moody's Manual of Investments. 
American and Foreign. Bank, Insurance, and 
Finance, the 1 955 manual was c&VLQ&Moody 's 
Bank & Finance Manual). The next year an 
interview of John Moody featured glowing 



1 54 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



comments about the manuals. Prefacing a 
sketch of Moody's life as an entrepreneur and 
publisher, the author stated, "next to the Bible, 
Wall Streeters put their faith in Moody's In- 
vestors Manuals" and opined, "it can safely be 
said that nearly anything of a financial statis- 
tical nature available anywhere on a publicly 
owned corporation will be found in Moody's 
manuals." 35 While such comments are not the 
result of a rigorous analysis or critique, they do 
reflect popular opinion of the manuals at the 
time. 

Purchase by Dun & Bradstreet 

The next two decades were a period of 
rapidchange for Moody's, In 1962, four years 
after Moody's death, the company was sold to 
Dun & Bradstreet (another company with a 
long-standing tradition of excellence in finan- 
cial publishing) in part so that Porter and 
others could convert their equity in the com- 
pany into cash, Moody's then became a wholly 
owned subsidiary (a virtually independent unit 
of the parent company). 

After Porter came a fairly quick succes- 
sion of editors-in-chief, all of them former 
editorial assistants, The first, Frank St. Clair 
(1963-1969), madeno major changes. During 
the one-year tenure of the second, George H. 
Parson, the title page format was altered — the 
typeface less ornate, the page uncluttered, and 
forthefirsttimethenamesofthepublisherand 
his assistant positioned on the page above the 
editor-in-chief. More significant, in 1970 the 
ratings division of Moody's Investors Ser- 
vice, by then a separate part of the company, 
instituted fees for the considerable effort and 
expense of studying and rating companies' 
securities. This change, now standardpractice 
throughout the financial industry, was first 
disclosed to manual users in the 197 1 Public 
Utility Manual Although it did not affect 
Parson's department directly, the increased 
company resources with which to pay salaries 
and other mounting expenses doubtless indi- 
rectly facilitated maintaining the quality of the 
manuals. The most notable development dur- 



ing this period was the publication of the new 
Moody's OTC Industrial Manual, splitting 
over-the counter companies (meaning those 
traded on smaller and regional stock ex- 
changes) off from the industrial manual and 
also expanding the number of such companies 
covered. 

Parson'ssuccessor,RoyA.Krause(1971- 
1 973), oversaw expansion of the industrials to 
a two- volume set in 1972 and division of the 
municipals into volume one (Alabama-New 
Hampshire and U.S.A.-its dependencies) and 
volume two (New Jersey- Wyoming) in 1973. 
In October of the last year of his editorship, 
after nearly four decades of rating only debt 
issues (bonds), the company resumed rating 
preferred stocks (on a scale with seven grada- 
tions of quality/riskiness). Their rationale for 
reinstating the ratings was both increased in- 
vestor interest and "dilution of some of the 
protection afforded them." 36 While Krause 
had no influence over this decision, it surely 
increased the utility and value of the manuals 
to the investor. 

Robert Hanson accepted the post of edi- 
tor-in-chief in 1973, and has devoted 18 years 
to the position. With a bachelor's degree in 
finance from City College of New York, 
Hanson started out in 1 962 in the news reports 
department at Moody's and came up through 
the ranks to the editorial board in 1971. As 
editor he has worked with a distinguished list 
of publishers (Robert H. Messner 1973-1975, 
William 0. Dwy er 1975-1981, Sheila S. Lam- 
bert 1981-1989, and Howard Kiedaisch, as- 
sociate publisher since 1982, and responsible 
for the manuals since 1989). In 1989, to make 
the editor-in-chief job more manageable, 
Moody's top officials gave half of the editor's 
mantle to a seasoned editorial board member, 
Earl Stephens, who took on the Bank &. Fi- 
nance Manual, the OTC Industrial Manual, 
the Public Utility Manual, and the Transpor- 
tation Manual. Hanson retains responsibility 
for the Municipal & Government Manual, the 
Industrial Manual, the International Manual, 
and the OTC Unlisted Manual. 



MOODY'S MANUALS 155 



Further Expansion 

The current pre-eminence of Moody's 
among financial publishers is the result of 
constant re-examination of what the market 
wants and needs and appropriate product de- 
velopment to meetsuch needs. Publisher Sheila 
Lambert played midwife at the introduction of 
two new manuals. In 1981 the burgeoning 
number of international and multinational en- 
terprises resulted in a separate International 
Manual. Duplicate entries were phased out 
gradually (companies paying for high visibil- 
ity still retaining the privilege of being listed in 
more than one manual if they so choose). 
Within a year or two, however, all foreign 
companies were shifted from the other manu- 
als into the International Manual; foreign 
countries and their political subdivisions were 
moved from the Municipal & Government 
Manual into the new manual. Then in 1986 
Moody's issued a new OTC Unlisted Manual 
giving investors access to information on com- 
panies not listed on any exchanges but traded 
exclusively via "pink sheets" or daily price 
quotes distributed only to stockbrokers. This 
manual was declared by Money, "your best bet 
for pinpointing smaller pink-sheet stocks." 37 

Beginning in 1976 half a dozen manuals 
expanded from one or two volumes to mul- 
tiple-volume sets: in 1976 the Bank & Finance 
Manual went to two volumes (banks, trust 
companies, savings and loan associations, and 
federal credit agencies in the first and insur- 
ance, finance, real estate, and investment com- 
panies in the second); in 1980 the Public 
Utility Manual split into two volumes; in 1 984 
the almost new International Manual came 
out as two units (Algeria-Ivory Coast and 
Jamaica-Zimbabwe); in 1986 the Bank & Fi- 
nance Manual was issued in three volumes, 
the third adding coverage of unit investment 
trusts, a relatively new form of investment 
product; in 1988 the Municipal & Government 
Manual, was published in three parts (Ala- 
bama-Kentucky, Louisiana-Pennsylvania, and 
Rhode Island- Wyoming); and in 1988 the 
Bank & Finance Manual's Unit Investment 



Trust volume divided into one part covering 
sponsors A-M and a second covering N-Z, for 
a total of four volumes. 

Technological Advances 

Spurred by competition from Standard 
and Poor's, the other giant of financial pub- 
lishing, and from smaller, newer firms, 
Moody's made two important, albeit some- 
what delayed, technological changes. Stan- 
dard & Poor's Corporation, formed by a 1941 
merger of Poor's Publishing and Standard 
Statistics, introduced the Compustat service in 
1962. Compustat, comprised of 20 years of 
annual data and theretofore distributed exclu- 
sively on tape compatible with mainframe 
computers, was offered in compact disc for 
microcomputer users around 1988. Moody's, 
however, loath to dilute a fine reputation by 
precipitous entry into nonprint technologies, 
did not follow suit. Apart from one brief 
attempt to construct a structured, computer- 
readable financial database (aborted because 
there seemed to be no demand for such a 
product), Moody's kept on doing what they 
had always done best — producing printed 
manuals and updating services. 

The first technological change involved 
overhauling the printing process in 1975. For 
years a cumbersome discontinuous arrange- 
ment of companies in the manuals was neces- 
sitated by the off-site linotype printing pro- 
cess. The logistics of maintaining a steady 
stream of work to the printer so that each 
annual volume could be completed and issued 
on time meant that similar companies were not 
integrated into their respective industry sec- 
tions. For example, in the same edition an 
initial section of American banks was fol- 
lowed first by foreign banks, then by another 
section of American banks, and again by a 
section of foreign banks. This process was 
terribly expensiveand inflexible. Both manual 
users and Moody's stockholders were better 
served by the new method of computerized 
typesetting, which reduced costs at the same 






156 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



&& 



time it "smoothed out" the production flow 
and permitted better organization of the manu- 
als. (Happily the separate index, covering all 
manuals except the Municipal & Government 
one, is still availableto help neophytes chart a 
course among the eight different manuals.) 

In 1986 when Moody's brought the com- 
puterized typesetting process inhouse and no 
longer depended on an outside printer, the 
second, even more significant technological 
advance was accomplished. Stored in com- 
puterized form, the data was no longer con- 
fined to the printed page. Moody's began to 
augment printed products with electronic dis- 
tribution of the data through cooperation with 
vendors such as DIALOG to offer interactive 
retrieval and manipulation of company finan- 
cial data supplied by Moody's. 

In 1988, the inhouse, computerized type- 
setting process also contributed to the devel- 
opment of the first of a series of compact disc 
products searchable offline via CD-ROM 
reader and microcomputer. This development 
permitted direct access to the manuals' vast 
compendia of facts without the significant 
expense of long distance phone charges in- 
curred in online searching. The first product, 
Moody's 5000 Plus, covering all companies 
traded on the New York and American Stock 
Exchanges as well as NASDAQ National 
Market companies was quickly followed by 
Moody 's International Plus covering the 1 ead- 
ing non-U.S. companies. At this writing a third 
CD product, Moody 's OTC Plus, designed to 
provide information about companies traded 
over-the-counter, has also been released. 

The final significant change in the manu- 
als during the past two decades was financial 
in origin. In 1975, when pressure on publish- 
ing firms to show a profit was mounting, 
Moody's instituted the option of purchasing 
more detailed coverage of company informa- 
tion. That is, for $1 ,000 dollars (in addition to 
the fee levied by the ratings department), a 
firmcould get increased visibility in the manual 
in the form of "full measure coverage." This 
option ensured that company narrative would 
be expanded, that financial data would be 



displayed across an entire page, and that in 
addition to a description of the firm, entries 
would provide up to seven years of financial 
and operating information together with ratio 
analysis putting the figures into perspective. 
Since its introduction, this service has under- 
gone several modifications. Today, four lev- 
els of expanded coverage (or Visibility) are 
offered. They included Corporate Visibility 
(CV), CV-Select, CV-Plus, and CV-Ultra. 
Presentation of company data is expanded 
with each level of coverage. Corporate Vis- 
ibility includes up to five years of financial 
statements with a medium-length description 
of the company's history, business, and other 
narrative. Corporate Visibility-Select includes 
up to a seven-year financial presentation and 
a more detailed narrative section. Corporate 
Visibility-Plus expands the narrative consid- 
erably, even including such details as the chief 
executive officer's letter to shareholders and 
the complete set of notes from financial state- 
ments. The highest level of coverage, Corpo- 
rate Visibility-Ultra, offers the listed com- 
pany an opportunity to include a full-page 
advertisement on the second page of its listing, 
(It should be noted that Moody's exercises 
considerable editorial judgment as to the con- 
tents of the ads.) 

Critical Reception 

Critical reception for the modern manuals 
has been almost as sparse as reaction to the 
very first ones. In the business community, the 
ratings and the ratings process are of para- 
mount importance; — the manuals, merely a 
transmittal mechanism, usually have not been 
deemed worthy of comment. Occasionally an 
article will favor a Standard & Poor's product 
or feature or state that Moody's "long domi- 
nant position in the municipal-rating field is 
being chipped away by an increasingly ag- 
gressive Standard & Poor's corporation, 1 ' 38 
However, most issuers of securities, with mil- 
lions of dollars in financing costs riding on 
ratings outcomes, practice the belt-and-sus- 
penders approach of using both services. 



MOODY'S MANUALS 157 



Most large investors do too. A business pro- 
fessor noted that "splits [meaning materially 
higher or lower ratings for the same security] 
do occur and both issuers and purchasers 
normally seek ratings from both agencies," 3 ' 
and concluded, "the value of the second rat- 
ing, or opinion, arises primarily from the fact 
that it is independent from the first." 40 

Among librarians, Moody's is always 
mentioned in the same breath as Standard & 
Poor' s, and most are reluctant to pick a favor- 
ite. Some prefer the tidiness of Moody's an- 
nual bound volume for its suitability in build- 
ing a collection of retrospect! ve print holdings 
and the savings in staff time from having one 
less loose-leaf service to file. Others place a 
high priority on the regular updating of the 
Standard & Poor 's Corporation Records. If a 
handbook or bibliography mentions only one 
of the two, however, it is virtually always the 
old reliable Moody's manuals. 

Only three reviewers have been both 
knowledgeable enough and brave enough to 
make a detailed comparison of the Standard & 
Poor 's Corporation Records and the Moody ' s 
manuals. The first, Judith Truelson, pro- 
nounced Moody's "the most comprehensive 
source of this kind of information [summary 
and analysis of information in company an- 
nual reports], available to private investor and 
financial analyst alike" 4 'The second, Bernard 
Schlessinger, asserted that whether "Moody's 
or S&P should be the primary source of busi- 
ness materials, given a limited budget, ... is a 
matter of personal preference." 42 In another 
passage, however, he evaluated the Moody's 
manuals as "One of the most comprehensive 
sources for information of this kind, this ser- 
vice is recommended for all business, aca- 
demic, and public libraries medium-sized and 
larger." 43 Jean Kellough, the third reviewer, 
dealt with the compact disc products of the 
respective publishers, Moody's 500 Plus and 
DIALOG Ondisc Standard & Poor's Corpora- 
tion Records. Having noted that S&P covers 
more companies (9,000 versus Moody's 
slightly over 5,000), she concluded that 
"Moody's 5000+ [sic], which seems best suited 



for a financial analyst or researcher who would 
use it often, offers sophisticated features that 
the average undergraduate student would not 



use 



>M4 



Reorganized for the Electronic Age 

In early 1989, the company was reorga- 
nized and renamed to emphasize electronic 
services — with print products (the manuals 
and updating services) and two electronic 
products, Datastream and Interactive Data, 
forming a group called "Dun & Bradstreet 
Financial Services of North America" and 
only the ratings service still going by the name 
Moody's Investors Service. Early the follow- 
ing year, however, Dun & Bradstreet manage- 
ment decided, to divest the two electronic 
database units, restore the print publishing 
section to Moody's Investors Service, and 
revert to emphasizing what Moody's has al- 
ways done better than anyone else — publish 
the most complete and most reliable financial 
information available. 

Always striving for improvement, 
Moody's has a five-year strategic plan for 
operations. Both current and potential new 
products are subjected to a rigorous set of 
criteria and testing for compatibility with com- 
pany mission, a close fit with what customers 
want and need, and other key considerations. 
Broad editorial plans have a dual focus. While 
manuals and updating services will continue 
to be available in "hardcopy" form, the same 
wealth of information will become available 
in nonprint formats as Moody's expands its 
activity in the arena of electronic products 
currently offered. The market will dictate 
what, if anything, is done to expand existing 
printed manuals or introduce new ones. A 
more focused product, addressing a narrower 
niche of investor interest than the well known 
encyclopedic manuals, is one option under 
discussion. Whatever direction is taken, the 
Moody's manuals will remain a household 
word in this country and abroad for genera- 
tions to come. 



158 DISTINGUISHED CIAS SICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

TheManual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Corpo- 
ration Securities. Annual. New York: 0. C. 
Lewis Co., 1900-07. 

Moody's Manuals. Annual. New York: Moody 
Manual Co., 1908-24, 

Moody 's Analyses of Railroad Investments, Annual. 
New York: Analyses Publishing Co., 1909-13, 

Moody's Analyses of Investments. Part I; Steam 
Railroads. Part H: Public Utilities and Industri- 
als. Annual, New York: Analyses Publishing 
Co., 1914-20. 

Moody's Analyses of Investments. Part III: Govern- 
ment and Municipal Securities. Annual. New 
York: Moody's Investors Service, 1918-1920. 

Moody's Analyses of Investments. Part I: Railroad 
Investments. Part II: Industrial Investments. 
Part III: Public Utility Investments. Part IV: 
Government and Municipal Securities. Annual. 
New York: Moody's Investors Service, 1920- 
1921. 

Moody 's Man ual oflnvestments and Security Rating 
Service, Government and Municipal Securities. 
Annual. New York: Moody'slnvestors Service, 
1921-1927. 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments and Security Hating 
Service. Public Utility Securities, Annual, New 
York: Moody's Investors Service, 1921-1927. 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments and Security Rating 
Service. RailroadSecurities. Annual.New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1921-1927. 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments and Security Rating 
Service. Industrial Securities. Annual. New 
York; Moody's Investors Service, 1921-1927. 

Moody 's Manual of Investments. American and For- 
eign. Government and Municipal Securities. 



Annual. New York: Moody ' s Investors Service, 
1928-1954. 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments. American and For- 
eign. Banks-Insurance Companies-Investment 
Trusts-Real Estate-Finance and Credit Compa- 
nies . Annual. New York: Moody's Investors 
Service, 1928-1954. 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments. American and For- 
eign. Public Utility Securities. Annual. New 
York: Moody's Investors Service, 1928-1953, 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments. American and For- 
eign. Railroad Securities. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1928-1951. 

Moody 's Manual oflnvestments. American and For- 
eign. Industrial Securities. Annual. New York: 
Moody'slnvestors Service, 1928-1953. 

Moody J s Manual oflnvestments. A merican and For- 
eign, Transportation. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1952-1953. 

Moody's Industrial Manual. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1954- . 

Moody 's Public Utility Manual. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1954- . 

Moody's Transportation Manual. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1954- . 

Moody's Bank & Finance Manual. Annual. New 
York: Moody's Investors Service, 1955- . 

Moody's Municipal & Government Manual. Annual. 
New York: Moody's Investors Service, 1955- . 

Moody's OTC Industrial Manual. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1970- . 

Moody 's International Manual. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1981- . 

Moody 's OTC Unlisted Manual. Annual. New York: 
Moody's Investors Service, 1986- . 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



There must be somewhere (perhaps in the 
apocrypha) a biblical prohibition against in- 
depth comparisons of the Moody's manuals 
and their competitors. The prevailing senti- 
ment seems to be: "Let him who is a certified 
financial genius cast the first stone." There are 
scores of articles — -both popular and theoreti- 
cal — on the ratings process and bushel baskets 
foil of news notes on specific ratings being 
changed as well as discussions of esoteric 
changes in the rating scales or the types of 
securities that get rated. But few writers seem 
to have enjoyed the happy combination of 
sufficient skill, time, and interest to write a 
thorough critique of the Moody ' s manuals and 
the Standard & Poor *s Corporation Records. 



Slavens gives succinct, serviceable de- 
scriptions of the Moody's manuals but barely 
mentions the Standard & Poor 's Corporation 
Records. Ganly gives complete, accurate, and 
readable descriptions of the Bank & Finance^ 
Industrial, OTC Industrial, and Public Utility 
manuals, but he too passes over the Standard 
& Poor's Corporation Records. Walford de- 
scribes only the Industrial Manual and its 
News Reports. Sheehy concentrates on direc- 
tories and encyclopedias, covering neither 
Moody's nor S&P's manuals. Ulrich 's covers 
both briefly and Woy gives directory-type 
information on both (although the Industrial 
Manual is the only Moody's manual he lists 
under the heading "International Business")- 



MOODY'S MANUALS 1 59 



Daniells's descriptive annotations compare 
favorably with Ganly in all respects and sur- 
pass him in covering all eight manuals and the 
Standard & Poor's Corporation Records. 

The three reviewers who go beyond simple 
description are Truelson, Schlessinger, and 
Kellough (covering compact disc versions). 
All compare and contrastMoody's and S&P's 
respective manuals more thoroughly and 
insightfully than any other writers on this 
topic. Since Moody* s and other financial pub- 
lishers always seem to have something new up 
their sleeves, it is devoutly hoped that some- 
one will provide timely updates for the library 
student and the practicing librarian. 

"A Century of Standard & Poor's." The Spectator. 
Employee Magazine of Standard & Poor's Cor- 
poration 7 (April, 1960): 1-16. 

Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. Henry Varnum Poor Busi- 
ness Editor, Analyst, and Performer. Cambridge, 
MA: Harvard University Press, 1956. 

Daniells, Lorna M. Business Information Sources. 
Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California 
Press, 1985. 

Ganly, John V. Serials for Libraries. New York: 
Neal-Schuman, 1985. 

Inventing Our Future. Centennial Report. New York: 
McGraw-Hill, [1988]. 

Jensen, Dennis J. "The Research Library of Standard 
& Poor's Corporation." In Banking and Fi- 



nance Collections, edited by Jean Deus. New 
York: Haworth Press, 1984. 

Kellough, Jean. "Moody's 5000+ and DIALOG 
Ondisc Standard & Poor's Corporations: A 
Comparison of Two Full-Text Business Data- 
bases," Laserdisk Professional 2 (November, 
1989): 78-89. 

Moody, John. A Fifty Year Review of Moody's 
Investors Service. New York: Moody's Inves- 
tors Service, [1949]. 

. Long Road Home: An Autobiography. New 

York: Macmillan, 1933. 

National Cyclopedia of American Biography. New 
York: James T. White, 1918. 

Schlessinger, Bernard S. The Basic Business Li- 
brary: Core Resources. 2nd ed. Phoenix: Oryx 
Press, 1989. 

Sheeny, Eugene P. Guide to Reference Books. 10th 
ed. Chicago: American Library Association, 
1986. 

Slavens, Thomas P. "Major Business Reference 
VTovks." ReferenceLibrarianno. 15 (Fall, 1986): 
185-94. 

Standard & Poor's 120 Years of Preserving the 
"RighttoKnow. "New York: Standard & Poor's 
Corporation, [1980]. 

Truelson, Judith A. "Hotonthe Corporate Trail." RQ 
15 (Spring, 1976): 223-28. 

Walford, Albert John. Watford's Guide to Reference 
Material, Volume 2: Social & Historical Sci- 
ences, Philosophy & Religion. London: Library 
Association, 1980. 

Woy, James. Encyclopedia of Business Information 
Sources. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988. 



NOTES 



1 John Moody, Long Road Home: An Autobiography 

(New York: Macmillan Co., 1933), 5 1 . 

2 Richard Rutter, "Statistics House Thrives on Facts," 

New York Times, 24 April I960, sec. 3, p. 1, 

3 G.B. Baker, "The Crisis at the Stock Exchange," Con- 

temporary Review 58 (November 1890): 680. 

4 Robert E. BedingfieJd, "Personality: Boswell of U.S. 

Corporations," New York Times, 6 May 1956, 3. 
s John Moody, Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous 

Corporation Securities (New York: O. C. Lewis 

Co., 1900): 47. 
* Ibid., 50-51. 

7 Ibid., 47. 

8 John Moody, Moody 's Analyses oflnvestments. Part II: 

Public Utilities and Industrials (New York: Analy- 
ses Publishing Co., 1915): 4. 

9 John Moody, Moody 's Manual of Investments and 

Security Rating Service, Industrial Securities (New 
York: Moody's Investors Service, 1927); iii. 

10 "A Financial Reference Book," New York Times, 17 

November 1890, 10. 
" Alvin S. Johnson, "The Truth About the Trusts," 
Political Science Quarterly 19 (June 1904): 307. 



ia Emory R. Johnson, "The Truth About the Trusts," 

American Academy of Political and Social Science 

24 (1904): 387. 
13 Roy Porter, dictated by Mr. Porter in 1937, transcript, 

Standard and Poor's Corporation Library, New 

York City, 8. 
" "4,000 Pages About Railways" New York Times, 15 

December 1911, 619. 

15 "Not Editor of Moody's Manual," New York Times, 23 

October 1921, 18. 

16 Porter, dictated by Mr. Porter, 8. 

17 Ibid., 5. 

18 John Moody, Moody 's Analyses oflnvestments. Parti: 

Steam Railroads (New York: Analyses Publishing 

Co., 1916): 17. 
'* Porter, "Dictated by Mr. Porter," p, 5. 
29 Moody, Moody's Analyses oflnvestment. Part I, p, 17. 
21 Ibid. 

12 Ibid. 

13 John Moody, Moody's Analyses of Railroad Invest' 

ments (New York: Analyses Publishing Co., 1 909): 
193. Italics in original. 
2,, iahnM.QOdy,A Fifty Year Review of Moody 's Investors 
Service (New York: Moody's Investors Service, 
[1949]): 11. 




160 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



" Emory R, Johnson, "Moody's Analyses of Railroad 
Investments" American Academy of Political and 
Social Science. Annals 34 (1 909): 211. 

s6 John Moody, Analyses of Investments, Part I: Steam 
Railroads (19 14): 17. 

""How to Analyze Railroad Reports," Political Science 
Quarterly 29 (March 1914): 180. 

31 Moody, Fifty Year Review, 1 7. 

w Moody's Analyses of Investments. Part II: Public 
Utilities and Industrials (New York: Analyses 
Publishing Co,, 1919): 2. 

30 John Moody, Moody's Analyses of Investments. Part 

III; Public Utility Investments (New York: Moody's 
Investor's Service, 1920): 5. 

31 Moody, Fifty Year Review, 18. 

32 Ibid., 32. 

33 Ibid., 22. 

34 J, Fred Rippy, "Moody's Manual of Investments, 

American and Foreign," Hispanic American His- 
torical Review 23 {November 1943): 702. 



3i "Boswell of U.S. Corporations," 3. 

36 Moody's Industrial Manual (New York: Moody's 
Investors Service, 1974): viii. 

" Andrea Rock, "Got a Stock Hunch?" Money 17 (Au- 
gust 1988); 117. 

38 Victor F. Zonana and Daniel Hertzberg, "The Rating 
Game," Wall Street Journal, 2 November 1981, p. 
1. 

19 Louis H. Ederington, "Why Split Ratings Occur," 
Financial Management 15 (Spring 1986): 38. 

40 Ibid., 46. 

41 Judith A. Truelson, "Hot on the Corporate Trail," RQ 

15 (Spring 1976): 224. 

41 Bernard S. Schlessinger, The Basic Business Library: 
Core Resources (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1989): 239. 

° Ibid., 39. 

44 JeanKellough, "Moody's 5000+ and DIALOG Ondisc 
Standard & Poor's Corporations: A Comparison of 
Two Full-Text Business Databases," Laserdisk 
Professional 2 (November 1989): 89. 



"The Bibliographical Wonder of the 
World": The National Union Catalog 



John R.M, Lawrence 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

On Monday, January 12,1981, Pan American 
flight 106 to London left Washington, D.C., 
carrying a shipment of cards for the last vol- 
ume of the massive, 754-volume National 
Union Catalog, Pre- J 956 Imprints} The ship- 
ment constituted the final leg of a journey that 
had commenced more than 80 years before. 
The final printed product of that monumental 
effort, whose aim had been the compilation 
and publication of a record of the holdings of 
American research libraries, had been hailed 
as "the bibliographical wonder of the world" 2 
and the "greatest single instrument of biblio- 
graphic control in existence." 3 The final edit- 
ing and publishing of this catalog had cost 
more than 34 million dollars and taken over 1 4 
years to complete, but the total effort involved 
from the beginning is immeasurable. 4 

Antecedents 

As early as 1850 the idea of a union 
catalog of books in American libraries had 
been proposed by Charles Coffm Jewett, li- 
brarian of the Smithsonian Institution from 
1847 to 1854. In his 1850 annual report he 
proposed the printing of a general catalog that 
would allow a scholar "the means of knowing 
the full extent of his resources for investiga- 
tion." Jewett proposed that the Smithsonian, 
by using stereotyped plates, would distribute 
records of its holdings to participating librar- 



ies, which in turn would submit plates for titles 
notheld in the Smithsonian. The latter in effect 
would act as a national bibliographic center. 
Jewett was well aware that this exchange of 
records would require that the participating 
libraries adhere to some sort of uniform cata- 
loging rules, and he included that idea in his 
ambitious plans. 5 

Unfortunately, a quarter of a century 
passed before Charles A. Cutter provided the 
impetus for standardizing cataloging with the 
publication of his Rules for a Printed Dictio- 
nary Catalogue (Washington: Government 
Printing Office, 1 875). 6 About the same time, 
various institutions began to consider the pos- 
sibility of reducing expenses by the use of 
centralized production and distribution of 
printed catalog cards. During the late 1890s, 
the American Library Association experi- 
mented with various card printing schemes for 
both books and journal articles. The first of 
these efforts was to provide short title-list 
cards for books cataloged by the publishing 
section; another project which began in 1 898 
provided cards for articles for scholarly jour- 
nals, such as those indexed by Poole 's Index 
to Periodical Literature (Boston: Houghton, 
1882) or the International Catalog of Scien- 
tific Literature (London: Royal Society of 
London, 1 902-2 1 ). 7 While these projects met 
with varying success, all of these efforts con- 
tributed to the gradual standardization of 
printed catalog cards, an innovation that would 
finally make practical not only the exchange 




162 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



of information about library holdings, butalso 
the easy integration of reports from various 
libraries into a single information source. 8 

In June 1898, the Library of Congress 
began to print catalog cards for books re- 
ceived for copyright. After January 1901, the 
Library began printing cards for all acces- 
sions, and plans for distributing the cards to 
other libraries were announced in July of that 
year. 9 In his 1901 annual report, Herbert 
Putnam, the Librarian of Congress, unveiled 
the ambitious scheme that woul d in fact create 
a national union catalog: 

Finally, it is fully recognized by the Library 
that next in importance to an adequate exhibit 
of its own resources, comes the ability to 
supply information as to the resources of other 
libraries. 

As steps in this direction may be men- 
tioned: 

First. The acquisition of printed cata- 
logues of libraries, both American and for- 
eign. 

Second, An alphabetic author catalogue 
on cards of books in department and bureau 
libraries in Washington. 

Third. A similar catalogue of books in 
some of the more important libraries outside 
Washington. 

The Library of Congress expects to place 
in each great center of research in the United 
States a copy of every card that it prints for its 
own catalogues; these will form there a state- 
ment ofvhat theNational Library contains. It 
hopes to receive a copy of every card printed 
by the New York Public Library, the Boston 
Public Library, the Harvard University Li- 
brary, the John Crerar Library, and several 
others. These it will arrange and preserve in a 
card catalogue of the great collections outside 
of Washington. 10 

A Union Catalog on Cards 

The ideas of depository card collections 
and distributing catalog cards on demand 
proved immensely popular, and did much to 
accelerate the further standardization of cata- 
log cards, although not soon enough for the 
new union catalog. " Cards from Harvard were 
smallerthanthe standard and had to be mounted 
on larger cards, while those from Boston Pub- 



lic required trimming and retyping of head- 
ings lost by trimming. 12 Initially, the files from 
each library were maintained separately, but 
by 1909 were so extensive that it was deemed 
necessary to arrange them into a single author 
alphabet. 13 At that time the new merged file 
included entries contributed by nine libraries: 
New York Public, Harvard, Boston Public, 
John Crerar, Washington Public, the Bureau 
of Education, the Department of Agriculture, 
the Geological Survey, and the War Depart- 
ment, Despite the fact that there was a surpris- 
ingly small amount of duplication in the file 
(only 20 percent of the titles were held in the 
Library of Congress, and only 7 percent by 
any 2 other libraries), Putnam enthusiastically 
predicted that when completed the union cata- 
log would contain about 600,000 entries, and 
in combination with an equal number of en- 
tries from the the LC public catalogs, would 
constitute the "closest approximation now 
available to a complete record of books in 
American libraries." 14 

Nonetheless, for the first 25 years of its 
existence, the union catalog remained a tool 
used chiefly by the Library of Congress cata- 
loging staff as a source for cataloging copy 
and supplying card orders. Without a special 
staff for maintenance, the union catalog was 
maintained by the library's Card Division as a 
supplement to the public catalogs. As other 
libraries, including the University of Illinois, 
the University of Chicago, and the Newberry 
Library, joined the list of contributors, the 
catalog continued to expand. By 1926, the 
union catalog held some 1,960,000 cards, 
representing far more titles than the modest 
predictions made in 1909. 

Expansion of the Catalog 

However, by this time it was also apparent 
to scholars that this gigantic figure repre- 
sented less than a fourth of scholarly titles to 
be found in American libraries. In addition, 
the rapid expansion of graduate study follow- 
ing World War I made the inadequacy of this 
bibliographic record painfully obvious. 15 In 



THE NATIONAL UNION CATALOG 163 



1926, scholarship received assistance from 
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The businessman 
provided a $250,000 gift to be administered 
over a five-year period, for the specific pur- 
pose of extending the "bibliographic appara- 
tus." Project "B," as the effort came to be 
called in order to distinguish it from other 
specially funded projects administered by the 
Library of Congress, was headed by Ernest 
Cushing Richardson, former director of the 
Princeton University Library and at that time 
the consultant in bibliography and research at 
the Library of Congress. To assist him, Ernest 
Kletsch, a former member of the Library of 
Congress staff who had entered private busi- 
ness, was named curator of the union cata- 
log. 16 Their chief objective was expressed as 
locating "at least one copy of every useful 
book now in the possession of one or more 
American libraries." 17 In the five-year history 
of the project some 8,344,256 copies of 
6,775,936 works were located and more than 
6.3 million cards were added to the union 
catalog. 18 

A task of such massive proportions re- 
quired the adoption of some special rules, and 
the way certain problems were handled per- 
manently shaped the union catalog. For the 
first time, a complete set of all Library of 
Congress printed cards was added to the cata- 
log. 19 A decision was made to weed out dupli- 
cate entries, and in cases of conflict the LC 
cards were considered the masterentry While 
their presence also helped to standardize filing 
procedures, various deviations had to be de- 
veloped for such a massive catalog, for ex- 
ample, the use of chronological order for 
numerous editions of the same work and the 
arrangement of some special groups by lan- 
guage before subdividing by date. Cards for 
Slavic and Semitic titles and other titles repre- 
sented in non-Roman characters were trans- 
ferred to other divisions of the Library of 
Congress, which established union catalogs 
for materials in those languages. 

Another very basic problem that had to be 
solved was the selection of a method of assign- 
ing symbols to libraries reporting to the cata- 



log. The method chosen employed a mne- 
monic based on three groups of letters repre- 
senting state, city, and library. This same 
method, proposed by Frank Peterson, a volun- 
teer worker at the University of Nebraska 
Library, has since been employed in many 
important reference works, includingthe Union 
List of Serials and Newspapers in Micro- 
form. 20 

Several methods of expanding reports 
were employed, In addition to adding LC 
printed cards, project staff typed cards for the 
handwritten entries in the old official cata- 
logs. 21 At least 118 printed book catalogs, 
including those of both general and special- 
ized collections from state, academic, and 
large public libraries, were clipped and 
mounted on cards, creating more than a mil- 
lion new entries. 22 Libraries were encouraged 
to make routine contributions of all cards 
duplicated by mechanical means. Those li- 
braries financially unable to submitlarge num- 
bers of reports were encouraged to supply 
copies of shelflists of "treasure room" items. 
Occasionally libraries loaned shelflists of spe- 
cial collections for project staff to transcribe, 
and, in a few cases, particularly in Washington 
and at Harvard, project staff visited libraries 
and copied or made photostats of catalog 
entries, In the case of Harvard, more than 
700,000 cards were copied over a period of 3 
years. One final method of expanding the 
catalog was the solicitation of gifts of groups 
of cards discarded by institutions in the pro- 
cess of recataloging their collections. The 
wide variance in cataloging practices among 
these institutions, plus the large number of 
cryptic, one-line entries received in this man- 
ner would cause future editors many head- 
aches. 23 

When the Rockefeller grant expired on 
August 31 , 1932, the Union Catalog Division 
was established as a unit of the Library of 
Congress. The appropriation of $20,000 was 
less than half of that available during each of 
the previous five years, and staff was trimmed 
from 31 to 11 employees. Most projects for 
expanding the catalog were frozen as staff 



164 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



time was consumed in the routines of filing 
cards, revising entries, and providing libraries 
with information on locations. 24 Nevertheless 
growth of the file continued. Hard financial 
times for libraries during the 1930s did not 
mean fewer reports. While the number of 
libraries reporting declined, the number of 
reports remained at a steady level as many 
contributing libraries were forced to adopt 
mechanical means of reproducing cards in 
order to save on expenses. 25 

Regional Union Cataiogs 

During the late 1930s, various projects of 
the Works Projects Administration had sig- 
nificant impact upon the union catalog. Per- 
haps the most far-reaching was the establish- 
ment in 1935 of regional union catalogs around 
the country, including those at Chicago, Phila- 
delphia, Denver, North Carolina, Texas, and 
Cleveland. From the outset, these projects 
were viewed as possible important contribu- 
tors to the national union catalog, 2 * and early 
surveys of the Cleveland and Philadelphia 
catalogs indicated that as much 24 to 34 per- 
cent of the titles represented in the regional 
catalogs were not included in the union cata- 
log. 27 However despite great enthusiasm over 
their creation and the perennial recommenda- 
tions from the Library of Congress staff, an- 
other decade would pass before these valua ble 
resources could be added to the union cata- 
log. 28 

Of more immediate impactupon the union 
catalog were a number of projects sponsored 
through the Historical Records Survey of the 
Works Projects Administration. One was the 
filming on 16mm film of some 19 District of 
Columbia library catalogs. Being mostly the 
collections of federal agencies, these institu- 
tions had been excluded from the efforts of 
"Project B" because the emphasis of that 
project had been upon collections outside of 
Washington. Eventually some 600,000 author 
entries were filmed and later transcribed for 
the union catalog by the New Jersey Historical 
Records Survey. 29 



Another great enhancement to the biblio- 
graphic apparatus was provided in 1937 by the 
absorption of the American Imprints Inven- 
tory by the Historical Records Survey. Under 
the editorship of Douglas C. McMurtie, this 
undertaking was intended to provide a nation- 
wide inventory of books and pamphlets pub- 
lished in the United States before 1 876 and in 
some western states before 1 890. Field work- 
ers across the nation canvassed library collec- 
tions identifying relevant materials, transcrib- 
ing the appropriate information, and forward- 
ing entries to a central office in Chicago. 
Before publication in various state checklists, 
all entries were checked in the union catalog 
in Washington. This afforded Library of Con- 
gress staff the opportunity to add all locations 
and entries not previously included in the 
union catalog. 30 

In 1936 the Division expanded its grow- 
ing location service in order to assist libraries 
urgently needing materials not reported in the 
union catalog. In cooperation with the Asso- 
ciation of Research Libraries, weekly check- 
lists of unlocated titles were circulated to 50 
research libraries. The participating libraries 
checked their holdings for the needed titles 
and returned the lists to the Library of Con- 
gress which then notified the requesting li- 
brary of the available locations. The titles that 
were not located were cumulated in annual 
lists of desiderata. In return for acting as a 
clearinghouse for interlibrary loans, the Union 
Catalog Division was able to add hundreds of 
entries and holdings for important scholarly 
resources. 31 

In its earliest years, most use of the cata- 
log was made by Library of Congress staff or 
researchers who could physically use the cata- 
log themselves. However "Project B" had 
served to advertise the value of the catalog and 
to make many more libraries aware of its 
potential. From 1 927 onward the catalog staff 
received an ever increasing amount of corre- 
spondence; so much in fact that the burden of 
correspondence began to tax staff resources 
heavily. By 1940, George Schwegmann, the 
director of the Union Catalog Division esti- 



mm 



u-msw? 



THE NATIONAL UNION CATALOG 1 65 



mated that 25 percent of staff time was spent 
answering such inquiries. 32 In addition the 
Library's independent Interlibrary Loan Ser- 
vice made regular use of the union catalog and 
in 1 935 alone made some 5,000 referrals based 
on information in the catalog. 33 

After 40 years in development, the union 
catalog had truly become a major national 
bibliographic resource. In fact it was deemed 
so important that at the start of World War II 
the catalog was removed from the capital as a 
precautionary measure. War and its accompa- 
nying research efforts further demonstrated 
the utility of the catalog. Requests for infor- 
mation on locations doubled during the first 
year of the war, and there was a conspicuous 
jump in requests for foreign technical and 
scientific materials. The fact that only two- 
thirds of the titles requested were located in 
the catalog highlighted the need to expand its 
coverage, 34 and Congress nearly doubled ap- 
propriations for the division during the 1942— 
43 fiscal year. 35 

Plans for a Book Catalog 

However, the most significant event af- 
fecting the union catalog during the war years 
was the agreement reached between the Asso- 
ciation of Research Libraries and the Library 
of Congress to publish in book form a deposi- 
tory collection of Library of Congress printed 
catalog cards. Over the years American librar- 
ies had found depository card sets increas- 
ingly expensive to maintain. In addition to 
space problems created by the huge files, it 
was estimated that each depository library 
spent over $1,200 each year simply for filing 
and new catalog furniture. In 1941, an Asso- 
ciation of Research Libraries committee 
chaired by William Warner Bishop proposed 
the publication of the card set in book form. 
The book catalog allowed costs to be evenly 
divided between the subscribing libraries and 
the Library of Congress, 36 In addition, the 
book format made it possible to extend the 
bibliographic resources of the Library of Con- 



gress to over 300 libraries, far more than had 
ever subscribed to the printed cards. 37 The 
resulting A Catalog of Booh Represented by 
Library of Congress Printed Cards Issued to 
July 31, 1942 ran 167 volumes and repro- 
duced approximately 1,900,000 cards. 
Edwards Brothers, Inc. of Ann Arbor, Michi- 
gan, produced the catalog over a span of 4 
years by photographing the cards, reducing 
the size of the image, and printing them 18 to 
a page. 38 

The immediate impact upon the union 
catalog of the new printed catalog and its 42- 
volume supplement which appeared in 1948, 
was a reverse of the decline in reports from 
contributing libraries that had been brought on 
by personnel shortages during the war. At the 
prompting of the Joint Committee on the Na- 
tional Union Catalog of the Association of 
Research Libraries and the American Library 
Association, 36 libraries agreed to check their 
holding against the printed catalog and report 
titles not represented in the Library of Con- 
gress collections. Another 24 research institu- 
tions agreed to search at least part of their 
collections. 39 In the first year alone, the union 
catalog received nearly 80,000 reports from 
these institutions. 40 

Increased appropriations during the pe- 
riod from 1 943-47 enabled the Union Catalog 
Division to finally add holdings from the Cleve- 
land and Philadelphia regional union catalogs. 
In 1948, in recognition of its growing use and 
importance, the union catalog was officially 
designated the National Union Catalog and 
efforts to expand its coverage increased anew. 
Complete holdings of Harvard University, the 
University of California at Berkeley, and the 
North Carolina union catalog were added. 
Libraries that had been reporting selectively 
were encouraged to report all new acquisi- 
tions, and the result was the rapid expansion of 
the catalog. 41 

This period also saw renewed calls for the 
publication of the entire catalog. As early as 
1928, Henry Putnam had discussed the need to 
publish the file. 42 The feasibility of publishing 



1 




166 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



die catalog was considered again in 1941, but 
a decision was delayed until the end of the 
war/ 3 However, the obvious incompleteness 
of the catalog, the tremendous burden of keep- 
ing up with the ever-rising number of current 
cards, plus huge filing backlogs of earlier 
reports always made the task of editing appear 
impossible. 44 In 1952, as an experimental step 
in planning the printing of the catalog, the 
Union Catalog Division began to set aside 
current reports for imprints for 1 952 and later. 
The intention of the separate file was to estab- 
lish a means of estimating the eventual size 
and cost ofpublishingthe entire catalog. 43 The 
following year the American Library Asso- 
ciation Board on Resources was presented 
with a proposal for reproducing the entire 
National Union Catalog, but the estimated 
cost of some 4 to 5 million dollars to complete 
the project daunted even the m ost enthusiastic 
supporters. 46 

Meanwhile, following the proposals laid 
out in 1946 by Halsey William Wilson in his 
pamphlet, A Proposed Plan for Printing Li- 
brary of Congress Cards in Cumulative Book 
Form (New York: H.W. Wilson), the Library 
of Congress had discontinued the distribution 
of depository card sets and had begun in 1 947 
to publish the Cumulative Catalog of Library 
of Congress Printed Cards. In 1 950, a separate 
subject catalog was initiated and the Cumula- 
tive Catalog was renamed the Library of Con- 
gress Author Catalog. Three years later, with 
the appearance of separate catalogs for maps, 
motion pictures and filmstrips, and music and 
phonograph records, the series became the 
Library of Congress Catalog— Booh: Au- 
thors. Recognition by both the Library and the 
profession that this catalog failed to represent 
the annual increase in scholarly titles held in 
American libraries resulted in the suggestion 
that the Library of Congress Catalog be ex- 
panded into a current National Union Cata- 
log. 47 

The proposal was first made formally by 
C. Sumner Spauiding at the summer 1953 
ALA annual meeting, and actively advocated 
the following year by Frederick H. Wagman. 



Wagman saw the publication of a current 
catalog of American library acquisitions as a 
possible solution to the problem of publishing 
the entire catalog. The staff of the National 
Union Catalog might be relieved of the con- 
siderable tasks of arranging, filing, and main- 
taining current entries as well as responding to 
reference queries about them. Staff time saved 
might be spent in editing the retrospective file 
for eventual publication. 48 

It was recognized at the time that not only 
would this change greatly enhance the proven 
utility of the current printed catalog, but would 
also offer the hope of "lifting a great burden 
of frustration from the shoulders of the exist- 
ing union catalog staff and of preparing the 
way for the ultimate publication of that great 
bibliographical instrument." By providing a 
terminus point for the older file, a current 
catalog would allow for the stabilization of 
that file in terms of growth. In addition, with 
the passage of time the current publication 
would assume retrospective importance. 49 

The ALA Board on Resources established 
a subcommittee chaired by Wagman to exam- 
ine the proposal and to make recommenda- 
tions regarding its implementation. Using re- 
sponses from surveys of subscribers to the 
Catalog and statistics provided by the Library 
of Congress, the subcommittee found the pro- 
posal economically feasible 50 and selected 
1 956 imprints as the best starting point for the 
National Union Catalog: A Cumulative Au- 
thor List. The publication plan was formonthly 
updates with quarterly and annual cumula- 
tions. 51 Following the pattern of its predeces- 
sor, the annual cumulations were eventually 
succeeded by five-year cumulations, although 
the entries, for 1956 and 1 957 were eventually 
published in both the 1953- 1957 and the 1958- 
1962 cumulations. 52 

A major breakthrough in terms of nation- 
wide bibliographic control of library materi- 
als, the new printed catalog sparked an expo- 
nential growth in the number of reports of 
library holdings. The total number of titles 
reported to the catalog in 1956 numbered 
103,000; in 1957, 326,00; and by 1962, 



THE NA TIONAL UNION CATALOG 1 61 



823,000." The size of five-year cumulations 
also reflected this same dramatic growth. The 
first numbered 28 volumes; while the last, for 
1973-1977, totaled 150 volumes. 54 

Plans for a Retrospective Union 
Catalog 

The success of the printed catalog of 
current titles made the need for publication of 
the retrospective file more apparent. The ex- 
istence of the self-contained and relatively 
compact file of 1952-1955 imprints allowed 
for the possibility of a small step in that direc- 
tion. In 1959 the ALA subcommittee on the 
National Union Catalog decided to sponsor its 
publication. Johannes L. Dewton was chosen 
as supervisor and editor of the project, and the 
30-volume National Union Catalog, 1952- 
1955 Imprints was distributed to subscribers 
inl961. 55 

Further encouraged by the sales of this 
publication and the execution of the project, 
the subcommittee decided to undertake publi- 
cation of the entire pre- 195 6 file. In 1962, the 
subcommittee began lengthy discussions of 
possible formats, including microfilm, 
microprint and even a "mechanized, central 
storage bank." Late that same year, the Com- 
mittee on Resources received a report from 
Johannes Dewton that estimated the editorial 
costs of the project to be $2,700,00. 56 

In October 1963, the Subcommittee on 
the NUC decided to invite bids for the publi- 
cation of the pre- 1 956 catalog. The successful 
bidder would be required to finance the edito- 
rial costs and allowed to recoup these from the 
sale of the catalog. If no satisfactory bid was 
accepted, the plan was to seek grant support 
for the editorial costs, or failing that, ask 
subscribing libraries to support these costs up 
front. 

A preliminary agreement between the 
Library of Congress and the American Li- 
brary Association was signed in June 1964. 
The agreement made publication possible, 
and, according to the terms, ALA agreed to 



obtain the funds necessary for the Library to 
edit the catalog. In March 1965, after consid- 
ering existing technologies and the likelihood 
of subscription support for each, the subcom- 
mittee decided on a bookformat for theplanned 
publication. After two mailings of invitations 
for bids, three bids with sample pages were 
received by the August 1966 deadline. The 
subcommittee selected the bid from Mansell 
Information/Publishing, Ltd., of London on 
the basis of the lowest sale price to libraries 
and the most satisfactory format. Contract 
negotiations between ALA and the company 
were concluded in January 1967. In February, 
the Library of Congress established the Na- 
tional Union Catalog Publication Project 
(NUCPP) to edit the catalog. Under guidance 
from John Cronin, work began with Johannes 
Dewton being selected as head of the project 
and Nathan N. Mendelldoffas assistant head. 
By March the first 27,000 edited cards to 
comprise the first volume were on their way to 
London." 

Mansell Publishing, although a British 
firm formed specifically for the purpose of 
publishing the National Union Catalog, had 
important advantages that enabled it to win the 
bidding process. The first of these was the 
experience its managing editor, John Com- 
mander, gained in publishing the British 
Museum's General Catalogue of Printed 
Books from 1961 to 1966. The second was the 
optical innovations of its parent company, 
Balding and Mansell, a subsidiary of Bemrose 
Publishing Company. 58 Essentially the firm 
had developed a system of sense-marking 
cards that made it possible to direct camera 
equipment to film only portions of cards in- 
stead of entire cards. The process not only 
made the filming of cards faster, but the effi- 
cient use of space in the final product resulted 
in lowered printing costs. 59 

The original contract called fora schedule 
of 60 volumes per year. The set was expected 
to take 1 years to complete and run some 610 
volumes. Each of the 14-inch volumes would 
contain about 700 pages and be priced at $15. 



1 68 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



An inflationary factor of 10 percent over the 
ten year length of the project was included in 
the contract, but proved grossly insufficient.* 
A supplement was also planned to accommo- 
date those reports received after publication 
began. 65 

Editorial Processes 

Once the contracts were in place, the 
Library of Congress was able to jump quickly 
into the editorialprocess. In eager anticipation 
of the event, John Cronin had years before 
spelled out the basic guidelines to be fol- 
lowed." The Library also had the previous 
experience of compilingthree 5-year cumula- 
tions of the current National Union Catalog, 
and many of the procedures and arrangements 
established for the publication of the pre- 1956 
imprints had precedents in these projects/ 3 

The task facing the project staff was sift- 
ing through some 20 million cards from vari- 
ous files, and to weed and edit them to an 
acceptable, consistent standard for publica- 
tion. The lack of standardization in a file built 
over a 67-year period that had seen three 
major revisions in cataloging codes plus innu- 
merable changes in filing rules posed tremen- 
dous problems. In addition, the individual 
entries varied greatly in terms of accuracy and 
completeness. For example, a large number of 
entries contributed by Princeton during the 
1920s were no more than one line long, while 
other records included incredible detail. De- 
spite the long-standing rule of Library of Con- 
gress cards taking precedence, a substantial 
amount of weeding needed to be done.*" In 
some cases, the duplicate entries numbered 
into the hundreds. 

Preparing the file forpublication required 
a number of processes. The first of these was 
interfiling seven different supplements with 
the main file. Pre-editors, or searchers, then 
reviewed the trays card-by-card, removing 
duplicate entries and transferring holdings 
information to thebestavailablerecord. Cross 
references were verified* filing adjusted, and 
all trays were compared to the Library of 



Congress Official Catalog to be sure that all 
LC printed cards were included in the Na- 
tional Union Catalog. 65 

The 25 to 30 project editors each re- 
viewed one 1,400-card tray each week, 65 
checking for correctness of entry and form, 
resolving conflicts, adding entries and cross 
references, arranging the filing order, and 
identifying entries that needed retyping. The 
cards were then examined by copy editors 
who, in preparing the cards for the filming 
pro cess, reviewed location symbols and elimi- 
nated extraneous information. If necessary, 
the cards were then retyped before review by 
a senior editor. 67 

The five senior editors who performed the 
final checking of entries ensured the biblio- 
graphic standards of the catalog. Checking 
some five trays each every week, they re- 
viewed the quality of the editors' work and 
resolved previously unsolved problems. 58 

After the final review, the cards were 
stamped sequentially, to insure the arrange- 
ment, and microfilmed. The film served as 
protection against loss of the shipment, and 
also provided an inhouse copy of the file for 
use until the printed volumes arrived. 69 The 
cards were then packed up and sent via air 
freight to London on Friday, and the whole 
process began again the following Monday. 

Amazingly, the staff never missed a dead- 
line, and the pace of five volumes per month 
was maintained unfailingly until the end of the 
685- volume main sequence in June 1979. 70 In 
order to meet the publication schedule, some 
voluminous authors and corporate bodies had 
to be assigned to senior editors as special 
projects, weeks ahead of the normal time- 
table. 71 Some sections required more elabo- 
rate treatment, Johannes Dewton continued 
working on the United States section even 
after his retirement in 1975. 72 By plan, only 
volumes 53-56 covering the Bible were pub- 
lished out of sequence after completion of the 
rest of the main set. 73 

The worst problems were encountered 
during the first 2 years, when the enormous 
scale of the difficulties involved, previously 



THE NA TIONAL UNION CATALOG 169 



only imagined, was finally experienced in 
practice. It became apparent very early in the 
project that too much optimism and miscalcu- 
lation had resulted in insufficient staffto handle 
the editorial work. Perhaps the direst moment 
was at the end of the first year when the 
contract with Mansell was under renegotia- 
tion and the Librarian of Congress threatened 
to terminate the Library's involvement. 
Mansell agreed to finance a larger editorial 
staff, 74 and the work continued with as many 
as 57 employees. 75 

Editorial Flexibility 

Another key to the success of the project 
was the willingness of the editors to adapt their 
procedures. The project had begun with a few 
basic guidelines: 

1. Library of Congress printed cards took 
precedence for all items and multiple 
reports were to be transferred to these 
master cards. 

2. When alternative headings existed, Li- 
brary of Congress headings were cho- 
sen. 

3 . The American Library Association cata- 

loging code of 1949 was the standard 
for form and choice of entries. 

4. Liberal use would be made of cross 
references from alternative headings. 

5. A unique form for author entries would 
be employed, and all holdings for an 
item would be listed in one place. 7 * 

In practice, strict adherence to even these 
few guidelines proved difficult. The publica- 
tion schedule required that weekly shipments 
be made in alphabetic sequence without de- 
lay. The unyielding deadline forced staff to 
become increasingly flexible and simplify 
procedures as the project progressed. 

The result was a shift in the nature of the 
printed catalog from one part to the next. Later 
volumes contained far fewer entries revised to 
meet the 1949 ALA rules, and even included 
entries following the 1967 Anglo- American 
Cataloging Rules. Staff had no time to make 



the new generation of reports received in the 
course of the project consistent with the old 
rules. Fewer added entries and cross-refer- 
ences were made as time went by. Filing rules 
for voluminous authors were simplified, and 
even the precedence of Library of Congress 
cataloging was not always acknowledged, 
particularly when more complete information 
was supplied by other libraries. 77 

When Johannes Dewton retired in 1975, 
leadership of the project was turned over to 
David A. Smith, who had already served sev- 
eral years as a senior editor. 78 By the time that 
the main sequence editing was completed in 
1979, over three million cards had been re- 
ceived for the supplement Before the main 
sequence was finished, the project's assistant 
head, Maria Laqueur, had designed and begun 
editing the supplement. Although a new pub- 
licationscheduleallowedslightlyrnorebreath- 
ing room, the supplement involved the addi- 
tional tasks of checking in the main sequence 
and publishing a register of additional loca- 
tions. 79 When the last editorial work was fi- 
nally completed in January 1981, some 14 
years after the project's start, the staff had 
reviewed over 23 million cards and prepared 
over 1 1 million for publication. 80 

In addition to the Library of Congress, the 
American Library Association, and Mansell 
Publishing, some 1 ,350 libraries in 5 1 nations 
had supported the project at a cost of over 
$35,000 each. 81 After 14 years, the result was 
a resource of unparalleled magnitude, of value 
to libraries in acquisitions, bibliography, cata- 
loging, interlibrary loan, reference, and re- 
search. The new printed catalog represented 
not only the largest print record of American 
library holdings, but also the most extensive 
record of the history of printing, particularly 
of the Western world. 82 

New Technology 

Yet by the time of completion of the pre- 
1956 catalog, the National Union Catalogwas 
already something of a dinosaur, With the 
advent of OCLC in the early 1970s and the 



4 



170 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



application of large-scale time-share comput- 
ing to bibliographic systems, there was talk as 
early as 1976 of the National Union Catalog 
being displaced. 83 In fact, in 1 978, the Library 
of Congress itself had recognized that its in- 
ability to commit the necessary machine and 
human resources meant that OCLC would 
preempt the Library's own efforts to develop 
anational online bibliographic service. 84 Even- 
tually, in terms of both number of records and 
contributing libraries, OCLC would dwarf the 
National Union Catalog. 

The 1 980s saw the introduction of auto- 
mation and a new microfiche format for the 
current catalog. The new format included a 
register with cumulative annual name, title, 
series and subject indexes and resulted in 
substantial savings in time and cost. 85 How- 
ever, these innovations plus the expansion of 
coverage to include Oriental and Near Eastern 
languages, could not make up for the conve- 
nience of the online systems, which have 
gradually usurped most of the NUC ' s catalog- 
ing, interlibrary loan, and even reference func- 
tions. 

Unfortunately, the development of com- 
peting bibliographic utilities has meant the 
impossibility of a true national union catalog. 
With many of the major research institutions 
that once constituted the bulk of contributors 
to the union catalog not contributing to OCLC, 
the latter does not reflect a complete picture of 
American library holdings, and particularly of 
many esoteric research materials. The result is 
that librarians and researchers must search 
multiple sources and systems to identify many 
hard-to-locate items. The situation will not be 
helped by the current plan of the Library of 
Congress for the National Union Catalog. 
Books. As of the 1 990 edition, the catalog will 
include only those reports from sources other 
than the three major bibliographic utilities, 
OCLC, RLIN, and WLN. In addition, staff in 
the division will be reduced significantly. 86 

These developments will leave 
unaddressed several important problems. As 
of 1 986, the year before the implementation of 



regular reports to the catalog in magnetic tape 
form, the collection of reports of pre-1956 
imprints not included in the National Union 
Catalog, Pre- J 95 6 Imprints main sequence or 
its supplement already stood at over 2 million 
cards. 87 In addition, although a Near East 
National Union List began to appear in 1 988, 8S 
six union catalogs containing another 2 mil- 
lion records for materials in Chinese, Hebraic, 
Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Southeast 
Asian languages remain unpublished. 89 While 
these problems may eventually be solved by 
various retrospective conversion projects, in 
the meantime a wealth of bibliographic infor- 
mation gathered for such projects will go 
largely untapped. 

Unlike some other important reference 
works, the National Union Catalog was not 
the product of a single person's ideas or ef- 
forts. Being based at a large institution, such as 
the Library of Congress, allowed the catalog 
to evolve slowly in terms of both purpose and 
design. Over the decades, several individuals 
made important contributions to shaping the 
reference tool. While Henry Putnam provided 
the official support necessary to establish the 
catalog, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., gave the 
financial support needed to build the file into 
something significant. Ernest Richardson, 
Ernest Kletsch, and George Schwegmann, Jr., 
presided for nearly three decades over the 
massive work of building the catalog. John 
Cronin and Frederick Wagman were perhaps 
the most effective of many advocates of bring- 
ing the catalog to print form. Johannes Dewton, 
David Smith, and John Commander ably 
oversaw the tremendous task of editing the 
catalog and producing National Union Cata- 
log, Pre-1956 Imprints. However, this pio- 
neering effort in resource sharing was truly 
the result of thousands of hands. From the 
legion of filers and editors at the Library of 
Congress to the army of catalogers from hun- 
dreds of libraries throughout North America, 
all played a significant role in building a 
tremendous bibliographic resource. 



. L 



_*j?jfe 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



THE NA TIONAL UNION CATALOG 171 



The National Union Catalog; a cumulative author 
list representing Library of Congress printed 
cards and titles reported by other American 
libraries. Washington: Library of Congress, 
1956-1982 (Monthly, with Quarterly and An- 
nual Updates). 

The National Union Catalog, Music and 
Phonorecords (title varies). Washington: Li- 
brary of Congress, 1956- . 

Tfie National Union Catalog, Motion Pictures and 
Filmstrips (title varies). Washington: Library 
of Congress, 1956-1982. 

The National Union Catalog, a Cumulative Author 
List, 1955-1957. Ann Arbor: J.W. Edwards, 
Inc., 1958. 28 vols. (v. 1-20, Authors; v.27, 
Music and phonograph records; v. 28, Motion 
pictures and filmstrips). 

The National Union Catalog, J 952-1 955 Imprints. 
Ann Arbor: J.W. Edwards, Inc., 1961. 30 vols. 

The National Union Catalog, a Cumulative Author 
List, 1958-1962. New York: Rowman and 
Littlefield, Inc., 1963. 54 vols. (v. 1-50, Au- 
thors; v.5 1 -52, Music and Phonorecords; v. 53- 
54 Motion Pictures and Film Strips). 

National Union Catalog, Register of Additional Lo- 
cations. Washington: Library of Congress, June 
1965- . (Published inbook form, 1965-1980; in 
microfiche format, 1 980- . Cumulative micro- 
fiche edition covers 1968-). 

The National Union Catalog, a Cumulative Author 
List, 1963-1967. Ann Arbor: J.W. Edwards, 
Inc., 1 968. 72 vols. (v. 1-59, Authors; v. 60-66, 
Register of Additional Locations; v. 67-70, 



Music and Phonorecords; v. 71-72, Motion 
Pictures and Film Strips). 

Library of Congress and National Union Catalog 
Author Lists, 1942-1962: A Master Cumula- 
tion. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1969. 
152 vols. 

The National Union Catalog, 1956-1967. Totowa, 
NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 1970-1972. 
125 vols. 

The National Union Catalog, a Cumulative Author 
List, 1968-1972. Ann Arbor: J.W. Edwards, 
Inc., 1973. 128 vols. (v. 1-104, Authors; v. 105- 
1 19, Register of Additional Locations; v. 120— 
1 24, Music; v. 1 25-128, Films and Other Mate- 
rials for Projection). 

The National Union Catalog, a Cumulative Author 
List, 1973-1977. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and 
Littlefield, Inc., 1978. 150 vols. (v. 1-135, 
Authors; v. 136-143, Music; 144-150 Films 
and Other Materials for Projection). 

The National Union Catalog, Pre- 1956 Imprints. 
London: Mansell, 1968-1981. 754 vols. 

National Union Catalog. Books. (Microfiche) Wash- 
ington: Libraiy of Congress, 1983-. (Monthly, 
with Annual Cumulation. Register Format with 
Name, Title, Series and Subject indexes). 

National Union Catalog. Audiovisual Materials ^(mi- 
crofiche). Washington: Library of Congress, 
1983- . 

National Union Catalog. Cartographic Materials 
(microfiche). Washington; Library of Congress, 
1983- . 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



While researchers are lucky in having a 
number of written accounts by individuals 
closely involved in the National Union Cata- 
log, there is considerable redundancy in what 
has been written about it, even in the brief list 
of sources provided here. The introductory 
section to the National Union Catalog, Pre- 
1956 Imprints, its printed prospectus, and the 
volume In Celebration (done to commemo- 
rate the completion of the project) conve- 
niently assemble a large amount of informa- 
tion on the catalog, but overlap considerably. 
The last is perhaps the most most comprehen- 
sive in coverage and includes articles by Wil- 
liam J. Welsh, Gordon R. Williams, David A. 
Smith, and John Commander. Somewhat al- 
tered versions of the articles by Smith and 



Welsh are also listed. For the most detailed 
discussion on the early development of the 
catalog, see the article by Schwegmann. For a 
discussion of developments during the 1950s, 
see the articles by Cronin (the first of which 
also appeared in the prospectus) and the col- 
lection of papers by Charles David and others. 
For lively descriptions of the editorial process, 
see either of the articles by David Smith. 
Finally, required reading for using and under- 
standing the scope and limitations of the Na- 
tional Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints is 
Johannes Dewton's introductory essay. 

Cronin, John W. "History of the National Union 
Catalog, Pre- 1956 Imprints." In Book Catalogs, 
compiled by Maurice F. Tauber and Hilda 
Feinberg, 118-32. Meruchen, NJ: Scarecrow 
Press, 1971. 



172 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



, 'The National Union and Library of Con- 
gress Catalogs: Problems and Prospects." li- 
brary Quarterly 34 (January, 1964): 77-96. 

David, Charles W., etal. "Proposed Expansion of the 
Library of Congress Catalog — Books: Authors 
into a Current National Union Catalog, 1956." 
College and Research Libraries 17 (Janu- 
ary, 1956): 24-40. 

Dewton, Johannes L. "Introduction to the National 
Union Catalog, Pre- 1956 Imprints." In National 
Union Catalog, Pre-1 956 Imprints, vol. 1, xi- 
xix. London: Manse]!, 1968. 

In Celebration: The National Union Catalog, Pre- 
1956 Imprints, edited by John Y, Cole. Wash- 
ington: Library of Congress, 1981. 

"National Union Catalog; Celebrates 30 Years." 
Library of Congress Information Bulletin 46 
(June;, 1987): 228-33. 



Prospectus for the National Union Catalog, Pre- 
1956 Imprints. London: Mansell, 1967. 

Schwegmann, George A., Jr. "The National Union 
Catalog in the Library of Congress." In Union 
Catalogs in the United States, edited by Robert 
B. Downs, 229-63. Chicago: American Library 
Association, 1942. 

Smith, David A. "The National Union Catalog Pre- 
1956 Imprints." The Book Collector 31 (Win- 
ter, 1982): 445-62. 

Welsh, William J. "The Last of the Monumental 
Book Catalogs." American Libraries 12 (Sep- 
tember, 1981): 464-68. 

Williams, Gordon R. "History of the National Union 
Catalog, Pre- 1 956 Imprints." In National Union 
Catalog, Pre- 1956 Imprints, vol. l,vii-x. Lon- 
don: Mansell, 1968. 



NOTES 



1 William Welsh, "The Last of the Monumental Book 

Catalogs," American Libraries 12 (September 
1981): 468. 

2 Richard Shoemaker, review of National Union Catalog, 

Pre- 1956 Imprints,Library Resources &Technical 
Services 13 (Summer 1969): 431. 

3 Annual Report of the Librarian ofCongress(\91\): 29. 
* Welsh, "The Last of the Monumental Book Catalogs," 

466-67. 
i John Y. Cole, "Introduction," in In Celebration: the 

National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints, ed. by 

John Y. Cole. (Washington: Library of Congress, 

1981), 3-4. 
•Gordon R. Williams, "History of the National Union 

Catalog Pre- 1 956 Imprints," in The National Union 

Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, vol. 1 (London: 

Mansell, 1968), vii. 
7 F. P. Jordan, "The History of Printed Catalog Cards," 

Public Libraries 9 (July 1904): 3 18-20. 

8 Williams, vii, 

9 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1902): 

101. 

10 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1901): 

241. 

1 ' A nnual Report of the Librarian of Congress ( 1 9 1 0): 7 1 . 

12 Annual Report of the Librarian o/Cowgrass (1908): 58. 

13 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1928): 
238. 

u Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1909): 
57-59. 

ls George A. Schwegmann, Jr., "The National Union 
Catalog in the Library of Congress," in Union 
Catalogs in the United States, ed, by Robert B. 
Downs (Washington: American Library Associa- 
tion, 1942), 231, 

16 Ibid., 232. 

" Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1927): 
240. 

18 Schwegmann, "The National Union Catalog in the 
Library of Congress," 232. 



19 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1927): 

240. 

20 Schwegmann, "The National Union Catalog in the 

Library of Congress," 233-35. 

21 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (2927): 

240, 

22 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1932): 78, 

25 Schwegmann, "The National Union Catalog in the 

Library of Congress," 235-37. 
24 Ibid., 247. 
"Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1935): 

48-49. 

26 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1936): 52. 

27 Schwegmann, "The National Union Catalog in the 

Library of Congress," 252. 
u Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1944); 82. 

29 Schwegmann, "The National Union Catalog in the 

Library of Congress," 250-51. 

30 Ibid., 252-53. 

31 Ibid., 257, 

32 Ibid., 256. 

23 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress ( 1 93 5): 47, 
^Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1942): 

46^17. 

35 Annual Report of 'the Librarian of Congress (1 943): 49. 

36 John W. Cronin, "The National Union and Library of 

Congress Catalogs, Problems and Prospects," Li- 
brary Quarterly 34 (January 1964): 80. 

Z1 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1 943): 48. 

3S Cronin, "The National Union and Library of Congress 
Catalogs, Problems and Prospects," 80. 

Jg Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1943): 48, 

w Annual Report of the Librarian of 'Congress (1944): 82. 

41 Williams, viii. 

42 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1928); 

243. 
" George A. Schwegmann, Jr. "The National Union 
Catalog in the Next Decade — Some Unsolved Prob- 
lems," Library Resources & Technical Services 1 
(Summer 1957): 159, 



THE NATIONAL UNION CATALOG 173 



44 Charles W.David, "Proposed Expansion oFthe Library 
of Congress Catalog-Books-. Authors into a Current 
National Union Catalog, 1 956," College and Re- 
search Libraries 17 (January 1956): 25. 

45 Cronin, "The National Union and Library of Congress 
Catalogs, Problems and Prospects," 82. 

"David, 24, 

11 Cronin, "The National Union and Library of Congress 
Catalogs, Problems and Prospects," 80-81. 

"George A. Schwegmann, Jr. and Robert D. Stevens, 
"The Proposal for a Current Author Catalog of 
American Library Resources," College and Re- 
search Libraries 17 (January 1956): 29. 

4 ' David, 25. 

"Schwegmann and Stevens, 28-29. 

51 Ibid., 31. 

53 Johannes Dewton, "Introduction to the National Union 
Catalog Pre-1 956 Imprints," in The National Union 
Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, vol. 1 (London: 
Mansell, 1968), xii. 

"Cronin, "The National Union and Library of Congress 
Catalogs, Problems and Prospects," 81-82. 

* "1973-1977 National Union Catalog Goes to Press in 
Record Time," Library of Congress Information 
Bulletin 38 (March 9, 1979): 81. 

"Cronin, "The National Union and Library of Congress 
Catalogs, Problems and Prospects," 82. 

16 Ibid., 84-85. 

" John W. Cronin, "History of the National Union Cata- 
log, Pre-1956 Imprints," in Book Catalogs, com- 
piled by Maurice F. Tauber and Hilda Feinberg 
(Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1971), 129-32. 

is John Commander, "Publishing the NUC," in In Cel- 
ebration: The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 
Imprints, ed. by John Y. Cole (Washington: Library 
of Congress, 1981), 28-30. 

w William Welsh, "The Library of Congress," in In 
Celebration: The National Union Catalog, Pre- 
1956 Imprints, ed. by John Y. Cole (Washington: 
Library of Congress, 1981), 10. 

60 Welsh, "The Last of the Monumental Book Catalogs," 

467. 

61 John Commander, "Production and Publication of the 

National Union Catalog Pre- 1 956 Imprints/'inTVie 
National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, vol. 1 
(London: Mansell, 1968), xx. 

62 Cronin, "The National Union and Library of Congress 

Catalogs, Problems and Prospects,*' 83. 

63 "The 1968-1972 Quinquennnial Edition of the Na- 

tional Union Catalog," Library of Congress Infor- 
mation Bulletin 33 (October II, 1974): A213- 
A214. 
44 David A. Smith, "The National Union Catalog Pre- 
1956 Imprints," The Book Collector 3 1 (Winter 
1982): 448^19. 



65 Margaret PorterSmith, "The National Union Catalog 

Pre-1956 Imprints; A Progress Report," Library 
Resources <& Technical Sen>ices20 (Winter 1 976): 
49-50. 

66 Smith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Im- 

prints," 453. 

67 PorterSmith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 

Imprints: A Progress Report," 50-51. 

68 Smith, u Tha National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Im- 

prints," 454. 

69 PorterSmith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 

Imprints: A Progress Report," 51. 

70 Smith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Im- 

prints," 450. 

7J PorterSmith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 
Imprints: A Progress Report," 50, 

72 David Smith, "Editing the NUC," in In Celebration: 
The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, 
ed. by John Y. Cole (Washington: Library of Con- 
gress, 1981), 27. 

"PorterSmith, 50. 

74 Smith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Im- 

prints," 449. 

75 PorterSmith, 49. 

76 Smith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Im- 

prints," 449. 
"Ibid., 451-53. 

78 Welsh, "The Last of the Monumental Book Catalogs," 

467. 

79 Smith, "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Im- 

prints," 458. 

80 Ibid., 449-50. 

81 Welsh, "The Last of the Monumental Book Catalogs," 

468. 
82 A,Plotnik,"NewsThatStaysNews,'Mmerictt«iiirar- 

ies 12 (September 1981): 453. 
83 Joe A. Hewitt, "The Impact of OCLC," American 

Libraries 7 (May 1976): 271. 
u Role of the Library of Congress in the Evolving Na- 

tional Network (Washington: Library of Congress, 

1978), 7. 
w "The National Union Catalog: Celebrates 30 Years," 

Library of Congress Information Bulletin 46 (June 

I, 1987): 230-32. 
86 "Library of Congress Announces Changes in National 

Union Catalog," Library of Congress News Press 

Release, PR 90-77 (June 1, 1990): np. 
87 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1986): A- 

12. 
88 "Library Launches Near East Union List," Library of 

Congress Information Bulletin 47 (June 20, 1 988): 

243. 
M Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1986): A- 

12. 



a 



The Record of Record: 
The New York Times Index 



Jo A. Cotes 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

On the ninth floor of the New York Times 
building on grubby West 43rd Street, in a 
room now shared with the newspaper's Rights 
and Royalties Department, about 20 editors, 
abstracters, indexers, and clerks produce one 
of the most influential and remarkable docu- 
ments of ourtime. If the New York Times is the 
newspaper of record, then certainly the New 
York Times Index is the record of record. 

Under the leadership of Adolph S. Ochs, 
the Times slogan became "All the News That's 
Fit to Print." "Ochs created the traditions that 
made the Times great — its full coverage, com- 
pleteness, and accuracy— and that are sus- 
tained by his descendents." 1 Even with a daily 
circulation ofmorethan onemillion, the Times 
still sells fewer papers than the Wall Street 
Journal or the New York Daily News, but it 
also has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any 
other newspaper. 

Back in 195 1 , Meyer Berger, one of those 
Pulitzer Prize-winning Tim es reporters, wrote: 

Because the Times has won universal recogni- 
tion as a newspaper of record, it is in demand 
in many forms — full size in bound newsprint, 
in rag paper for better preservation, on tiny 
microfilm where a full page is reduced to a 
little more than one inch. Libraries, parlia- 
ments, gteatbusiness houses all over the world 
subscribe for it in these forms. The semi- 
monthly New York Times Index for quick 
reference to the newspaper's contents, and an 
annual index that runs to some 1,500 pages, 
are also available. 2 



Early Days of Benign Neglect 

The Index, as highly regarded as it is 
today, has a peculiar history of almost benign 
neglect. All indexes since the newspaper's 
birth in 1851 are now widely available, but 
that was not always so. For decades, the Index 
was used simply as an in-house resource. 
From September 18, 1851, to September 1858 
the Index was compiled in longhand. "In the 
beginning, it was a brief and sketchy affair, 
entered painstakingly in longhand into a 
leather-covered ledger volume, and it was 
intended for staff use only. An index of this 
kind, with minor changes in format, was main- 
tained for more than sixty years except for two 
periods of suspension (September 1 858through 
1 862 and July 1905 through 1912), J "the rea- 
sons for which cannot now be determined." 4 
Indexes for the period covering September 18, 
1858, through December 31, 1862, were fi- 
nally compiled in the 1960s and published in 
1967. "The project to bridge this gap in the 
series of indexes to the Times was conceived 
and begun by Joseph C. Gephart, editor of the 
Index until his retirement in 1964, who also 
did most of the original indexing for this 
volume and others in the series." 5 

In 1 863, the indexes were compiled semi- 
annually and, for the first time, set in type. 
"Though still intended for the staff only, this 
was a far more sophisticated Index than its 
predecessor — It was arranged by year, and 
each year was divided into three- or four- 
month periods." 6 Butonce again the Index was 



ms 



NEW YORK TIMES INDEX 175 



suspended from mid- 1905 through 1912. More 
than 50 years later, indexes for those lost years 
were compiled and published beginning in 
1 968 . The earlier indexes, especially the hand- 
written ones, present some expected research 
glitches. For example, the longhand entries 
are not divided by year — they are strictly 
alphabetical. And the number directly to the 
right of those entries are not dates, but refer the 
user to an issue number. In addition, complete 
names are not always listed. 

Stability and Growth 

It was not until 1913 that a semblance of 
the Index that we know today was published. 
Indexes were compiled quarterly from 1 9 1 3 to 
1929, then monthly from 1930to 1947. It was 
during this latter time period that cumulative 
annual volumes were introduced. From 1948 
to the present, indexes have been published 
semimonthly. Since 1978, there have been 
quarterly cumulations. A subscription to the 
semimonthly issues plus the cumulative an- 
nual cost $50 in 1952. By 1990 the price had 
climbed to $645. 

The current New York Times Index is a 
unique subject, geographic, organization, and 
personal name indexing/abstracting tool to the 
final late edition of the New York Times. 
Almost every article, with the exception of 
some letters and advertisements, is indexed. 
Arranged in dictionary form, it refers the user 
to the date, page, and column where the article 
is located in the newspaper. It offers cross- 
references, and such detailed abstracts of ar- 
ticles that the user may not need to locate the 
entire article. 

In addition to serving as an almanac of 
sorts, the Index has also been used as a scien- 
tific tool, often playing a major role in social 
science research. For example, an article in 
the Journal of Consumer Affairs reported that 
the Index had been used to "test the vi ability of 
the resource mobilization perspective on the 
farm workers' movement" and was analyzed 
for indications of "macro-level changes in 
activities of the groups involved," 7 



Harvey L. Holmes, Jr., assistant director 
and editor, joined the Index staff in 1967, and 
became editor in 1975. He notes that "This is 
the best selling index on the market, and in 
many ways the most respected. Before we 
take our bows we must acknowledge that 
other papers are doing indexes and putting 
them out earlier." 8 The index to the Washing- 
ton Posi> for example, is issued monthly with 
an annual accumulation, but is available only 
from 1 972 on, (The Post index was published 
by Bell & Howell from 1972-1981 as part of 
its Newspaper Index project. Most of Bell & 
Howell's indexed newspapers are available 
from the mid- 1 970s on, but it has also indexed 
the New York Tribune, 1841-1924, available 
on microfilm.) The Wall Street Journal also 
offers a monthly index with annual cumula- 
tions, available from 1955 to the present. No 
other newspaper index today, however, offers 
the detailed abstracts and documentation avail- 
able in the Times Index. 

The New York Times Index has had seri- 
ous weight problems at times. The 196% Index 
boasted 1,713 pages, which led John Rothman, 
one of the great Index editors, to write in his 
foreword that year, "This volume lends sub- 
stance to our new slogan: 'If it's not in the 
Times Index, maybe it didn't happen.'" 9 "As 
the Times continued to grow in size and the 
news became even more complex, the number 
and length of the abstracts increased in pro- 
portion, and the Index got bigger . . . and 
bigger," wrote Rothman. 

Some of the annual Index volumes of the mid- 
30s were virtually cubic in shape. The paper 
shortage of the war years forcibly curtailed 
this, but with the end of World War II the 
newspaper returned to Us Former dimensions, 
and so did the Index. This led to the use of 
cross-references as a substitute for duplica- 
tion . . . and also led in 1948 to a change in the 
physical format of the Index: largerpages.and 
an arrangement of three columns, instead of 
two, per page. 10 

The 1940s almost saw the death of the 
Index, according to Holmes. "There had been 
very serious talk about ending the Index. John 
Rothman saved it by emphasizing quality and 
productivity." 



176 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



The 1965 Index offered the first signed 
foreword by Rothman along with an important 
new development. More than 200maps, graphs, 
charts, and photographs were included. 

Ia the mid- 1970s, after Rothman had left 
the Index to work on the computerized Infor- 
mation Bank, and other editors had come and 
gone, the newly appointed Holmes decided it 
was time to exercise some control over the 
Index's once again expanding girth. In 1971, 
the page size had increased. In 1973, it had 
split into two volumes. By 197 '4 ,the New York 
Times Index weighed in at nearly 3 ,000 pages. 
"We reined that in in 1975 and decided to do 
a lot more editing," Holmes said. "Now the 
Index is 1,200-1,500 pages, but we index 
more today than ever before." For example, in 
the 1988 Index, the subject heading "Plagia- 
rism" offers see also references to articles 
indexed under "Gallbladder," "Harvard Uni- 
versity," "Medicine and Health," "Music," 
and the "Presidential Election of 1988 " One 
of the entries under "Music" indicates that 
"Federal Jury in White Plains, NY, finds that 
Mick Jagger did not steal song, Just Another 
Night, from Jamaican reggae singer Patrick 
Alley (M), Ap 27, III, 22:1." This entry also 
indicates to the user that this is a story of 
medium length, and that it appeared in the first 
column on page 22 of section three on April 
27, 1 988. According to the Index, "Whenever 
possible, entries are made under 'subject' 
headings (e.g. Airlines, Mental Health, Steel). 
. . . Names of persons and organizations are 
usually covered by cross references to the 
subjects of their activities."" As such, this 
article also is cross-referenced under Jagger's 
name. 

Reform and Renaissance 

In the 1980s there was criticism of the 
Index once again. "We experienced a renais- 
sance in the 1980s with indexing," Holmes 
said. "Beginning around 1982, users felt the 
Index was too complicated. Like Ulysses, it 
was much admired but never read. And 



granted, there was a European bias; some 
headings were seen as labels. For example, 
under 'China, 1 it would say 'China, Commu- 
nist.' 'Homosexuality' was indexed under 
crime or medical headings. For the subject 
heading 'Women,' there would be a see also 
reference to 'Domestic Service.' We were 
behind the times." (For the record, the see also 
references for 'Women' now include the 'Equal 
Rights Amendment' and the 'Feminist Move- 
ment,' along with 'Housewives' and 'Femi- 
nine Hygiene Products.') Dr. Roy Peter Clark, 
of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, has 
delighted in the cross references since exam- 
ining the 1976 edition of the Index. In that 
year, Dr. Clark wrote an article about religion 
and education. The cross reference under his 
name was "See also Jesus Christ." The Index 
does tell the user that "Cross references do not 
indicate the specific content of the entries to 
which they refer, and should not be so con- 
strued. Thus a cross reference from a person's 
name to a crime heading cannot and does not 
indicate whether that person is a defendant, a 
witness, a prosecutor, or a person merely 
commenting on the subject but not a party to 
it." 12 

"In the course of 125 years not all Index 
editors thought alike," Rothman wrote, "and 
so the Index users will find some years in 
which there was no 'BookReview' listing and 
no 'Deaths' listing. These aberrations of our 
forebears have been remedied in the separate 
cumulations of the New York Times Book 
Review Index and the New York Times ObitU- 
aries Index, respectively." 13 In the 1858-1968 
volume of the New York Times Obituaries 
Index, it was reported that 

in some years, accidental deaths and suicides 
were included under 'Deaths, * in other years 
they were not; in some years titles were given 
and in others omitted; in some years last name 
and initials only were given; in some years 
entries were limited to the news story of the 
death itself, in others they included stories on 
the preceding illness and on the aftermath. 
Our aim in producing this volume was to 
provide a convenient recompilation." 14 



m 



NEW YORK TIMES INDEX 177 



It is precisely that, a recompilation; unfor- 
tunately the material was not re-edited. Vol- 
ume 2 of the New York Tim es Obituaries Index 
covers 1969-1978. This volume includes many 
individuals whose deaths are covered in the 
"murders" and "suicides" sections of the In- 
dex. It also contains a section of addenda and 
errata for the first volume. 

The lengthy, detailed abstracts available 
in the modern Index are a far cry from the 
early abstracts. According to Rothman: 

In the years before World War I, entries 
consisted generally of only one or a few words, 
often in 'telegram' style. Since the newspaper 
itself was small and there was no need or intent 
to use thtlndexhy itself, without reference to 
the original newspaper articles, these brief 
entries served quite adequately to identify the 
articles. But as the newspaper grew in size and 
complexity, it became necessary to character- 
ize the source articles more fully, and so, 
during the 1920s and 30s the abstracts gradu- 
ally became longer and more informative. 
This development was spurred further during 
the Second World War, when more detailed 
abstracts were needed to distinguish one battle- 
front report from another. 15 

The New York Times On Microfilm is 
available from the paper's beginnings in 1 8 5 1 . 
The Times purchased the Microfilming Cor- 
poration of America in the late 1960s and 
began to produce the microfilm and micro- 
fiche inhouse. The Index is now distributed by 
University Microfilms International, which 
purchased the Index licensing rights in 1983. 

Training Indexers 

Training for indexers and abstracters em- 
phasizes writing. "We stress old fashioned 
journalism," Holmes said. "Reading skills are 
important too. The indexers need to know 
when to stop reading and start writing. Index- 
ers mustproduce 70-1 00 abstracts a day while 
working on deadline. In addition, they have to 
be aware that users will be doing onl ine search- 
ing as well as reference searching." More than 
25 years ago Rothman said: 



Indexing is a giant guessing game. Indexers 
must assess in advance what information a 
user is likely to seek, where he is likely to look 
for it, and how much detail the abstract (or 
'entry') should include to possibly spare him 
a trip to the original item in the newspaper. 
They must devise ways of guiding the user to 
additional information that he may not be 
seeking but that would also be relevant to his 
quest. They must keep in mind that they are 
serving not only the users of today but also 
those of future generations (who, to compli- 
cate things still further, are bound to have a 
different perspective and only too likely to 
have a different vocabulary.) 16 

Some sections of the Times are more 
difficult and time-consuming to index than 
others, the frontpage and international stories 
among those. As early as 1924, Index editor 
Jennie Well and wrote, "An indexer needs 
psychological insight as much as an advertiser 
does. Certainly a good imagination is a vital 
element in his mental equipment." Welland 
went on to say that "The staff of the Index has 
turned specialist. Each person is held respon- 
sible for all articles on certain assigned sub- 
jects. For instance, one person takes care of 
prohibition in all its complications." 17 In 1 93 1, 
Charles N. Lurie, then editor of the Index, 
wrote, "In the writing of the entries, certain 
fields of work are assigned to each indexer; 
when possible, the subjects include fields in 
which she is personally interested." 18 At one 
time, indexers did indeed specialize in sub- 
jects, but, according to Holmes, "developed 
their own fiefdoms. We prefer indexers to be 
generalists." 

Computerized Production 

The current computer indexing system, a 
far cry from the typewriter and carbon slips or 
even the paper tape system of years past, 
provides instant editing. The 1968 Index fore- 
word indicates that the Index had just "com- 
pleted a two-year program of transition to a 
computer-assisted production process that 
enables us to abstract and index more material 
more accurately, more thoroughly and more 



1 78 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



efficiently." 19 The first edition of The New 
YorkTimes Thesaurus was published in 1968. 
A new Thesaurus was introduced in 1982. 

"We have high academic standards but 
we are not an academic enterprise," Holmes 
said. "We are a business and not part of the 
New York Times newsroom in any way." And 
according to Breckinridge Jones, Jr., deputy 
editor, "We do have more contact now with 
the newsroom and the library because of the 
online system." In 1983, Mead Data Central 
licensed the New York Times online data- 
bases. This includes the Information Bank 
Abstracls,vthich contains the Times abstracts 
as well as abstracts from dozens of other 
newspapers and magazines, A separate file 
called Advertising and Marketing Intelligence 
contains abstracts of articles from trade and 
professional journals. In addition, the New 
York Times is a full-text file on NEXIS, up- 
dated daily, which contains every article pub- 
lished in the paper since June 1980. Index 
entries are sent through a computer program 
at Mead, and the indexing terms are attached 
automatically to the corresponding full-text 
item. In January 1972 the Index was first 
processed through the New York Times Infor- 
mation Bank system. 

PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Seymour Topping of the New York Times 
wrote, "Readers have been attracted to elec- 
tronic media, in some cases to the exclusion of 
newspapers. In general, however, the two me- 
dia are supplementary and complementary." 
He went on to say that "There is a sense that we 
must be thinking about shaping the newspaper 
of the future so it can be more meaningful, 
more serviceable, more indispensable to the 
community." 20 Regardless, "for many people 
today's newspaper will not be dead tomorrow 
but will be then and perhaps forever a vital 
source of information," Rothman wrote. "It 
must have been this same conviction that 
prompted Henry Jarvis Raymond to start an 
index for the infant New York Times back in 
1851, and that has prompted his successors to 
maintain this service, to improve it and expand 
it, and to offer it to the public," 21 Their efforts 
have enhanced the value of the New York 
Times as a historical document. Thanks to 
them, this index, this road map to the New York 
Times, this record of record for nearly 150 
years, exists in convenient book format, readily 
available in many libraries, providing access 
to the newspaper of record. 



The New York Times Index. New York: Bowker, 
1966-1976. 15 Vols. (v. I, Sept. 185 1-1862; v. 
II, 1863-1874; v. Ill, 1875-1879; v. IV, 1880- 
1885; v, V, 1886-1889; v. VI, 1&9Q-1893; v. 
VII, 1894-1898; v. VIII, 1899-June 1905; v. 



IX, July 1905-Dec. 1906; v. X-XV, 1907- 
1912.) 
The New York Times Index. Semimonthly, with 
annual cumulations. New York: The Times, 
1913-, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Though much has been written about the 
New York Times, its Index has largely been 
overlooked. John Rothman, editor of the New 
York Times Index through the mid-1970s, 
provides the richest historical overviews in 
"Preserving the News That' s Fit To Print" and 
"About the Times Index." Harvey L. Holmes, 
Jr., currently the Index editor, and Breck- 
inridge Jones, Jr., deputy editor, contributed a 
large amount of material for this essay in a 



personal interview at the New York Times 
Index office on 9 February 1990. 

Doebler, Paul. "New York Times Opens Its Informa- 
tion Bank to Commercial Clients." Publishers 
Weekly 203 (June 18, 1973): 60-61. 

Dolan, Donna R. "Subject Searching of the New York 
Times Information Bank." Online 2 (April, 
1978): 26-30. 

Greengrass, Alan R. "The Information Bank Thesau- 
rus." In The Information Age in Perspective, 
Proceedings of the American Society for Infor- 



NEW YORK TIMES INDEX 179 



mation Science, comp. EverettH. Brenner, 137- 
140. White Plains, NY: Knowledge Industry 
Publications, 1978. 

Lurie, CharlesN. "TheNew York Times Index, 1930." 
Wilson Library Bulletin 5 (April, 1931): 501- 
03. 

Morse, Grant W. Guide to the Incomparable New 
York Times Index. New York: Fleet, 1980. 

"New York Times Sues Over Index." Publishers 
Weekly 21 1 (20 June 1977): 28. 

Paneth, Donald. "The New York Times:' In The 
Encyclopedia of American Journalism, 345-49 . 
New York: Facts on File, 1983. 

Rothman, John. "About The Times Index" Paper 
presented at a workshop on "The Uses, Misuses, 
and Abuses of The New York Times Index" 
jointly sponsored by Metro and Microfilming 
Corporation of America, New York, April 28, 
1977. 

. "Automated Information Processing at the 

New York Times" In Information Transfer, 
American Society for Information Science Pro- 
ceedings, 85-87. New York: Greenwood, 1968. 
-."Preserving the News That's Fit to Print." 



Saturday Review 48 (November 13, 1965): 89, 
102-03. 
Schwarzlose, Richard A. Newspapers, A Reference 
Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987. 



Shepard, Douglas. "A Corrective Supplement to 
Morse's Guide to the Incomparable New York 
Times Index" Reference Services Review 9 
(October/December, 1981): 33-35. 

Slade, Rod, and Alex M. Kelly. "Sources of Popular 
Literature Online: New York Times Information 
Bank and the Magazine Index." Database 2 
(March, 1979): 70-83. 

Welland, Jennie. "Published Newspaper Index." Li- 
brary Journal 49 (February 15, 1924): 177-78. 

The following are indexes to the New 
York Times Index, not the newspaper. Each is 
an "independent work not published or ap- 
proved by the New York Times*' See "New 
York Times Sues Over Index" in Publishers 
Weekly, June 20, 1977. 

Persona! Name Index to The New York Times Index, 
J 85 1-1974, edited by Byron A. Falk and Valerie 
R. Falk. Verdi, NV:Roxbury Data, 1976-1983. 
22 vols. 

Personal Name Index to The New York Times Index, 
7975-7PW,editedbyByronA.FalkandValerie 
R. Falk. Verdi, NV: Roxbury Data, 1986-1988. 
4 vols. 



NOTES 



' Donald Paneth, Encyclopedia of American Journalism 
(New York: Facts on File, 1983), 345. 

2 MeyerBerger, The Story of The New York Times, 1851- 
1951 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951), 563. 

3 John Rothman, "Preserving the News That's Fit to 

Print," Saturday Review 48 (13 November 1965): 
102. 

4 John Rothman, Foreword to the New York Times Index, 

1899-June 1905, iii. 

5 Foreword to the New York Times Index, July 1902- 

December 1906, v. 

^Foreword to the Mew York Times Index, 1863-1864, v. 

'Darlene Brannigan Smith and Paul N. Bloom, "Using 
Content Analysis to Understand the Consumer 
Movement," Journal of Consumer Affairs 23 (Win- 
ter 1989): 305. 

8 Harvey L. Holmes Jr., assistant director and editor, New 
York Times Index, interview with the author, 9 
February 1990. Many of the direct quotes in this 
essay derive from that interview with Holmes and 
his colleagues. 

"John Rothman, "Foreword" in the New York Times 
Index, 1968, unpaged. 

10 John Rothman, "About the Times Index," A paper 
delivered at a workshop on "The Uses, Misuses, and 



Abuses of the New York Times Index jointly spon- 
sored by Metro and Microfilming Corporation of 
America, 28 April 1977:2. 

11 "How to Use the New York Times Index," in the New 

York Times Index, 1988, unpaged. 

12 Ibid. 

13 John Rothman, "About The Times Index," 6. 

H John Rothman and Byron A. Falk, Jr., "Introduction" 
in The New York Times Obituaries Index, 1858- 
1968, (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation, 
1970), unpaged. 

15 John Rothman, "About the Times Index" 2. 

!d John Rothman, "Preserving the News That's Fit to 
Print," 89, 102. 

17 Jennie Welland, "The Published Newspaper Index," 

Library Journal, 49 (15 February 1924): 177. 

18 CharlesN. Lurie, "TheNew York Times Index, 1930," 

Wilson Library Bulletin 5 (April 193 1): 502. 

19 John Rothman, "Foreword" to the New York Times 

Index, 1968, unpaged. 
""Seymour Topping," in Steven Friedlander, comp., 

"Stop the Presses," Avenue 12 (October 1988): 79. 
21 John Rothman, "Preserving the News That's Fit to 

Print," 103. 



m 

Si 

h 



"The Jewel in the Crown": The 

Oxford English Dictionary 



James Rettig 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

In 1984, Robert Burchfield, editor of the four 
supplementary volumes of the Oxford English 
Dictionary, called that dictionary the "'jewel 
in the crown'" of the Oxford University Press .' 
It has not always been so. The Oxford Univer- 
sity Press formally emerged from its anteced- 
ents in 1690 to produce Bibles. 2 Its twofold 
mission was to publish learned books as well 
as the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible. 
The latter category proved more lucrative. 
Bibles, still a perennial item on OUP's list, 
remained its stock in trade through the nine- 
teenth century. The shift from being known 
primarily as a publisher of The Word to being 
the publisher about words began in the middle 
of the nineteenth century and was complete 
early in the twentieth. 

The history of English language dictio- 
naries antedates the history of the Oxford 
University Press by nearly a century and that 
of its great dictionary by yet another and more . 
Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabetical! 
(1604), generally acknowledged to be the first 
English dictionary, was simply a list of diffi- 
cult words. It explained their meanings and 
labeled those words having aFrench or Greek 
origin, but other apparatus familiar to today's 
dictionary users — etymology, identification 
of a word's part of speech, and illustrative 
quotations—were lacking. These features 
developed in later dictionaries, butuntil Nathan 
Bailey published his An Universal Etymologi- 



cal English Dictionary in 1721, English-lan- 
guage dictionaries largely followed that early 
model of listing only hard words. Although 
Bailey listed only about 40,000 words, he 
included many common, even some vulgar, 
words as well as difficult ones. 3 

Johnson's and Richardson's 
Dictionaries 

Later in the eighteenth century, Samuel 
Johnson broke new ground in two ways. First, 
in his Plan for a Dictionary of the English 
Language (1747), he examined various prin- 
ciples by which he could exclude categories of 
words from the dictionary and found all of 
them lacking. His Plan implies a theretofore 
unknown catholicity in lexicography. How- 
ever, the incredible demands of the task he 
imposed upon himself forced him to modify 
his plan in practice and the dictionary was not 
as inclusive as expected. Nevertheless, his 
intent was noble and it anticipated later lexico- 
graphical efforts managed by teams. Second, 
he illustrated the meanings of words and their 
various senses through quotations. This prac- 
tice dates back to at least 1598 when John 
Florio used it in his A Worlde of Wordes, an 
Italian-English dictionary that included quo- 
tations from Italian authors. But it was John- 
son who made the practice the foundation of 
serious English lexicography. In his famous 
preface to his dictionary, he advised his read- 
ers that "The solution of all difficulties, and 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 181 



the supply of all defects, must be sought in the 
examples, subjoined to the various senses of 
each word, and ranged according to the time of 
their authors." 4 With the first edition of his 
Dictionary (1755), Johnson set a powerful 
precedent, drawing many of his quotes from 
noted writers such as Shakespeare, Dryden, 
and Bacon whose works he "regardfed] as the 
wells of English undefikd" 5 Because neither 
he nor anyone else at the time understood the 
proper pronunciation of Middle English, he 
had little appreciation of Chaucer and other 
early authors; therefore in his dictionary John- 
son drew illustrative quotes principally from 
writers of the Elizabethan age and later. 
Johnson's dictionary went through four edi- 
tions in his lifetime, the last appearing in 1773; 
was reprinted numerous times thereafter; and 
was used as a foundation for later dictionaries, 
including Noah Webster's. 

The next significant advance in English 
lexicography was Webster's An American 
Dictionary of the English Language (New 
York: S. Converse, 1828). Webster did not 
think quotations were necessary and relied 
instead solely on precision in definitions to 
convey words' meanings. Webster advanced 
English lexicography, theretofore an art prac- 
ticed to advantage only in Great Britain, by 
treating terms of American origin or use with 
the same seriousness as those drawn from the 
canons of Shakespeare and Spenser. 

Charles Richardson also contributed to 
the principles of English lexicography. In his 
A New Dictionary of the English Language 
(London: W. Pickering, 1836-37), he col- 
lected illustrative quotations back to the four- 
teenth century; Johnson used quotes only as 
far back as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586). 
However, because Richardson's purpose in 
compiling his dictionary and selecting his 
quotes was to demonstrate that each word 
"had a single immutable meaning," 6 his dic- 
tionary was flawed in conception and thus in 
execution. It did, nonetheless, offer some- 
thing more up-to-date than Johnson's dictio- 
nary, by then 80 years old. 



The Philological Society 

Thoughtful men recognized thatalthough 
Richardson's recorded a greater percentage 
of the English vocabulary than any other dic- 
tionary, it was incomplete. Hence on June 18, 
1857, the Philological Society of London ap- 
pointed a committee consisting of Herbert 
Coleridge, F.J. Furnivall, and Richard 
Chenevix Trench "to collect unregistered 
words in English.*' 7 The intent was to compile 
a supplement to Richardson's dictionary and 
thereby bring the lexicographic record of En- 
glish up to date. But then, on November 5 and 
19 of that year, Trench, then Dean of 
Westminster and later Anglican Archbishop 
of Dublin, presented to the Society a two-part 
paper entitled "On some Deficiencies in our 
English Dictionaries." Trench faulted exist- 
ing dictionaries on seven points: 

I. Obsolete words are incompletely regis- 
tered; some inserted, some not; with no rea- 
sonableruleadducedfortheomissionofthese, 
the insertion of those other. 

II. Families or groups of words are often 
imperfect, some members of a family in- 
serted, while others are omitted. 

III. Oftentimes much earlier examples of the 
employment of words exist than any which 
our Dictionaries have cited; indicating that 
they were earlier introduced into the language 
than these examples would imply; and in case 
of words now obsolete, much later, frequently 
marking their currency at a period long after 
that when we are left to suppose that they 
passed out of use. 

IV. Important meanings and uses of words are 
passed over; sometimes the later alone given, 
while the earlier, without which the history of 
words will be often maimed and incomplete, 
or even unintelligible, are unnoticed. 

V. Comparatively little attention is paid to the 
distinguishing of synonymous words. 

VI. Many passages in our literature are passed 
by, which might be usefully adduced in illus- 
tration of the first introduction, etymology, 
and meaning of words. 

VII. And lastly, our Dictionaries err in redun- 
dancy as well as in defect, in the too much as 




182 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



If 



well as the toolittle; all of them inserting some 
things, and some of them many things, which 
have properly no claim to find room in their 
pages. 8 

Trench's trenchant criticism of the state of 
English lexicography, supported by copious 
examples, convinced the Society to abandon 
its inadequate plan to issue a supplementary 
dictionary in favor of a plan to create an 
entirely new dictionary. The faults Trench 
found in existing dictionaries implied the 
desiderata for the new dictionary. These 
formed the foundation for what was to become 
the Oxford English Dictionary. 

As the OED's. legendary editor, James 
A.H. Murray noted, "the English Dictionary, 
like the English Constitution, is the creation of 
no one man, and of no one age; it is a growth 
that has slowly developed itself adown the 
ages." 9 Murray was speaking not of the dictio- 
nary he was editing, but of English dictionar- 
ies collectively, of which the OED is but the 
exemplar. As those that came before it and the 
many that have with heavy indebtedness to the 
OED followed, the plan that developed for the 
OED had antecedents in earlier dictionaries. 

The nineteenth century was the golden 
age of philology. In. Germany Jacob and 
Wilhelm Grimm pioneered the study of lan- 
guage on historical principles. They estab- 
lished the practices of basing definitions of 
words on historical principles, that is, of dis- 
cerning their meanings through use and of 
charting changes in meaning through changes 
in use over the life of a word. At the time 
Trench had influenced the Philological Soci- 
ety to embark upon a new English dictionary, 
the Grimms had already been at work on a 
historical dictionary of German for several 
years. The first part of their Deutsches 
Worterbuch (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1852-1960) 
appeared in 1 852, The project suffered andyet 
survived setbacks, including two world wars, 
and concluded in 1960. 

The Grimms' Deutsches Worterbuch was 
not the only model for the Philological Society 
to imitate. Hans Aarsleff has shown that 
Herbert Coleridge, the dictionary's first edi- 



tor, credited George Liddell and Robert Scott's 
Greek-English Lexicon Based on the German 
Work of Francis Passow (Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1 843) as an exemplar for its 
reliance on quotations for clues as to usage, 
meaning, etc. In a letter to Trench, Coleridge 
said that "the theory of lexicography we pro- 
fess is that which Passow was the first to 
enunciate clearly and put into practice suc- 
cessfully — viz., 'that every word should be 
made to tell its own story'— the story of its 
birth and life, and in many cases of its death, 
and even occasionally of its resuscitation." 10 
Passow, a German philologist, firstpropounded 
these principles in 1812. u 

From the examples provided by the 
Deutsches Worterbuch and Passow as embod- 
ied in Liddell and Scott' s Lexicon and from the 
inspiration of Trench's critique of English 
dictionaries, the Society on January 7, 1858, 
resolved "That instead of the Supplement to 
the Standard English Dictionaries now in 
course of preparation by the order of the 
Society, a New Dictionary of the English 
Language be prepared under the Authority of 
the Philological Society." 12 Just two weeks 
later F.J. Furnivall read to the Society "a 
circular which the New Dictionary Commit- 
tee proposed to issue, stating the plan of the 
Dictionary and asking for help in carrying it 
out," 13 The help sought was readers to record 
occurrences of words in the works of noted 
English writers. When the intention had been 
to issue a supplementary rather than a com- 
pletely new dictionary, members of the Soci- 
ety voluntarily read books and prepared re- 
ports of "unregistered words." Thus was es- 
tablished the manner in which the editors 
would obtain the basic building bricks they 
would fashion into the monumental dictio- 
nary. 

Coleridge's and Fumivall's 
Editorships 

The next year Herbert Coleridge, grand 
nephew of the famous poet, accepted the 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 1 83 



dictionary's editorship. That same year saw 
publication of the Proposal for the Publica- 
tion of a New English Dictionary by the Philo- 
logical Society (London: Trtibner, 1859). The 
founding principles enunciated in this docu- 
ment attest to the influence of Trench' s ideas. 
The proposal calls for the inclusion of "every 
word occurring in the literature of the lan- 
guage it professes to illustrate," the gathering 
of quotations back to "the end of the reign of 
Henry III [i.e., 1272]," the uniform adoption 
of the historical principle in the treatment of 
individual words, and the inclusion in every 
etymology of "that language which seems to 
present the radical element contained in the 
word in its oldest form." 14 The list of principles 
put forth in the proposal echo Trench again 
and again. 

This proposal and other appeals by the 
Society generated interest in the dictionary on 
both sides of the Atlantic. Lists of authors and 
works to be read for the dictionary were com- 
piled, volunteers enlisted, and assignments 
made. Three lists of authors and books were 
drawn up, one for the period of 1250-1526, 
one for 1526-1674, and the last for 1674- 
1858. A proposal by Coleridge that "Ameri- 
cans should make themselves responsible for 
the whole of eighteenth century literature, 
which probably would have a less chance of 
finding as many readers in England" came to 
naught. 15 Nevertheless, American readers con- 
tributed to the dictionary, scouring many books 
both British and American from various peri- 
ods and reporting on their reading. In his 
presidential address to the Philological Soci- 
ety for 1880, Murray singled out Americans 
for special commendation. 16 In 1 860 Coleridge 
estimated that the first installment of the dic- 
tionary would appear in two year's time. The 
estimate was much too optimistic; indeed, 
Coleridge died in April 1861 at age 3 1 . 

With Coleridge's death, the editorship 
fell to Fumivall; this proved to be a mixed 
blessing for the dictionary project. Fnrnivall, 
by profession a solicitor and by nature a man 
of great energy with many interests, devoted 



his life to literature and education. Fumivall 's 
tenure as editor proved very beneficial to the 
dictionary project, for this indefatigable 
founder of organizations did much to create 
the environment the dictionary needed to meet 
its ambitious goals of all inclusiveness, of 
using quotations from as far back as the thir- 
teenth century, rigorous application of histori- 
cal principles, and of supplying full etymolo- 
gies, Fumivall created or was instrumental in 
the foundings of numerous literary societies, 
most significantly for the dictionary, the Early 
English Text Society (1864). It had become 
obvious that to carry out the plan of the dictio- 
nary, something would have to be done to 
improve the availability of texts of literature 
from the Old English and Middle English 
periods. As it was, the Philological Society 
was taking rare books from the sixteenth cen- 
tury and cutting them up for distribution to 
readers and for the editors' use! Fortunately, 
early manuscripts were safely out of its reach 
in various repositories. But they were also 
outside the grasp of readers and thus these 
texts' wordhoards could not disgorge their 
treasures to the readers . Hence the importance 
of the Early English Text Society. Without its 
successful efforts to provide printed editions 
of these early documents, the OED 's founda- 
tion would have been built on the sand of 
conjecture rather than the rock of research. 

But whilst Fumivall busied himself with 
important ancillary matters, work on the dic- 
tionary itself just inched along, and haphaz- 
ardly at that. With regard to the dictionary 
proper, Fumivall developed a system of as- 
signing responsibility for words beginning 
with various letters to subeditors. Readers sent 
the subeditors "slips," the 4" x 6" cards on 
which they noted words, provided the words' 
illustrative quotes, and noted the quotes' 
sources and dates. The subeditors were re- 
sponsible for organizing these materials, a 
responsibility they carried out with varying 
degrees of quality. With modification and 
refinement this system later proved to be an 
important element in the actual creation of the 
dictionary. 



184 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



James AH Murray 

Happily several events in 1 876 converged 
to revitalize the dictionary project. An Anglo- 
Americanpublishing partnership of Macmillan 
and Harper and Brothers approached James 
A.H, Murray, a master at Mill Hill School 
south of London and a philological scholar of 
note, about the possibility of editing a dictio- 
nary to rival Webster's. Murray, a largely self- 
educated man of eclectic interests, received 
his doctorate from Edinburgh University in 
recognition of his achievements, He was a 
man who steadfastly believed that any task 
worth doing was worth doing well, a trait that 
assured the dictionary's quality but also its 
slow progress. At the same time they ap- 
proached Murray, the publishers inquired 
about the availability of the Philological 
Society'smaterialsforthe enterprise. Someof 
these materials were made available to Murray. 
Basing his work on these, he prepared sample 
entries and, at the publishers' request, scaled 
these down, but not enough to satisfy them. 
Since Murray was not willing to cut them 
further and since the publisher was not willing 
to support an enterprise on the scale Murray's 
standards demanded, the proposal came to 
naught. However the epiphany of Murray's 
sample entries renewed the Philological 
Society's interest in the new dictionary. 

Initial arrangements with publishers for a 
dictionary that was to have been published 
more than ten years earlier had long since 
lapsed. However in 1878 the Society began 
negotiations with the Oxford University Press. 
These concluded successfully March 1 , 1879, 
when the two parties signed a contract for a 
dictionary 

to occupy not less than 6,000 nor mote than 
7,000 pages, . . . and the said Dictionary shall 
be edited and prepared on the same principles 
and on the same lines ofhistorical and linguis- 
tic evidence as to the forms and meanings of 
its words, as are shown on the Specimen page 
. . . , and shall contain on its title page 
'Founded mainly on the materials collectedby 
the Philological Society. 17 



The contract not-so-modestly underestimated 
the dictionary's ultimate length by half. 

Earlier in 1 878 the Society had persuaded 
Murray to accept the editorship. And thus was 
the project rejuvenated and set on its sure-but- 
lengthy course, Murray began preparing for 
the task ahead. On the lawn of his home at Mill 
Hill he erected a small building, made of iron 
to minimize the threat of fire, and dubbed it the 
Scriptorium. He also lined the walls of the 
Scriptorium with pigeon holes, "1 ,029 in num- 
ber, for the reception of the alphabetically 
arranged slips" 1 * to accommodate each word's 
slips, to be arranged in alphabetical order, as 
the dictionary progressed from A to Z. Over 
the years Furnivall had received many of the 
materials from subeditors when they gave up 
on the project; Murray reported that on Lady 
Day (March 25) he "received from Mr. 
Furnivall some ton and three-quarters of ma- 
terials which had accumulated under his roof 
as sub-editor after sub-editor fell off in his 
labors." 19 

The value of the materials Murray re- 
ceived varied considerably. They came from 
diverse sources. The letter H's slips arrived 
from Florence; the slips for "Pa" had been 
stored in a bam in Ireland and its stock con- 
tinuously depleted as slips were used to light 
fires; one bag of slips arrived inhabited by 
mice and another held the corpse of a rat! 20 
Some were damp and many scrawled illeg- 
ibly. But nearly two tons of slips, sans mice, 
were not enough. To adhere to his rigorous 
standards and produce the dictionary envi- 
sioned by the Society, Murray needed more 
slips, byproducts of a still more ambitious 
reading project. In 1879 Murray appealed for 
"a thousand readers ... to complete the work 
as far as possible within the next three years." 21 
Readers were directed to 

Make a quotation for every word that strikes 
you as rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, 
peculiar, or used in a peculiar way. . . . 

Take special note ofpassages which show 
or imply that a word is either new and tenta- 
tive, or needing explanation as obsolete or 






OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 185 



archaic, and which thus help fix the date of its 
introduction or disuse. 

Make as many quotations as convenient 
to you for ordinary words, when these are used 
significantly, and help by the context to ex- 
plain their own meaning, or show their use,- 22 

Not enough readers took the last instruction 
sufficiently to heart. As a result, when Murray 
and his assistants came to write the articles on 
common words, they often had to do addi- 
tional reading to obtain a sufficient number of 
quotations of enough value from enough peri- 
ods to demonstrate properly such a word's 
history. Murray also began a practice, also 
followed by later editors, of issuing lists of 
books to be read and of words for which 
examples, both early and recent, were lacking. 

Murray had other editorial issues to settle 
before the dictionary could progress beyond 
the sample entries that had rekindled the 
Society's interest and persuaded the Oxford 
University Press to publish it. The most sig- 
nificant was devising a manner of showing 
pronunciation. Murray consulted with various 
experts on the subject and created a system 
thatreceived the Society's approval on March 
17, 1882. 23 A typographical style also had to 
be established and followed consistently. The 
typography had to help identify and maintain 
distinctions among the parts of each entry — 
headword, etymology, definitions, quotations, 
etc. More than a century later Murray was to 
win the gratitude of computer programmers 
and systems engineers for the precision with 
which he designed his dictionary's typogra- 
phy. 

In May 1 882, nearly a quarter of a century 
after the idea of the dictionary was first pro- 
posed, its first batch of copy went to the 
printer. 24 A-Ant, the first 352-page installment 
of the New English Dictionary, appeared on 
February 1, 1884, two weeks after Murray 
proudly laid three advance copies on the table 
before his colleagues in the Philological Soci- 
ety. 25 (Eventually each fascicle numbered 64 
pages.) That spring Murray estimated that the 
dictionary, provided he received enough as- 
sistants, would be completed in less than 12 



years. 26 This was but one of many instances in 
which Murray's optimistic estimates proved 
to be wishful thinking. 

Needed Help 

Help was needed and it came from an 
unexpected source. Henry Bradley, a largely 
self-educated philologist then supporting his 
family by freelance literary work and review- 
ing, wrote a two-part review of the first fas- 
cicle for the Academy in its February 16 and 
March 1 issues of 1884. Bradley praised the 
dictionary for its willingness to accommodate 
all words, its historical sweep, the clarity of its 
typography, the value of its illustrative quota- 
tions, and its concern for etymology. He also 
noted that "there are few indeed of the ety- 
mologies given in this first part of the Dictio- 
nary which we are inclined to dispute." 27 Yet 
in disputing several, he demonstrated his au- 
thority. 

The Delegates of the Oxford University 
Press, its governing board, expressed concern 
throughout the protracted publication of the 
dictionary about the slowness of its pace and 
continually urged its editor to move faster. In 
order to further the dictionary's progress, 
Murray resigned his teaching duties to devote 
full time to his editorial duties and moved to 
Oxford in 1885. At the urging of the Del- 
egates, the staff was enlarged. In May 1886, 
due largely to his insightful review of A-Ant, 
Henry Bradley joined Murray's staff. Late in 
1 887 he was put at the head of a team charged 
with responsibility for the letter E and worked 
thereafter independently of Murray. 

Both Murray's team and Bradley's team 
followed Fumivall's model whereby sub- 
editors did preliminary work. Their assistants 
prepared a draft of each word's article and 
then the editor reviewed and corrected it 
Among assistants a division of labor devel- 
oped based on each one's expertise. However 
some questions could not be answered within 
the Scriptorium, The lack of adequate space 
and library resources often forced the staff to 



* 



1 86 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



> i 



make time-consuming trips to the Bodleian or 
college libraries, And to answer some ques- 
tions, such as the intended meaning of a par- 
ticularword as used by a contemporary writer, 
Murray corresponded with the likes of Lord 
Tennyson, Robert Meredith, Thomas Hardy, 
Robert Browning, James Russell Lowell, and 
a wide range of experts, including "the Direc- 
torofthe Royal Botanic Gardens atKew about 
the first record of the name of an exotic plant; 
... to a Jesuit father on a point of Roman 
Catholic Divinity; [and] to the Secretary of the 
Astronomical Society about the primum-mo- 
hile or the solar constant," 28 

The dictionary progressed under Murray 
and Bradley's guidance. The Deceit to Deject 
fascicle published January 1, 1895, bore the 
title The Oxford English Dictionary, the title 
that in time came to supplant New English 
Dictionary. To speed its progress even more, 
William Alexander Craigie of the University 
of St. Andrews joined Bradley in 1 897 and 
assisted with the letter G and assisted Murray 
with the letters I and K. In 1901 Craigie 
assumed independent editorial responsibility 
for the letter Q. 29 Charles Talbut Onions be- 
came the dictionary's fourth editor in 1914, 
having joined Murray's staff in 1895. "Be- 
tween 1906 and 1913 [he had] prepared spe- 
cial portions of M, N, R, and S" and in 1914 
"began with a separate staff to edit the later 
portion of that letter (Su-Sz)." 30 Even with 
four editorial teams working on the dictionary 
simultaneously, Murray's hope to see its 
completion by his eightieth birthday was frus- 
trated. He died at age 78 on July 26, 1 9 15, after 
a brief illness; the dictionary was well into the 
letter S and Murray had begun planning for the 
letter U. In recognition of his achievement, 
Murray had been knighted in 1 908; at that time 
the dictionary had been published through the 
letter P. Murray's death slowed progress, as 
did the loss of staff members to military ser- 
vice during the Great War and Bradley's death 
on May 23, 1923. Fortunately the system of 
several editors working independently assured 
continuity and the work moved forward. 



Critical Reception 

Seventy-one years after Dean Trench had 
criticized existing dictionaries, the dictionary 
he had envisioned finally appeared. In April 
1928 the first copies were presented to King 
George and President Coolidge, "the highest 
representatives of the two great English-speak- 
ing nations." 31 It was received with universal 
acclaim. The Nation, anticipating its comple- 
tion a bit prematurely in 1927, said that "No 
similar work . , , is comparable in magnitude, 
accuracy, or completeness." 32 The unsigned 
review in the Times Literary Supplement called 
' it a "monumental and inalienable public pos- 
session. " 33 The Saturday Review hailed it as "a 
monument which will last when a thousand 
best-sellers are forgotten" and called it "the 
topmost peak of a long range of gloss-collec- 
tors and lexicographers." 34 Ernest Weekley, 
writing in the Quarterly Review called it a 
"noble monument of the English language." 35 
And Floyd Knight said that "one might look 
for flaws in the 'New English Dictionary', or 
lament that it does not include proper names; 
but its scholarship is so monumental as to 
make fault-finding seem petty." 36 

Yet it had been 44 years since A-Ant 
appeared. During those four decades mankind 
had learned how to fly, how to talk across the 
miles over radio, how to make moving pic- 
tures, and how to record sound and play back 
recordings. Inescapably a product of its times, 
much of the OED was behind the times. Well 
before the dictionary was complete, some had 
recognized that it would be incomplete. In 
1919, Craigie himself outlined the work that 
needed to be done to supplement the dic- 
tionary's historical coverage. In a paper pre- 
sented to the Philological Society in 1919 he 
called for work to commence on historical 
dictionaries for the Old English; the Middle 
English (1175-1500); the Tudor and Stuart 
(1500-1675); the 1675-1800; and the older 
Scottishperiods. 37 More than 70years later the 
tasks Craigie outlined are not yet complete. 
The OED Supplement, edited by Craigie and 
Onions, appeared in 1933. A plan for a new 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 187 



Dictionary of Old English was announced in 
the late 1960s butthus far hasyielded fascicles 
for only several letters, but progress contin- 
ues. 38 The Middle English Dictionary, (Ann 
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952- ) 
begun in 1925 and whose first fascicle did not 
appear until 1952, has reached "So," Some 
quotations have been collected for a diction- 
ary of the Tudor and Stuart period for the Early 
Modem English Dictionary, but that project 
has been suspended, perhaps permanently. No 
effort has been made towards a dictionary of 
the 1675-1 SOOperiod, one that Craigie thought 
might not differ enough from the nineteenth 
century, a period we) 1 represented in the OED, 
to require its own dictionary. A Dictionary of 
the Older Scottish Tongue, (Chicago: Univer- 
sity of Chicago Press, 193 1- ) begun under 
Craigie's editorship, had reached "Re" at the 
end of the 1980s. Several years after calling 
for these dictionaries, Craigie concluded 
American English also needed its own histori- 
cal dictionary and, even while helping bring 
the OED to its conclusion, departed for the 
University of Chicago to assume the editorship 
of A Dictionary of American English on His- 
torical Principles (Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1938-44). 

Flaws in the Dictionary 

Despite the praise it received in 1928, 
many of the dictionary's users did "look for 
flaws in the 'New English Dictionary'" and 
found them. Even though readers in North 
America had contributed thousands of slips 
for the dictionary, the sorts of sources they 
read differed little in nature from the sources 
being read in England. As a result, peculiarly 
American senses of words common to the two 
national vocabularies and distinctly Ameri- 
can words were badly underrepresented in the 
dictionary, as were distinctly Australian, South 
African, etc., English words. In this signifi- 
cant way the dictionary fell short of Murray's 
stated goal of "containing] all English words 
ordinary and extraordinary," 39 A much more 



common form of criticism was antedatings of 
the earliestrecordeduse of particular words or 
notations of later uses of words labeled as rare 
or obsolete. Murray himself anticipated just 
this form of criticism, inevitable given the 
sometimes haphazard way in which early vol- 
unteer readers did their work. In 1884 he 
estimated that "Earlier instances will . . . yet be 
found of three-fourths of all the words re- 
corded, above all, of the words introduced 
fromLatinsince the Renascence." 40 Andnearly 
five decades after the dictionary's comple- 
tion, one prominent scholar declared that "in- 
stead of providing an unquestioned basis for 
further research, the O.E.D. has to become its 
object." 41 Rather than contribute to the endless 
line of articles relating hit-and-miss antedat- 
ing and postdating of single words that, as 
Murray himself predicted, hadbecome a staple 
in the pages of Notes & Queries and other 
learned journals, Jiirgen Schafer did a system- 
atic study of the works of Shakespeare and 
Nashe to derive an overall estimate of how 
many of the 260,000 headwords in the OED 
(includingthe 1933 supplement) are subject to 
antedating. He concluded that more than 
96,000 can be antedated, some by more than a 
century, One imagines that Murray would 
have been pleased that his own estimate had 
been so far above that established scientifi- 
cally, or at least as scientifically as possible, 
for Murray considered himself not a literary 
man but a scientist whose object of study was 
the English language. 

Antedating and postdating of OED words 
can become a game and, like any game, canbe 
corrupted. Marghanita Laski, credited with 
submitting more than 250,000 slips for the 
four- volume supplement begun in 1957, has 
been a very adept player at the game. In 1 968, 
noting that the editors like to have five ex- 
amples of a word to establish its meaning, 
Laski 

"admitted] to certain plantings, though not 
furtive ones, For instance, when the editor 
asked me if I could produce evidence to show 
that OED was wrong in supposing that berate, 
v. was obsolete in England, 1 couldn't imme- 




188 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



diatety iaymy hands onan example, so slipped 
it into my next review and carded it — but 
several implanted ones turned up in the next 
few weeks. And when it occurred to me that 
ironmonger (the shop) now has two meanings, 
corresponding respectively toFr. quincailkrie 
and Fr. droguerie, it seemed to me unlikely I 
would find quotations illustrating this. So I 
wrote an article on changes in shop functions 
. . . offered it to the Guardian '$ women's page, 
explaining why I'd written it, and then, when 
it was published, carded it."** 

The Supplement and the second edition of the 
OED quote Laski's 1952 use of "berate" as a 
verb! Although it is not clear that this is the 
planting she submitted* it seems likely. 

No dating in the OED of the earliest 
occurrence of any word can be taken as a 
certainty of its earliest appearance in written 
English; rather that dating denotes the earliest 
reference available to the editors. The method 
by which the slips for the original were com- 
piled was imperfect. Most readers, Craigie 
noted, "as a rule did their duty pretty effec- 
tively by taking out at the most two or three 
thousand quotations from a single work." 43 
However some fell below the editors' stan- 
dards and too few fully heeded Murray's 
entreaty to give sufficient attention to ordi- 
nary words. Several years into the project he 
told the Philological Society "I have often 
thought that if I could find time to direct it, or 
if the Society could find someone else to direct 
it, the reading of all books over again, with the 
instructions, Take out quotations for all words 
that do not strike you as rare, peculiar, or 
peculiarly used, 1 would be of enormous ser- 
vice." 4 " Furthermore, the readers often worked 
from incomplete or less-than-authoritative 
texts of early works. Only if every text of 
every literary creation of the previous seven 
centuries had been available to the editors and 
only if every word in every one of those 
documents had been concordanced and linked 
to its contextual phrase — only if this 
unimaginably unmanageable task had been 
performed and only if Murray and others had 
had time to examine every use of every word 



thus recorded, could one say with certainty 
that the editors had recorded the earliest use of 
each word in each of its senses. 

The First Supplement 

Upon completion of the dictionary, work 
began immediately on its first supplement, a 
contingency provided for in the 1879 agree- 
ment between the Philological Society and the 
Oxford University Press. Craigie and Onions 
were engaged to produce the supplement. 
Already a considerable body of additional 
slips, many providing antedatings of words, 
had accumulated. However, a supplement in- 
corporating all of this information as well as 
new words and new senses of old words 
"could not be contemplated" at thattime "and 
it was therefore resolved to produce a supple- 
mentary volume the scope of which would be 
in the main restricted to the treatment of those 
accessions of words and senses which had 
taken place during the preceding 50 years." 45 
Onions and Craigie allowed two categories of 
exceptions: "items of modern origin and 
present currency that had been either inten- 
tionally or accidentally omitted would be in- 
cluded, and account would be taken of earlier 
evidence for American uses, which Sir Wil- 
liam Craigie was in a position to supply." 46 
And so "appendicitis,""burg"meaningatown, 
"chop-suey," "intelligentsia," "movie," 
"mushiness " "peachy" meaning agreeable, 
"radio," "Rayon," "speedway," "tyrannosau- 
rus," and "wave-length" entered the OED. 
Scientific and technical terms, treated inad- 
equately in the original OED even as such 
terms proliferated rapidly, figure prominently 
in the supplement. The tale of how Murray 
decided against including "radium" because 
he doubted the word would take hold is leg- 
endary. Given the gift of hindsight, the 
supplement's editors corrected this notorious 
omission and others less celebrated. 

Upon completion of the supplement, the 
staff was disbanded and the OED became a 
document frozen in time. However the Ian- 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 189 



guage continued to grow through the coinage 
ofnew words; some words took on new senses; 
some words fell out of favor and others gained 
respectability. Yet there was no one to record 
these changes systematically and to keep the 
dictionary up to date. Its users, meanwhile, 
continued to report antedatings and postdatings 
and journal editors continued to publish these 
reports. Other dictionaries, of course, carried 
on,butnone ofthese chart the life of each word 
through every period as minutely as does the 
OED. The decision to dismantle the lexico- 
graphic machine that had been operating con- 
tinuously for more than fifty years was most 
unfortunate. The only effort by the Oxford 
University Press to update the OED was ob- 
lique in that it was done through the revised 
third edition of The Shorter Oxford English 
Dictionary. This dictionary, derived from its 
namesake, was first published in February 
1933, and reprinted with corrections the next 
month, in a second edition in 1936, in a third 
edition in 1944, and with revised addenda in 
1955. Entries in the 40-page 1955 addenda 
and corrigenda section are stripped down ver- 
sions of OED entries all but bereft of illustra- 
tive quotations. 

As a product of its times, the OED inevi- 
tably shared some of the prejudices of the 
period. Victorian prudishness led to its falling 
short of Murray 's goal to make it all-inclusive. 
For example, two well known four-letter words, 
one referring to the act of sexual intercourse, 
the other to female genitalia, were excluded. It 
has been taken to task for failing "not only the 
smut-hound but also the student of literature 
by omitting any blush-making sub-meanings 
of familiar words, whatever the eminence of 
the authors who have used them." 47 Not until 
1968 did the Delegates of the Oxford Univer- 
sity Press approve their inclusion. 48 Also ex- 
cluded were many dialect and slang terms, 
with those included always labeled as such. 
The OED gave preference to the Received 
Standard dialect of England, thereby implic- 
itly endorsing it as "proper" English. Just what 
is "proper" English and what is not, indeed 
whether or not such a thing exists or can exist, 



has been and continues to be a matter of 
considerable debate, brought to white-heat 
intensity in 1961 with publication of Webster's 
Third New International Dictionary (Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1961), a dictio- 
nary that departed from the practice of making 
such distinctions. Suffice it to say that the 
OED's practices have figured in the debate. 
Uponits initial completion in 1928,thatanony- 
mous reviewer for the Times Literary Supple- 
ment praised it for capturing the language 
before it had been degraded when "the newly 
literate received their charter to treat the lan- 
guage as they pleased in hourly print." 49 This 
reviewer counted himself as one of "those 
who respect the purity of the language, who 
try to honour and understand its traditions and 
its idioms, who feel doubtful whether even so 
supple an instrument as English can bear with- 
out grave deterioration the incessant strain put 
upon it by modern democracy, [and who] . . . 
rejoice[s] that the Dictionary has come into 
being when it has and as it has." 50 The very 
historical principles upon which the OED is 
founded and from which its well-deserved 
reputation rests mock such praise! One could 
just as well say that it would have been better 
had the OED come to completion in 1612 or 
1756 or 1857 so as to have captured the 
language before its corruption by some other 
forces. Entry after entry after entry in the OED 
demonstrates unequivocally the inevitability 
of change in language. And that is why, if one 
can commit a crime against the English lan- 
guage, dispersal of the dictionary staff upon 
completion of the 1933 supplement was surely 
such a crime. 

Robert Burchfield 

The Oxford University Press began to 
atone for this grave mistake in 1957 when it 
appointed Robert Burchfield, aNewZealander 
who had studied Old English and related lan- 
guages while a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, to 
edit a new supplement to the OED to replace 
the 1933 supplement. Burchfield has related 
that, '"The very hard-headed publishers at the 






190 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



M 
% 



time looked at me more or less sternly . . . and 
they said, "Look, 1275 pages, one volume, 
seven years: there is the format,"'" 51 The 
lessons of 1879-1928 had been forgotten. 
When the first volume of the supplement 
appeared in 1 972, eight years after the proj ect 
had been scheduled for completion, it alone 
contained 1,331 pages covering "a" through 
"gyver." Burchfield estimated at the time that 
the supplement would be complete in two 
more volumes and within six years. Fourteen 
years later the fourth and final volume of the 
supplement appeared. He adhered to the same 
high standards Murray established and went 
to the same painstaking steps to establish just 
what a word meant, consulting Buckminster 
Fuller about"dymaxion"J.R.R,Tolkeinabout 
"hobbit," and Murray Gell-Mann about 
"quark." 

The 1972-86 four- volume supplement 
lists antedatings of words, new senses, and 
new words. It is the most catholic part of the 
OED, for in it Burchfield' s "aim, doubtless not 
fully achieved, was to give parity of treatment 
to the English of the United States and that of 
the United Kingdom. The same broad demo- 
cratic line was taken for other varieties of 
English, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 
South Africa, and so on." 52 But, great as its 
contribution is in bringing the OED up to date 
and in including words from vigorous En- 
glish-speaking traditions outside the United 
Kingdom, the OJEDplus its supplements is still 
incomplete. 

An Incomplete Record of the 
English Language 

From its inception, the OED has been a 
print-based dictionary. In its original Pro- 
posal, the Philological Society said the new 
dictionary "should contain every word occur- 
ring in the literature of the language it pro- 
fesses to illustrate?™ The examples readers 
collected in the 1 860s and for many years 
thereafter necessarily came from printed 
sources. And although the OED 's ten original 



volumes cited popular usages from newspa- 
pers and the like, it looked, much as had 
Johnson, upon the established canon of great 
writers as the source of the core vocabulary of 
English. Jiirgen Schafer determined that 
Shakespeare, whose every word was put on a 
slip for the editors' consideration, is much 
overrepresented in the OED, especially as a 
source of first use. This tradition continued in 
the 1972-86 supplement for, as Burchfield 
said, "Every single word andmeaning of great 
ancient writers like Geoffrey Chaucer were 
recorded in the OED. And I could see no case 
that could be made to leave out of the supple- 
ment the words of the corresponding 20th- 
century writers, Stephen Spender, W.H. 
Auden, T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Evelyn 
Waugh, Iris Murdoch, and so forth." 54 Leav- 
ing aside the question of the merits of 
Burchfield' s comparative literary assessments, 
the point is that the OED is a dictionary of 
written English emphasizing the written En- 
glish of its well educated and most literary 
users. At the same time that his editorial poli- 
cies upheld this tradition, Burchfield also de- 
mocratized the OEDby including popular and 
ephemeral sources in greater numbers than 
before. 

It has come under some fire for this. 
Insofar as spoken English differs from written 
English, the OED presents an incomplete 
record . Works such as the Dictionary of Ameri- 
can Regional English (Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press, 1985- ) and the English 
Dialect Dictionary (London; H. Frowde, 1 898- 
1905), of course, compensate for this. The 
OED's editors have always had to make 
choices and impose limits; if they had not, 
their work would still be in the preparatory 
stages. But, the criticism that the OED prac- 
tices "black-and-white lexicography" 55 is valid 
to the extent that it reminds one that the OED 
falls short of Murray's goal of all-inclusive- 
ness. That goal will always be a chimera if for 
no reason other than the print medium of the 
OED. Even while Burchfield and his team 
labored away at their supplement, a monu- 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 191 



mental achievement in itself, some of the 
OED's most ardent advocates questioned its 
future viability. 

Marghanita Laski, a true friend of the 
OED and indefatigable contributor of quota- 
tion slips for the four-volume supplement, 
shared those concerns about "black-and-white 
lexicography." In describing her practices 
while reading for the dictionary, she said "I do 
not hesitate to send in words I have only heard, 
whether in speech or on the radio, since the 
date I give ... is evidence that the word or 
phrase was in use at the time." 56 Other limita- 
tions in the aging OED were also evident by 
the time its supplement began to appear. Laski 
presented the case forcefully just one day after 
publication of the first volume of the supple- 
ment. In a letter to the Times Literary Supple- 
ment she asked whether or not the OED was in 
serious danger of becoming "an object of 
veneration rather than a tool for modern use." 57 

The Second Edition 

Work continued on the supplement, of 
course, but another decade passed before the 
Oxford University Press began planning for 
the long-range viability of the dictionary. Study 
of the problem began in early 1982. In a press 
conference held May 15, 1984, at the Royal 
Society in London, the Press announced its 
plan to issue a new edition combining the ten- 
volume 1928 dictionary (re-issued in twelve 
volumes in 1933 with the supplement as vol- 
ume 13 and reprinted in 1961 and 1970) and 
Burchfield's four supplements. To do this, 
however, required new ways of operating. 
Even in the 1980s Burchfield and his staff 
continued to produce the dictionary's supple- 
ment much as Murray had in his Scriptorium. 
Just as with editing the supplement the time 
had come to include more scientific and tech- 
nical terms, so with preparation of the second 
edition the time had come to rely on state-of- 
the-art technology. 

The project required the combined efforts 
of several organizations, IBM United King- 
dom, Ltd., donated equipment and assigned 



personnel to work with OUP on planning and 
executing the project; Great Britain's Depart- 
ment of Trade and Industry supported it; and 
the University of Waterloo in Canada pro- 
vided programming expertise to supplement 
that of OUP staff. OUP directed and managed 
the project. Initial hopes to use optical scan- 
ners to convert the dictionary's text into ma- 
chine-readable form were dashed. The com- 
plexities of the typography made that tech- 
nique impractical. The entire dictionary had to 
be keystroked onto computer tape! Interna- 
tional Computaprint Corporation (ICC) in the 
United States was awarded the contract for 
this herculean task. The contract specified a 
maximum of 7 errors per 10,000 keystrokes; 
its 1 20 typists performed the entire job with a 
remarkably good error rate of between 4 and 
4.5 per 10,000. 58 Murray's typographic de- 
sign, faithfully followed save for minor ex- 
ceptions for more than a century, proved a 
great boon to the electronic conversion pro- 
cess. The typographical conventions cued the 
typists to different parts of each article and 
thereby cued them to insert various codes to 
identify the start of each part. Computer pro- 
grams had to be devised to merge the 1 928 text 
and the text of the supplements. This was a 
complex task since many entries in the supple- 
ments had to be inserted into existing entries in 
the base set. It was further complicated by the 
fact that in some cases different parts of an 
article in the supplements had to be inserted 
into various locations in the original article. 
Some human intervention was required, but 
most of this difficult work was accomplished 
by machine. 

The result, published in 20 volumes in the 
spring of 1989, was The Oxford English Dic- 
tionary, second edition. Its introduction forth- 
rightly states that "Whereas the Supplement 
can be regarded for practical purposes as up to 
date, it is a matter of common knowledge that 
many elements of the original OED require 
revision. That is the very purpose for which 
the New OED Project, of which the present 
work is the first printed product, was initiated. 
Several of these requirements have been ad- 



192 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



dressed in this edition." 59 One of those re- 
quirements was to convert Murray's pronun- 
ciation system to a more modern system. The 
editors prudently chose to employ the Interna- 
tional Phonetic Alphabet, developed at the 
end of the nineteenth century. OED2 includes 
"an additional 5,000 words, combinations, 
and senses , . . located chiefly in the first third 
of the alphabet, where work done for the 
£wppZeme«iisnowtwentyyearsoTmoreold," 60 

Desiderata for the Future 

OED2 is but a first step toward a New 
OED, for indeed a new OED is needed. Take, 
for example, a representative definition. Its 
article on "gasoline," published in 1898, de- 
fines it as "a volatile inflammable liquid, one 
of the first products in the distillation of crude 
petroleum, employed for purposes of heating 
and illumination," The first part of the defini- 
tion remains valid, but the latter part is at best 
misleading. At that time the dictionary pro- 
vided one 1895 illustration hinting at this 
fuel's use in motor vehicles; the other four 
illustrations relate to illumination and cook- 
ing. Both the 1933 and 1972 supplements add 
illustrations related to automobiles, two also 
dating from 1 895. This is not an isolated case. 
Many of the definitions need to be brought up 
to date; additional reported antedatings and 
postdatings need to be recorded; and the En- 
gltshof Great Britain's former colonies needs 
to be more fully represented. 

These examples are indicative of broader 
problems, problems most clearly enunciated 
in 1972 by MarghanitaLaski in the same letter 
to the Times Literary Supplementm which she 
expressed the fear that the OED might soon be 
little more than "a magnificent fossil." 61 Like 
Trench in his criticism of the dictionaries of 
the mid-nineteenth century, Laski outlined 
seven areas requiring attention: 

1. Antedatings. ... An enormous number of 
"first examples" in OED can now be ante- 
dated, of important as of trivial words and 
usages, and often by centuries. 



2. Postdatings. Most "latest examples" in 
OED, even in the later volumes, are nine- 
teenth-century, often early nineteenth- 
century. From OED one can have no indica- 
tion whether the bulk of words and usages 
cited continue to be current. . . 

3. Reading. . . . two people can read the same 
book and record almost non-identical lists of 
words to be found in it. . . . In addition, 
. . . many of OED's original readers were 
inept. . . . 

... it is clear that extended reading in 
the trivia of past centuries could be as valuable 
to a revision of OED as the reading of contem- 
porary trivia has been to the new Supplement. 

In addition, the past century has seen the 
publication of much useful material, espe- 
cially in the field of diaries and letters. . . . 

4. Subjects, . . . One need only consider the 
kind of people who read for OED to guess, 
usually rightly, what kinds of subjects will be 
inadequately covered. 

5. Corrections. A few examples: Words and 
usages categorized by OED as "obsolete" 
have often proved to be in later use than 
recorded; as "rare" have proved to be com- 
paratively common; as "nonce" have proved 
to be more than that. Whole categories of 
usage have been capriciously treated or virtu- 
ally ignored. . , . Words missed by 0£Z>and 
obsolete before the new Supplement ' s period 
could be recorded. 

6. Spellings. In several cases words are en- 
tered only under spellings now unfamiliar and 
without cross-reference. 

7. Place of entry. In several cases, compound 
words and phrases are entered onlyunder their 
most unlikely component and without cross- 
reference. 62 

The first step towards a new OED, converting 
the existing OED to machine-readable form, 
has been completed, 

Already the complicated process of con- 
verting the OED to machine readable form has 
provided benefits that one could only dream 
about just a few years ago. In early 1988 the 
text of the original ten-volume New English 
Dictionary was made available on CD-ROM 
for searching and manipulation through a mi- 
crocomputer. The entire text can be searched 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 193 



through a number of approaches, including 
quotation author, quoted work, quotation text, 
sense/definition, etymology, headwords and 
usage, and other sorts of labels. This empow- 
ers linguists and others to use this rich re- 
source on the history of the language in new 
ways. One way is to search a word in the 
quotations then to check the word's date of 
first appearance in its own article and compare 
dates of quotations. In this way reports of 
antedatings andpostdatings can, one assumes, 
be generated in quantities that the late Jiirgen 
Schafer could only imagine. Furthermore, they 
can be generated from within the OED itself! 

Determining more accurate dates for the 
first or last recorded appearances of words is 
but one use of the electronic OED. Since the 
database is in machine-readable form, editors 
are finally free of Murray's slips-and-cubby- 
holes process and its later analogs. They can 
work on the OED without regard for its alpha- 
betical sequence and, conceivably, from any 
location on the globe where there is a phone 
line. The New OED has the potential of being 
a truly international record of world 
English. Editors working via computer and 
telecommunications lines from offices in each 
nation in which English is the predominant or 
a significant language could make contribu- 
tions. If users have access to the database in its 
daily updated state, the OED will, thanks to the 
electronic medium, be more up-to-date and be 
kept more up-to-date than it has been in the 
print medium. 

These are possibilities, not yet fully real- 
ized in late 1989. The staff today is largely 
centralized in Oxford. Editorial work contin- 
ues to rely on 4" by 6" paper slips and "the 
drafting of new entries goes on all the time." 63 
Keyboarding of completed entries is carried 
out as a separate operation. Ten of the 14 full- 
time staff entrusted with keeping the OED 
healthy "are concerned solely with the prepa- 
ration of entries for new vocabulary items." 64 
Three of these ten specialize in scientific and 
technical terminology. The others tend to "da- 
tabase improvement andplans forrevision, as 



well as senior editorial work." 6S These four- 
teen are assisted by a number of freelancers 
who "carry out support activities such as file 
searching and library research." 66 As for em- 
bracing all varieties of English, the editors are 
aware of the challenge of doing this from 
Oxford. In at least a partial response to this 
challenge, they began in 1989 to organize a 
North American reading program through the 
Press's New York office to parallel the pro- 
gram conducted from the Oxford headquar- 
ters. Lexicographer Dr. Jeffery Triggs directs 
the program's American component from an 
office in New Jersey. 67 This international pro- 
gram, explains a staff member, is principally 
"a directed reading exercise, i.e., a number of 
freelancers 'read* sources selected by us, and 
submit illustrative quotations, at the moment 
about 12,000 per month" from readers in the 
United Kingdom, plus those from readers 
elsewhere. 68 Their efforts are supplemented 
by voluntary contributors throughout the world, 
the very means by which the original two tons 
of quotation slips delivered to Murray in 1 879 
had been collected. 

The agenda before that staff, much of it 
echoing Laski ' s seven-point critique of 1 972, 
is best summarized in the concluding pages of 
the second edition's history of its production: 

There is much in the style of the Dictionary, 
the punctuation, the capitalization, the defini- 
tional terminology, and the spelling (within 
entries and even of some headwords) that calls 
for modernization. In the cross-reference sys- 
tem, many improvements are desirable, nota- 
bly in the citation of variant spellings as 
headwords and in the more precise specifica- 
tion of parts of speech, homonym numbers, 
and sense numbers. In the etymologies, the 
varying systems of transcription should be 
harmonized, the linguistic nomenclature 
shouldbe brought up to date, and the results of 
recent research should be added. The organi- 
zation of senses within many entries needs to 
be rethought. Numerous scientific and techni- 
cal definitions need to be brought into line 
with present-day knowledge (though the 
Supplement amended the treatment of many 
of the most important terms). Many of the 
definitions of general vocabulary need to be 



IB! 



194 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



reworked lo take account of recent techno- 
logical and social changes. There are a num- 
ber of references to countries, currency val- 
ues, institutions, and persons, which are now 
anachronistic; and there are still a few defini- 
tions which enshrine social altitudes that are 
now alien. The usage and subject labels should 
be made fully consistent and modernized. 

Many current words are illustrated by a 
latest quotation from the first half of the 
nineteenth century, or even earlier, and it is 
difficult to distinguish them from words or 
senses that are now, in fact, disused. Recent 
examples ought to be supplied for every sense 
that is still current. The citation style of many 
quotations from the original OED could well 
be brought up to the standard of consistency of 
the Supplement (although improving it would 
require the rechecking of many thousands of 
quotations). Earlier examples exist (in various 
places) forthousands of wordsand senses, and 
these should be added. The coverage of En- 
glish before 1 7O0, and at least as far back as 
1500, could be markedly improved. Last, but 
certainly not least, the coverage of English 
outside the UnitedKingdom needs to be greatly 
expanded, especially the English of North 
America, which is the greatest source of lin- 
guistic change, but not neglecting the English 
of many other parts of the world where it is a 
first or important language. 69 

It is an ambitious agenda, reminiscent of the 
challenge Trench put before the Philological 
Society in 1857. 

A timetable for publication (in whatever 
form) of the New OED has not been an- 
nounced although the target is about 1 5 years 
hence. 10 A CD-ROM version of the second 
edition is planned for release in the early 
1990s. Whatever the editorial team's hopes 
for the eventual New OED, those hopes will 
probably not be realized as punctually as they 
would like any more than Murray's or 
Burchfield's hopes were. But there are plans 
and dreams for a new and better OED and 
related products. And there is a vigorous model 
for these plans. The OED began spawning 
other dictionaries even before it was com- 
plete. Among these are the Concise Oxford 
Dictionary of Current English in 1911, the 
Pocket Oxford English Dictionary of Cur rent 



English in 1924, the Little Oxford Dictionary 
of Current English in 1930, the two-volume 
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 1933, 
the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 
in 1 966, the compact edition of the Oxford 
English Dictionary in 1971, the Oxford 
Children's Dictionary in 1976, the Oxford 
American Dictionary in 1980, the Oxford 
Minidictionary in 1981, and the Oxford Uni- 
versal Dictionary in 1981. The family now 
consists of more than 25 dictionaries. Future 
enhancements of the OED or spin-offs from it 
include a "talking dictionary," which would 
provide the pronunciation or various dialectic 
or national pronunciations for words; dictio- 
naries of national or regional English; special- 
ized dictionaries tapping all ofOED's terms 
from a particular field such as religion or 
medicine; a database consisting just of the 
quotations file, much of it not yet published, 
for use by lexicographers and others; athesau- 
rus including synonyms and antonyms; a dic- 
tionary in which illustrations, some of them in 
video, supplement verbal definitions of things 
and processes; and a polyglot dictionary. 71 
Already in 1989 Webster's Ninth New Colle- 
giate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam- 
Webster, 1983) was released on CD-ROMfor 
use with the Apple Macintosh microcom- 
puter. It features digitally recorded pronun- 
ciations of entry words. 

Thanks to the work of Murray and his 
assistants; thanks to the workMurray's fellow 
editors and Robert Burchfield and his assis- 
tants continued; thanks to the work of the team 
of programmers, editors, and typists in the late 
1 980s, the OED promises to remain the glitter- 
ing jewel in the OUP crown. Although the 
labor involved in bringing the New OED into 
being will be nearly as monumental as the 
labor that has made it a possibility, it will be 
well worth the effort. The New OED ought to 
sparkle even more brilliantly and merit more 
praise than any of the books or databases that 
have preceded it, 



^ 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 195 



A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 
Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by 
the Philological Society, edited by James A.H. 
Murray, Henry Bradley, W.A. Craigie, andC.T. 
Onions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888-1928. 
10 vols. 

A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 
Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by 
the Philological Society, edited by James A.H. 
Murray, Henry Bradley, W.A. Craigie, and C.T. 
Onions. Introduction, Supplement, and Bibli- 
ography, by W.A. Craigie and C.T. Onions. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. 542, 330, 91p. 



The Oxford English Dictionary, Being a Corrected 

Re-issue with an Introduction, Supplement and 

Bibliography of a New English Dictionary on 

Historical Principles, edited by James A.H. 

Murray, Henry Bradley, W, A. Craigie, andC.T. 

Onions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. 13 

vols. Reprinted 1961, 1970. 
A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, 

edited by RobertBurchfield. Oxford: Clarendon 

Press, 1972-86, 4 vols, 
The Oxford English Dictionary, prepared by J. A. 

Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 1989. 20 vols. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



To the extent that the history of the OED 
and the life of James A.H. Murray are one and 
the same, Elisabeth K.M. Murray's thoroughly 
researched biography of her grandfather of- 
fers a fine history, Aarsleff s article is a care- 
ful exposition of the intellectual antecedents 
of the dictionary. Ronald Fritze's brief history 
leans heavily on several sources and empha- 
sizes the financial aspects of the enterprise. 
Shenker's history offers a good picture of the 
evolution of the OED2. Fletcher, Gray, and 
Murphy describe the dictionary's transition 
from the relatively static state as a printed 
book to its fluid state as a machine-readable 
database. Algeo's review of the second edi- 
tion is the most thorough, critical, and insight- 
ful available . In additi on to numerous substan- 
tive articles this brief bibliography cannot 
accommodate, hundreds of brief notes on 
antedatings and the like as well as reviews of 
the OED in its various media and degrees of 
completion have appeared over the past cen- 
tury. 

Aarsleff, Hans. "The Early History of the Oxford 
English Dictionary, " Bulletin of the New York 
Public Library 66 (September, 1962): 417-39. 

Algeo, John. "The Emperor's New Clothes: The 
Second Edition of the Society's Dictionary," 
Transactions of the Philological Society 88 
(1990): 131-50. 

Benzie, William. Dr. F. J. Furnivall, Victorian 
Scholar Adventurer. Norman, OK: Pilgrim 
Books, Inc., 1983. 



Burchfield, Robert. "Four-letter Words and the OED." 
Times Literary Supplement no. 3684 (October 
13,1972): 1233. 

— — . "O.E.D.; A New Supplement." Essays and 
Studies 14 (1961): 35-51. 

"Some Thoughts on the Revision of the 



O.E.D." In An English Miscellany, Presented to 
W. S. Mackie, edited by Brian S. Lee, 208-18. 
London: Oxford University Press, 1977. 

Burchfield, Robert, and Hans Aarsleff. The Oxford 
English Dictionary and the State of the Lan- 
guage. Washington: Library of Congress, 1988. 

Craigie, W.A. "The Making of a Dictionary." Satur- 
day Review of Literature 4 (April 21, 1928): 
792. 

Fletcher, Ewen. "Computerising the Oxford English 
Dictionary," Bookseller (January 18, 1986): 
219-23. 

Fritze, RonaldH. "The Oxford English Dictionary: A 
Brief History." Reference Services Review 17 
(1989): 61-70. 

Gray, J. C. "Creating the Electronic New Oxford 
English Dictionary." Computers and the Hu- 
manities 20 (1986): 45-49. 

Hanham, Alison. "The Cely Papers and the Oxford 
English Dictionary." English Studies, 42 (June, 
1961): 129-52. 

Harpley, Mary, "The Oxford English Dictionary on 
Compact Disc." British Book News (February, 
1988): 90-91. 

Harris, Roy. "The History Men." Times Literary 
Supplements. 4 144 (September 3, 1982): 935- 
36. 

Laski, Marghanita. "Reading for OED." Times Ziter- 
aiy Supplement no. 3437 (January 11, 1968): 
37-39. 

Murphy, Cullen. "Caught in the Web of Bytes: The 
Electronic Oxford English Dictionary." Atlan- 
tic 263 (February, 1989): 68-70. 






*l1 






196 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Murray, James A.H. The Evolution of English Lexi- 
cography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900. 

Murray,K.M. Elisabeth. Caught in the Web of Words: 
James Murray and the Oxford English Dictio- 
nary. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, 

"The OED and How it Grows." Bay State Librarian 
67 (February, 1978): 17-18. 

Schafer, Jiirgen. Documentation in the O.E.D.: 
Shakespeare and Nashe as Test Cases. Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1980. 

Shenker, Israel. "Annals of Lexicography: The Dic- 
tionary Factory ."New Yorker 65 (April 3, 1989): 
86-100. 



Sider, John W. "Reading for the OED : A Case 
History." English Language Notes 1 8 (Decem- 
ber, 1980): 131-38. 

Trench, Richard Chenevix. On Some Deficiencies in 
Our English Dictionaries, London: Jolin W. 
Parker and Son, 1857. 

Wardale, E. E. "The 'New English Dictionary.'" 
Nineteenth Century and After 103 (January, 
1928): 97-110. 

Weiner, Edmund. "Computerizing the Oxford En- 
glish Dictionary." Scholarly Publishing 16 
(1985): 239-253. 

. "New Uses for the New OED." Bookseller 

(January 25, 1986): 332-36. 



NOTES 



1 Rosemary Herbert, " Oxford University Press ' s ' j ewel in 

the crown," 1 Christian Science Monitor, 4 May 
1987, p. B4. 

2 Various printers served the Oxford University as far 

back as 1478, a date often cited as the beginning of 
the Oxford University Press. However, on October 
2, 1 690, a legally binding agreement transferring 
rights and property from an entrepreneur to Oxford 
University marked "the beginning of the true Uni- 
versity Press." Harry Carter, A History of the 
Oxford University Press, vol. 1, To the Year 17B0 
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 109. 

5 Sidney I, Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of 

Lexicography (New York: Scribner's, 1984), 44~- 

48. 
4 Samuel Johnson, "Preface," in A Dictionary of the 

English Language (London: W. Strahan, 1755). 
s Ibid. Italics in original. 

6 Landau, 66. 

7 "Notices of Meetings," Transactions of the Philologi- 

cal Society (1857): 141. 

I Richard Chenevix Trench, On Some Deficiencies in our 

English Dictionaries (London: John W. Parker, 
1857), 3. 

s James A..H, Murray, The Evolution of English Lexicog- 
raphy (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1900), 6-7. 

10 "A Letter to the Very Rev. The Dean of Westminster 
from Herbert Coleridge" in Trench, (1860), 72. 
Professor Hans Aarsleff of Princeton University 
was the first to point out the significance of this 
passage. 

II Hans Aarsleff, "The Original Plan for the O^D.and Its 

Background," in The Oxford English Dictionary 
and the State of the Language, by Robert W. 
Burchfield and Hans Aarsleff (Washington: Li- 
brary of Congress, 1988), 42-43. 

12 "Notices of the Meetings of the Philological Society in 

1858," Transactions of the Philological Society 
(1858): 198. 

u Ibid., 199. 

u Proposal for the Publication of A New English Dictio- 
nary (London: Triibner, 1859), 2-4. 

13 "A Letter to the Very Rev. The Dean of Westminster 

from Herbert Coleridge " 72. 



u James A.H. Murray, "The President's Annual Address 
for 1 880," Transactions of the Philological Society 
(1880-81): 122 

1 ' "Dictionary-Contract with the Clarendon Press," Trans- 
actions of the Philological Society (1 877-79): li. 

11 James A.H. Murray, "The Work of the Philological 
Society, from May, 1878, to May, 1879," Transac- 
tions of the Philological Society (1877-79): 568. 

19 Ibid. 

20 K.M. Elisabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words 

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 176- 
77. 

21 An Appeal to the English-speaking and English-read- 

ing Public to Read Books and Make Extracts for the 
Philological Society's "New English Dictionary" 
(n.p., 1879), 4. Italics in original. 

22 "Directions to Readers for the Dictionary," in Murray, 

Caught in the Web of Words, 347. Italics in original. 

23 "Historical Introduction," Oxford English Dictionary 

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), xiv. 

24 James A.H. Murray, "Thirteenth Address of the Presi- 

dent of the Philological Society, Delivered at the 
Anniversary Meeting, Friday, 16th May, 1884," 
Transactions of the Philological Society (1882- 
84): 508. 

" Ibid. 

"Ibid., 531. 

21 Henry Bradley, review of A New English Dictionary on 
Historical Principles, Part 1, A-Ant, The Academy, 
no. 617,new ser. (1 March 1884): 141 . The first part 
of Bradley's review appeared in The Academy, no, 
615, new ser. (16Feberuary 1884): 105-06. 

28 Quoted from James A.H. Murray's personal papers in 
Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, 201. 

39 "Historical Introduction," xviii. 

30 Ibid, 

31 Ibid., xx. 

32 "The 'N.E.D.'" Nation 124 (15 June 1927): 660. 

33 "Our Dictionary," Times Literary Supplement no. 1 368 

(19 April 1928): 277. 

34 "The Greatest of Dictionaries," Saturday Review 4 (2 1 

April 1928): 487. 
31 Ernest Weekley, "The Oxford Dictionary," Quarterly 
Review 250 (April 1928): 242. 



OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 1 97 



16 Floyd Knight, "The Greatest of TiicX\oass\<is" Bookman 
67 (April 1928): 141. 

" W.A. Cragie, "New Dictionary Schemes Presented to 
the Philological Society, 4th April, 1919," Trans- 
actions of the Philological Society, (1925-30): 6- 
13. 

JS Joan Holland, Drafting Editor, Dictionary of Old 
English, letter to the author, 24 October 1990. 

i? "Directions to Readers for the Dictionary," reprinted in 
Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, 348. 

40 James A.H. Murray, "Thirteenth Address of the Presi- 

dent of the Philological Society," 516. 

41 Jurgen SchSfer, Documentation in the O.E.D.: 

Shakespeare and Nashe as Test Cases, (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1980), 3, 

42 Marghanita Laski, "Reading for OED," Times Literary 

Supplement no. 3437 (11 January 1968): 38. 

43 W.A, Craigie, "The Making of a Dictionary," Saturday 

Review of Literature 4 (21 April 1928): 792. 

44 James A.H. Murray, "Thirteenth Address of the Presi- 

dent of the Philological Society," 516. Italics in 
original. 

43 "Preface to the Supplement," in James A.H. Murray, 
Henry Bradley, W.A. Craigie, and C.T. Onions, 
eds., A New English Dictionary on Historical Prin- 
ciples, Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected 
by the Philological Society, W.A. Criagie and C.T. 
Onions., eds., Introduction, Supplement, and Bibli- 
ography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), [v], 

4( Ibid. 

47 Alan Brien, "Down with All Bowdlers!" New States- 

man, 72 (5 August 1966): 199. 

48 R. W. Burchfield, "Four-letter Words and the OED," 

Times Literary Supplement no. 3684 (13 October 
1972): 1233. 

49 "Our Dictionary," 278. 

50 Ibid. 

5i Rosemary Herbert, "The Building of a Dictionary," 
232 Publishers Weekly (2 October 1987): 38. 



52 Robert W. Burchfield, "The Oxford English Dictionary 
and the State of the Language," in The Oxford 
English Dictionary and the State of the Language, 
Robert W.BurchfieldandHansAarsleff (Washing- 
ton: Library of Congress, 1988), 20. 

i3 Proposal for the Publication of A New English Dictio- 
nary by the Philological Society (London: Tr bner, 
1859), 2-3. Italics in original. 

54 "'AH other dictionaries are temporary works,"' U.S. 
Newsand WorldReports 101 (1 1 August 1986): 59. 

" Roy Harris, "The History Men," Times Literary Supple- 
ment no, 4144 (3 September 1982): 935. 

56 Laski, "Reading for OED," 38. 

57 Marghanita Laski, "Revising OED," rimes Literary 

Supplement no. 3684 (13 October 1972): 1226. 
38 J.C. Gray, "Creating the Electronic New Oxford En- 
glish Dictionary," Computers and the Humanities 
20 (January/March 1986): 45. 

59 "Introduction," in J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Werner, 

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1989), [xi]. 

60 Ibid. 

41 Laski, "Revising OED," 1226. 

"Ibid. 

63 Y.L. Warburton, OED Editorial Co-ordinator, letter to 

the author, 27 July 1989. 
* Ibid. 

65 Ibid. 

66 Ibid. 

* 7 Marjorie Keyishian, "Oxford English Dictionary Sets 
Up Shop in Morristown," New York Times, 11 
February 1990, New Jersey ed., sec. 12, p. 1, 4-5. 

68 Y.L. Warburton, letter to the author, 27 July 1989. 

69 "The New Oxford English Dictionary Project," in The 

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., lv-Ivi. 

70 Y.L. Warburton, letter to the author, 27 July 1989. 

71 Edmund Weiner, "New Uses for the New OED," 

Bookseller (25 January 1986): 332-36. 



"Mom in the Library": The Readers' 
Guide to Periodical Literature 



Mary Biggs 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

In 1967, reference expert Bill Katz declared: 

Turning to the Readers' Guide to Periodical 
Literature is like nuzzling in the massive 
monobosomofAmericanmotherhood. Some- 
how, it is the closest thing to mora in the 
library — soft, all embracing, ready to educate 
us for anything. , . . Like pumpkin pie, LSD, 
and television, the index is merely an amor- 
phous collection of American mores and atti- 
tudes Jtcanbe analyzed, pummeled, orpraised, 
No matter how approached, it finally adds up 
to mother draped in the red, white, and blue, a 
full shopping bag dangling fromher arm, wire 
curlers adorning her head. 1 

Katz went on to criticize some of "mom's" 
policies, darkly detecting her "cool, calcu- 
lated hand" in the index. He over-extended his 
metaphor, but his essential point was well 
taken: the Readers' Guide had long before 
become a familiar, dependable, reassuring 
fixture in libraries of all types and sizes. Not 
surprisingly, academic librarians complain of 
the difficulty of "weaning" students from "the 
green books" (as Readers' Guide is often 
called) and onto the subject-specialized in- 
dexes more suitable for most college research. 
Even when mom can no longer solve all prob- 
lems, she remains comforting — a beacon to 
the insecure. And so with the Readers ' Guide. 
Indeed, if the H,W. Wilson Company did 
not also issue a wide range of indexes to 
scholarly and professional literature, many 
students might resist even more strenuously. 



That it does, that the old friendly format can be 
found behind covers of other colors, bearing 
other names, is an invaluable aid to librarians' 
instruction efforts, enabling them to counsel 
the timid that "If you can use the Readers ' 
Guide, you can use this. The only difference is 
that it will lead you to the authoritative articles 
your professor wants you to use." The air 
vibrates with relief. 

How did the index achieve maternal sta- 
tus? First, of course, it meets an important 
information need and until recently had no 
real competition. Second, it is reasonably easy 
to use and its format has remained the same 
over its 90-year lifetime. And third, it is ex- 
traordinarily good at what it does. 

Halsey William Wilson 

To appreciate the remarkable accomplish- 
ment of Readers ' Guide requires some knowl- 
edge of the publisher that initiated and still 
produces it: the H.W. Wilson Company. The 
story has many times been told of Halsey 
William Wilson and the unique business that 
he founded and nursed patiently to success 
against great odds. 2 

Bom on May 12, 1868, in Wilmington, 
Vermont, Wilson was orphaned when still a 
toddler and spent his childhood in Massachu- 
setts with his grandparents, his adolescence 
with an aunt and uncle in Iowa and Minnesota. 
While working his way through the University 
of Minnesota, he joined with his roommate to 



READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE 199 



establish what became essentially the univer- 
sity bookstore. Wilson acquired his half of the 
$400 start-up capital by taking loans from 
other students. They flourished, of course, as 
the American Dream requires, and Wilson 
eventually bought out his partner and gained 
the means to marry a coed with whom he 
thereafter lived for 59 years, until his death in 
1954. Work overtook studies and Wilson never 
received his baccalaureate, but didn't suffer 
for lack of it. 3 

Beginnings of Wilson's Publishing 
Career 

His first publishing venture — the Cumu- 
lative Book Index (CBI), which has been con- 
tinuously published ever since — grew out of 
his need as a bookseller for a cumulative new- 
book catalog. Publishers' Weekly, the 
industry's trade journal, had provided semi- 
annual cumulations, but stopped in 1895, giv- 
ing Wilson an idea and practical impetus. 
Three years later, he began issuing CBI from 
his apartment with a staff consisting of himself 
as production and business manager and his 
wife as editor. 4 Its first issue consisted of a 1 6- 
page pamphlet. 5 CBI is important here be- 
cause it was Wilson's first title and set the 
pattern for his second, the Readers ' Guide to 
Periodical Literature (RG). 

The presence of "cumulative" in CBPs 
title suggests that this was a noteworthy fea- 
ture for the time, and indeed Wilson is some- 
times credited incorrectly with having invented 
the practice of cumulation. 6 In fact, others had 
gone before him, including Frederick Leypoldt 
of Publishers ' Weekly and, more notably, 
William Howard Brett of the Cleveland Public 
Library, whose Cumulative Index to Periodi- 
cals (Cleveland: Cleveland Public Library, 
1869-1897; Cleveland: Helman-Taylor Co., 
1898-1903) was an important precursor of 
Readers' Guide? But earlier attempts had 
soon foundered on economic problems. In 
those pre-computer days, cumulation seemed 
to demand a complete resetting of type, an 



effort much too expensive to be recouped 
through the prices that could successfully be 
charged. Drawing on printing experience he 
had gained while self-financing his education, 
Wilson decided that the lines of type could be 
retained after their first use and speedily 
interfiled with other lines to produce cumula- 
tions. This entailed difficulties but proved 
feasible; a practiced Wilson "combiner" could 
mergeup to 1 00 galleys of type, orabout 6,000 
index entries, in an eight-hour shift 8 

Through his work with CBI, Wilson also 
discovered the optimal index arrangement. 
The first five issues were divided into two 
parts: an author-title index followed by a clas- 
sified index, It was soon clear that subscribers 
were confused, and the combined author-title- 
subject "dictionary" format, which would be 
applied to subsequent Wilson indexes as well, 
was adopted. 9 

Finally, the development of CBI set en- 
during financial and editorial precedents. By 
the time she finished assembling its second 
number, Justina Wilson had decided that full- 
time housekeeping combined with full-time 
editing added up to too much work. Marion E. 
Potter, a 29 -year-old graduate student, be- 
came Wilson's first employee and stayed with 
him for 55 years, until her death one year 
before his, ' ° Accounts of the company invari- 
ably highlight her contribution, and her long 
experience and legendary industriousness 
must, along with Wilson's own direct daily 
involvement, have formed a backbone that 
supported the enterprise through its years of 
development. 

Strong supports were needed, for nothing 
came easy. Bibliographic publishing was and 
long remained time-consuming, unglamorous, 
and commercially unpromising, Forty years 
after the company's founding, Creighton Peet 
observed in a New Yorker "profile:" "[Wil- 
son] has had his field pretty much to himself, 
and been more or less welcome to it. " ] ! By that 
time, of course, the H.W. Wilson Company's 
profitability was well-established though 
modest. But each index, beginning with CBI, 



200 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



lost money for awhile. In 1898, figuring that 
this first endeavor would cost him $500 for 
typesetting and printing, he had set his annual 
subscription fee at $1 and set out optimisti- 
cally to enlist a minimum 500 subscribers. 
But, in a pattern that would repeat, that first 
year yielded only 300 subscribers and Wilson, 
undeterred, made up the difference from his 
bookselling proceeds, ' 2 He would continue to 
do this as each new reference serial sought its 
audience, subsidizing them first through hts 
store and later, after he had given up retail 
sales and moved to New York, through the 
profits from more lucrative publications. This 
practice has continued down to the present in 
the H.W. Wilson Company, which, 37 years 
after the founder's death, still functions ac- 
cording to his principles. In 1990, Readers' 
Guide Abstracts on microfiche was six years 
old, its paper edition two years old, and it was 
still regarded as an expensive undertaking 
though it had recovered its costs through sale 
as a computerized database. George Lewicky, 
who at the time had headed Wilson's index 
division for 25 years, explained philosophi- 
cally that building a sufficient subscriber list 
would take time, as it had for other indexes, 
and the company, confident of its produces 
value, could wait, 13 

It was, then, on this base of knowledge 
and practice that the three-year-old business 
built the index that would become its most 
famous. 

Existing Periodical Indexes 

Although Wilson did not establish CBI 
with libraries' needs in mind, he soon acquired 
librarians as subscribers and began attending 
to their concerns. At meetings, he heard them 
say that identifying useful periodical articles 
was so difficult that keeping back runs some- 
times seemed pointless. Though indexes ex- 
isted, they were sadly inadequate. The first to 
be created had been the famous Poole 's Index 
to Periodical Literature, which is still used 
today. First issued in 1848 as An Alphabetical 



Index to Subjects Treated in the Reviews and 
Other Periodicals to Which No Indexes Have 
Been Published (New York: George P. 
Putnam), it was revised by its author, William 
Frederick Poole, in 1853 and then lay dor- 
mant, becoming increasingly out of date, until 
the first meeting of the American Library 
Association (ALA) in 1 876, There Poole pro- 
posed, and the Association endorsed, a coop- 
erative project, with indexing to be performed 
by librarian-volunteers around the country 
and submitted to Poole as editor-in-chief. The 
result appeared in 1882, with quinquennial 
updates through 1907 (Boston: Houghton, 
1882-1 908). u Ambitious, progressive, and 
important as it undoubtedly was, Poole 's none- 
theless suffered from poor subject indexing; 
no author indexing; omission of periodical 
dates; inclusion of some less-useful, and ex- 
clusion of some more-useful, periodicals; and, 
of course, infrequency. Two other efforts — 
Brett's aforementioned Cumulative Index to 
Periodicals and W.L Fletcher's Cooperative 
Index to Periodicals, offered as a Library 
Journal supplement from 1883 to 1892 — 
began as monthlies but soon slid back to 
quarterly, then annual, schedules. ' s An oppor- 
tunity, and dangers, were apparent to Wilson. 

First Issue of Readers ' Guide 

The February 1901 CBI carried, for the 
first time, a supplement curiously entitled "A 
Monthly Cumulative Index to Ten Important 
Periodicals" — curious because it actually in- 
dexed only seven: Atlantic Monthly, Harper 's 
Monthly, North American Review, Century, 
Forum, Review ofReviews^ and Scribner's. l6 
Of these, only the first three survive, and only 
the first two are still indexed by Readers' 
Guide, 

Three months later, CBI printed the first 
advertisement for a separately published 
monthly Wilson periodical index, now named 
the Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature 
and including, in addition to the seven maga- 
zines listed above: Bookman, Cosmopolitan, 



READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITEM TURE 20 1 



Critic, International Monthly, McClure's 
Magazine, Outlook, Popular Science Monthly, 
and World's Work, 17 (Again, the company's 
math seemed defective, as the ad promised 
indexing for "fourteen leading periodicals," 
but clearly listed 15.) Then as now an author- 
subject index, RG was said to be "useful in the 
library, in the club and in the home." It could 
be had for $ 1 per year, or, "for a limited time," 
free with a subscription to any of the indexed 
magazines save Cosmopolitan andMcClure 's. 
A sample copy would be sent for the price of 
a two-cent stamp. 

At the end of 1901 , a paper-covered vol- 
ume was published that cumulated the entries 
in the CBI supplement with those from the new 
Readers ' Guide. Each subsequent year saw 
similar cumulations. When the second was 
issued, in December 1902, the list of indexed 
periodicals had lengthened to 21. I8 In 1903, 
Readers ' Guide absorbed Brett's tottering in- 
dex, and the first quinquennial cumulation 
was subtitled: "A Consolidation of the Cumu- 
lative Index to a Selected List of Periodicals 
and the Readers ' Guide to Periodical Litera- 
ture"" 

The early multi-year cumulations are no- 
table for sudden steep increases in the number 
of periodicals indexed, followed by a general 
leveling off at just over 1 00 titles. The number 
would rise slowly after that, reflecting the 
increase in popular magazines. Those early 
issues were also unusual — given the index's 
name and what we have come to expect from 
it — in handling some books and report litera- 
ture as well as periodicals. For the first 23 
years of i?G's existence, it provided statistics 
in its subtitles. Thus the 1905-9 cumulation 
proclaimed itself "An Index to Ninety-Nine 
Periodicals, and Also in the Same Alphabet an 
Index to 430 Books, Reports, etc., Constitut- 
ing a Supplement to the Second Edition of the 
A. L. A. Index to General Literature" 20 The 
1910-14 edition provided "An Author and 
Subject Index to 1 1 1 Periodicals and Reports 
and 1 67 Composite Books "but also explained 
that because the forthcoming Standard Cata- 



log would include analytics for books, they 
would no longer be indexed mReaders ' Guide, 
excepting "government and association re- 
ports" (e.g., conference proceedings). 21 
Twenty years later, book indexing was en- 
hanced by the new Essay and General Litera- 
ture Index, which thoroughly analyzed collec- 
tions of essays in book format. In 1915-18, 
RG users were told to expect an "Author and 
Subject Index to 104 Periodicals and Re- 
ports"; in 1919-21 and in 1922-24, "An Au- 
thor and Subject Index to 108 Periodicals and 
Reports"; and finally, in 1925-28, the more 
noncommittal subtitle of "An Author and 
Subject Index" was adopted. 22 

Change and Continuity 

Today, the scope of Readers' Guide re- 
mains determinedly unchanged. It is, as it was 
in 1901, "an author subject index to selected 
general interest periodicals of reference value 
in libraries." 23 The number of publications 
indexed has grown to 188. As has ever been 
true, they are all English-language, almost all 
published in the United States, and cover all 
subjects of any conceivable popular interest. 

One of the few changes mReaders ' Guide 
over the years has been frequency of cumula- 
tion. The question of the optimal schedule 
appears to have perplexed the company. Al- 
though annual cumulations were always com- 
piled, the span of final cumulations varied. As 
indicated in the publication history below, 
three five-year cumulations covering 1900— 
14 were followed by one four-year (1915- 
1918). Then, in her preface to the fifth multi- 
year cumulation, which included only 1919- 
21, editor Elizabeth J. Sherwood announced 
that "the three-year cumulative plan [is] now 
permanently adopted." 24 She could not have 
anticipated the coming proliferation of maga- 
zines or the resistance librarians would even- 
tually develop to the cost of replacing cumu- 
lations with broader cumulations. The "per- 
manent" decision held only through the next 
cumulation (1922-24). Following that were 



202 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



three more four-year volumes and then, be- 
ginning in July 1935, 30 years of biennial 
compilations, For March 1965-February 1966, 
only a hardbound annual cumulation was of- 
fered, a practice persisting down to the present. 
It necessitates more laborious searching by 
the user interested in several years' worth of 
information (a problem circumvented by the 
newer online and CD-ROM versions of the 
index), but has resulted in volumes much more 
manageable physically. 

Small changes notwithstanding, what is 
perhaps most remarkable about the source is 
the durability of its original design. Despite its 
status as very nearly a pioneering effort; de- 
spite the great changes that have occurred in 
the publishing industry, education, and Ameri- 
can demographics; and despite the recent emer- 
gence of several competitors, Readers ' Guide 
has never significantly changed its look, its 
arrangement, or its purpose. A 1905 library 
user would be entirely comfortable with a 
1990 issue, though subject headings and ar- 
ticle titles would be startling. And here, for 
publisher, user, and, by the way, intellectual 
historian, is the most challenging and interest- 
ing aspect of indexing: selecting and system- 
atizing subject headings. 

Indexing Practices 

Poole had created what was essentially a 
keyword subject index, using authors' title 
terms as descriptors rather than developing a 
controlled subject-indexing vocabulary. Ironi- 
cally, the ease of keyword indexing automati- 
cally by computer has revived the popularity 
of this method, but its deficiencies are serious, 
and Wilson recognized them. His astuteness 
and that of his early editors is easy to overlook 
in a period that bristles with indexes of all 
types, with well developed subject heading 
lists for all topics, that has seen many analyses 
of their relative strengths and has at its com- 
mand a vast array of high technology to facili- 
tate all indexing and printing tasks. But that 
Wilson, with almost no useful precedents to 



learn from and every reason to minimize costs 
and labor, still recognized the great advan- 
tages of controlled-vocabulary indexing and 
pursued them, seems positively prescient. 

The principal advantage, of course, is that 
all citations to articles on a given subject are 
brought together under a uniform descriptor, 
regardless of the terminology selected by (he 
articles' authors. Furthermore, when a title 
offers few or no clues to content, as is often the 
case in all periodicals and especially in popu- 
lar magazines, the indexer's exercise of judg- 
ment assures that it will nonetheless be placed 
under the appropriate heading(s). But all of 
this requires the strenuous, enormously time- 
consuming intellectual laborof carefully read- 
ing every article to be indexed; deciding upon 
the most appropriate terms to represent thou- 
sands of concepts and the cross-references 
needed to guide the user to them; and continu- 
ally scrutinizing and revising headings and, of 
course, their associated cross-references, to 
reflect changes in usage. 

Following the practice of CBI and bor- 
rowing its headings wher^uitable, Readers ' 
Guide commenced with tlpj^sram of subject 
indexing and elaborate cross-referencing that 
continue? to distinguisjfal Wilson indexes. In 
1990, George Lewic^y isolated JJG's cross- 
reference structure, along with the accuracy 
and currency of its subject headings, as the 
characteristic that set it apart from and raised 
it above all competing guides to general -inter- 
est magazines. 25 

The Library of Congress Subject Head- 
ings (LCSH) derived in 1898 were used when 
possible, though being designed for books, 
LCSH terminology often lacked the specific- 
ity needed to describe narrowly focused maga- 
zine articles. Encyclopedias were also con- 
sulted, as were any other indexes the editor 
could find. 26 Indexing is never straightfor- 
ward, however, and different editors embraced 
different ideal theories of subject delineation, 
which led to some conflict. Years later, Marion 
Potter, the first RG editor, would remember 
her successor, Anna Lorraine Guthrie, de- 



READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE 203 



manding: "Use the encyclopedia subject head- 
ings. Every reader can find things in an ency- 
clopedia and does not need to have the proper 
page pointed out to him." 27 This is debatable, 
but does agree with the preference implied by 
Guthrie herself in her preface to the 1905-09 
volume. 28 

Accordingto John Lawler, the two women 
argued at length about headings, with Guthrie 
initially favoring the simply-formatted head- 
ings of the Peabody catalog (e.g., "Child la- 
bor"), Potter preferring the Athenaeum 
catalog's system of subdivision ("Children- 
Employment"): "The discussion continued 
until in time the two editors had converted 
each other. Then it was resumed with Miss 
Guthrie defending Miss Potter's former posi- 
tion and Miss Potter advocating Miss Guthrie's 
discarded theories." Potter also sought advice 
from the University of Minnesota faculty. 
"What about 'contagious diseases'?" Lawler 
has her asking the "startled head of the medi- 
cal school" . . . "should it be 'infectious 
diseases,' or perhaps 'communicable dis- 
eases'?" 29 Experience helped, but the task 
never became easy. Potter recalled hearing 
Al ice Dougan, who served longer than anyone 
else as RG's editor, declare after many years: 
"Subject heading work is a hard job," 30 

In 1954, R.G editor Sarita Robinson ex- 
plained the index's current policy on subject 
heading "selection and use.*' It had not changed 
much, with other Wilson indexes and LCSH 
still the main guides. She pointed out, how- 
ever, that because it dealt with more timely 
literature, RG often had to treat an idea before 
LCSH did, resulting, eventually, in differ- 
ences between them . Other problems i ncluded 
the difficulty of determining how narrow the 
indexing should be, how many cross-refer- 
ences were really needed, and which ideas or 
events were of purely ephemeral interest, 
which of sufficiently enduring importance to 
merit their own subject headings. 31 

Tracing the evolution of new terms down 
through the years of the index is fascinating in 
itself and illuminates some of Robinson's 



points, not to mention Dougan' s frustration. 
For example, the 1900-04 index offered only 
two subject sections dealing with aviation: 
"Aerial navigation" and"Air-ships."By 1 905- 
09, there were many relevant headings and 
many dozens of entries. What would come to 
be "Pilots" were "Aeronauts," and cross-ref- 
erencing for the still used "Aerial navigation" 
instructed the user to "see also": "Aeronau- 
tics," "Aeroplanes," "Balloons and Air-ships," 
and "Flying machines." Throughout subse- 
quent volumes, the numbers of entries contin- 
ued to multiply, and in 1915-18, the primary 
terms at last became "Aeronautics" (with a 
reference from "Aerial navigation") and "Air- 
planes." 

Similarly, one can imagine Wilson index- 
ers scrambling to keep up with automotive 
developments. In 1900-04, the form of fuel 
that would emerge as standard was not yet 
certain; although "Automobiles, Gasoline" 
took the largest share of citations, with 29; 
"Automobiles, Electric" had only one less; 
"Automobiles, Steam" had 10; and "Automo- 
biles, Alcohol" had 5. In 1905-09, there were 
suddenly dozens of headings relating to auto- 
mobiles. By 1915-18, "Automobiles" were 
apparently assumed to be gasoline-fed ve- 
hicles, forno qualifier was deemednecessary. 
Two new headings, however, turned out to 
reflect only a short-lived fantasy and immedi- 
ately fell into disuse: "Autoplanes," with a 
citation to Scientific American's article on "A 
Limousine for Land and Air Travel," and 
"Automobiles, Aerial," leading the user to a 
single article entitled "Aero- Auto-Craft — The 
Car of the Future." 

"Wireless telegraphy" was used through 
1919-21, though there was by then some 
confusion about it, and "Radio" also appeared, 
with one citation. In 1922-24, the latter head- 
ing subsumed the former. "Atomic power" 
appeared for the first time in 1939-41, with 
entries for 18 articles, all of them speculative. 
Headings and citations proliferated after that, 
but with a dramatic leap in number, and the 
first use of "Atomic bomb," in the 1943-45 



204 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



cumulation. "Calculating machines" did not 
give way to "Computers" until 1965-66, 
though long before that, many cross-refer- 
ences had to be provided. (Before 1932, "Cal- 
culators" were "Mathematical prodigies"!) 

Recent economic and political events also 
raise questions for the indexer, who cannot 
know at the time they are first reported how 
future users will search for them. Thus the 
stock market's "Black Friday" lies buried 
under "Stock exchange," subheading "Crisis, 
October, 1929," in the 1929-32 cumulation, 
confounding some current users seeking con- 
temporary accounts of that day. And "World 
War I" remained "European War, 1914-1918" 
until 1977-78. In 1951-53, a cross-reference 
was provided from "World War, 1914-191 8," 
but several subsequent cumulations omitted it, 
presumably by accident When asked how she 
decided when to revise outdated headings, 
Marion Potter is said to have replied: "When 
I shudder at them and can't stand them any 
longer, I finally change them." 32 

Computerization facilitates subject work, 
but it remains RG's most problematic task. 
The company has long been criticized for not 
following the lead of other services (e.g., 
Psychological Abstracts and ERIC) by pub- 
lishing its indexes' subject heading lists, To- 
day, online subject files for each index are 
available to both the Wilson staff and the 
public — though paper lists continue to be re- 
quested. On average, three headings per ar- 
ticle are assigned. When asked in 1 990 about 
changes occurring atRG, its editor, JeanMarra, 
mentioned only two: an attempt to establish 
more uniformity of headings among the vari- 
ous indexes, and increasing care to avoid 
terminology with a potential to offend certain 
groups. As an example, she cited "sexist head- 
ings." But she added, with typical Wilson 
caution, "We reflect the literature. We don't 
feel we're out to change the world." Still, said 
Marra, "We're trying to become more sensi- 
tive."" 

Establishing the most authentic form of a 
name is perhaps easier than setting subject 



headings, but still a challenge. The Wilson 
Company has always been notable for its 
carefully developed and maintained personal 
and corporate names files. 34 Once created 
separately for each index, these have been 
collapsed into a single online name authority 
control file which governs the entire com- 
pany, guaranteeing consistency among in- 
dexes. 35 

Selecting the Sources Indexed 

But regardless of its indexing and produc- 
tion quality, a periodical guide is only as 
useful as its sources are well selected. Read- 
ers ' Guide has been attacked on this score by 
both interested and disinterested parties, which 
is perhaps unavoidable for an index that is 
ubiquitous yet necessarily limited in number 
of magazines treated. 36 Its defense has always 
been its unusually responsive means of selec- 
tion. Early in the history of Readers ' Guide, all 
subscribers were polled periodically to deter- 
mine which titles should be added. As the 
subscriber list grew unmanageably long, only 
a representative sample was questioned. In 
1951, through a Wilson Library Bulletin ar- 
ticle, editor Sarita Robinson took her concerns 
about i?G coverage directly to librarians. "Are 
we indexing the right magazines?" she asked, 
and went on to note irregularities in topical 
coverage (e.g., no gardening magazine, but 
nine on education) ; overlap with the company's 
subject-specialized indexes; and possible 
changes in magazine quality over a long run, 
She concluded by suggesting that a broad- 
based survey be carried out by ALA as "unbi- 
ased and qualified representatives of the pro- 
fession." 37 One year later, the Committee on 
Wilson Indexes was established under the 
auspices of the American Library Associa- 
tion. 38 

In 1984, former member Charles R. 
Andrews described the committee's function- 
ing in detail. 39 Composed of librarians prima- 
rily from the eastern seaboard, to assure their 
attendance at Bronx meetings (though this is 



READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE 205 



changing and today some come from as far 
away as California 40 ), the committee evalu- 
ates Wilson indexes, surveys subscribers, re- 
views suggestions for change, and communi- 
cates its final decisions to the company, which, 
within its staff and financial limits, complies, 
In one celebrated instance, Wilson was even 
persuaded to restore nine previously deleted 
titles that librarians thought important to li- 
brary users, though their reference value was 
questionedby the Wilson Company. 41 Whereas 
committee members once read all letters and 
requests from the public, since the 1970s these 
have poured in so copiously that George 
Lewicky and Jean Marra screen them and 
present recommendations for the committee's 
consideration. 42 Thus the link between the 
committee and the library profession has be- 
come less direct, mediated by the company 
itself. Though there have been no significant 
published criticisms of this change, it has the 
potential to undermine objectivity of assess- 
ment. Nonetheless, all letters are available to 
any committee members who wish to read 
them, and the company's relationship with its 
customers remains close and personal, per- 
haps uniquely so. 

In the 90 years since Readers ' Guide was 
founded, it has spun off important auxiliary 
projects. The first was the Periodicals Clear- 
ing House, established in 1910 because old 
articles, whose existence was now signaled by 
indexing, often could not be found. At its most 
expansive, the Clearing House had for sale 
approximately three million single issues, 
100,000 bound volumes, and 1,000 complete 
runs, and searches for still other numbers 
could be commissioned. Kraus Periodicals 
purchased the Clearing House in 1955. 43 

Related Wilson Indexes 

A more enduring development began 
unpretentiously as theReaders ' Guide Supple- 
ment — much as RG itself had started life as an 
appendage to Cumulative Book Index. Index- 
ing periodicals that were too specialized and 
academic to be needed by public libraries, the 



Supplement appeared five times each year, 
then cumulated in a bound volume. The first 
multi-year cumulation covered 1907-15, the 
second 1916-19/ 4 The third (1920-23) at last 
gave it an independent identity and announced 
its new name: International Index to Periodi- 
cals t with the rather broad explanatory sub- 
title, "Devoted Chiefly to the Humanities and 
Science." 45 In 1965, it was re-titled Social 
Sciences and Humanities Index and in 1974 
split into two separate indexes. 

By this time, the company had long since 
left Minneapolis, its first home (and "birth- 
place" of Readers ' Guide). By the early teens, 
Wilson had felt the need for proximity to the 
center of American publishing. He moved the 
company first to White Plains, New York, in 
1913, and four years later to more adequate 
and conveni ent quarters in the Bronx, where it 
still resides. Located just to the east of the 
bustling Major Deegan Expressway, it is eas- 
ily identified by the famous sculpture of a 
huge lighthouse atop an open book that soars 
upward from its rooftop — which refers, of 
course, to the famous Wilson lighthouse logo 
that is imprinted upon each publication. 

Other Readers' Guide Products 

In 1935, Abridged Readers' Guide was 
started for smaller institutions. Identical in 
format to its unabridged namesake, itincluded 
the indexing for only about one-quarter of the 
periodicals. It continues to this day, fulfilling 
the needs of small public and school libraries. 

As the years wore on, researchers had felt 
the lack of Wilson-quality periodical indexing 
for the nineteenth century. The company re- 
solved, therefore, to create such an index 
retrospectively, covering 1890-99. When the 
project was first announced, 20 periodicals 
were to be included, but by the time it was 
published in 1944, the number had increased 
to 51,and The nineteenth Century Readers' 
Guide spanned two thick volumes. 46 

That no additional RG product or format 
was offered until almost 40 years later is, from 
one perspective, a testament to the company's 



206 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



^ 



caution and stability, and from another, its 
reluctance to change with the times, Well after 
other reference works had gone online, 
Wilson's publications remained stubbornly 
paper-bound. Finally, in 1983, Readers' Guide 
and several other indexes were computerized 
and marketed by Wilson acting as its own 
vendor under the name Wihonline. In 1987, 
the same indexing span was published on CD- 
ROM as Wilsondisc — with, of course, con- 
tinuing updates, In both formats,i? G was well- 
received by reviewers and users. 

But the company's first foray in decades 
into an indexing format essentially outside its 
experience came with the introduction of Read- 
ers' Guide Abstracts — initially on microfiche 
in 1 984, and four years later in a paper version 
designed primarily for public and school li- 
braries, incorporating only 40 percent of the 
abstracts available in the microfiche product. 
In the same year, Popular Magazine Review 
(Topsfield, MA: Data Base Communications 
Corp., 1984-87) began. It was eventually ac- 
quired by Ebsco and underwent a title change 
to Magazine Article Summaries (Palo Alto, 
CA, 1987- ). Offering indexing and compara- 
tively short abstracts for popular magazine 
articles in both paper and CD-ROM, Maga- 
zine Article Summaries has perhaps been 
Readers 1 Guide Abstracts' most comparable 
competitor, though it has won much less atten- 
tion and acceptance. 

Readers ' Guide Abstracts represented an 
extremely bold step — intellectually, because 
popular magazine articles had never seemed 
as suited to abstracting as scholarly papers, 
and practically, because it was uncommonly 
labor-intensive. Located in Cambridge, Mas- 
sachusetts, to take advantage of that area's 
deep pool of well educated workers, the Ab- 
stracts in 1990 employed 32 full-time profes- 
sional abstracters, most of them English or 
journalism majors hoping to launch writing 
careers. Explaining why the Abstracts were 
undertaken, Lewicky noted an accelerating 
trend throughout the information industry to- 
ward database enhancements, "value-added" 
features. 41 



At the age of 90, with 26,1 19 mail sub- 
scriptions to its unabridged paper version and 
21,590 to the abridged, 48 the Readers' Guide 
to Periodical Literature is comfortably indis- 
pensable, "the closest thing to mom in the 
library." The index, and more impressively 
the entire company that produces it, stands as 
a striking example of success in bibliographic 
publishing. What, then, were the elements of 
this success? 

The Reasons for RG's Success 

Posing the same question in her 1951 
article, "Whodunit?," Marion E. Potter settled 
on a single answer: H.W. Wilson himself*' 
And she was probably correct. The most du- 
rable building block of his success was the 
importance and uniqueness of his products- 
most notably CBI and Readers ' Guide, which 
together served as foundation and pilotproject 
for what was to come. But he was not the first 
to recognize the need, nor were his indexes 
truly pioneering. He was, however, the firstto 
succeed and endure as an index publisher, and 
he set high standards of quality that even today 
Readers' Guide's major competitor, Maga- 
zine Index (Menlo Park, CA: Information 
Access Corp, 1 977- ), does not seem to aspire 
to and certainly has not reached. 50 Added to 
this are several impressively far-sighted, hard- 
headed, business decisions. 

First, and least often commented upon, 
was his willingness to hire women. At a time 
when they had few opportunities in the private 
sector, Wilson welcomed them and often placed 
them in key positions, thus availing himself of 
the best talents of a largely underrated or 
ignored, but educated and willing, prospec- 
tive labor force. 

Second, he asserted the futility of compe- 
tition in costly publishing projects with lim- 
ited markets, and, equally important, won the 
agreement of the competitor in question. In 
191 1, Wilson and R.R. Bowker, producer of 
Publishers ' Weekly, agreed to divide up the 
bibliographic universe. As a result, Bowker 



READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE 207 



would terminate his new monthly periodical 
index and the cumulated book lists which had 
begun reappearing in Publishers' Weekly, 
while Wilson would turn over to Bowker some 
directories and a digest of library literature 
that he had been publishing. 51 However one 
may feel about voluntary restraints on compe- 
tition, the deal apparently benefitted both com- 
panies financially. 

Third, Wilson knew and stayed close to 
his customers, a tradition continued by his 
company after his death. Even before the ALA 
Committee on Wilson Indexes was formed, he 
consulted librarians regularly, attended their 
meetings, and seriously considered their writ- 
ten suggestions. He never grew away from his 
users, never lost sight of their needs, and so he 
understood what they would purchase. Coupled 
with this was his willingness to take losses on 
new products that held his confidence, allow- 
ing them ample time to build adequate sub- 
scriber lists. That he already owned and main- 
tained a profitable second business during his 
early years as publisher helped immeasur- 
ably. 

Fourth was his development of cumula- 
tions, which had been considered economi- 
cally infeasible. 

Fifth, and most famous, was his initiation 
of "service basis" pricing, an imaginative con- 
cept that overcame the other greatest financial 
obstacle to unsubsidized index publishing. An 
intellectually demanding and labor-intensive 
task, index creation is very expensive, yet the 
potential market is comparatively small and 
consists mostly of libraries in the not-for- 
profit sector. Especially in the early days of 
Readers ' Guide, neither high-volume sales at 
low prices nor modest sales at high prices 
couldbe counted upon to cover costs, let alone 
generate a profit. Wilson hit upon the novel 
idea of pricing the index as a service rather 
than ^product. He first experimented with and 
rejected the possibility of issuing indexing on 
cards, with libraries buying those that covered 



the periodicals they owned. Reasoning that 
even if the entire index were received, librar- 
ies would find primarily useful only those 
parts pertinent to their holdings, he then de- 
cided to charge differentially, based on the 
number of titles owned by the subscribing 
library. In effect, the smallest libraries with 
the fewest resources were charged least and 
the largest libraries were charged most, even 
though they all received the same product. 
S ervice basis pricing withstood indignant chal- 
lenges from large libraries which, regardless 
of their indignation, found Readers ' Guide 
essential and bought it. Over time, the unor- 
thodox pricing method became accepted and 
was applied to new Wilson indexes as they 
developed. It is still used for the specialized 
sources, though by 1 961 , the audience for both 
Readers ' Guide andAbridged Readers' 'Guide 
had grown so large that flat pricing became 
possible. 52 Today, they cost every subscriber 
$150 and $75 per year, respectively. 

So, through its founder's persistence, self- 
confidence, imagination, good judgment, and 
conservative financial expectations, the H.W. 
Wilson Company prospered, and its flagship 
index became as familiar and indispensable as 
mom. What Readers' Guide has meant to 
generations of researchers is possible to ap- 
preciate only if one can imagine being without 
it and without all of the indexes whose ways it 
paved. Obviously, itprovides access to moun- 
tains of information that would otherwise re- 
main virtually inaccessible. But, beyond this, 
it must have encouraged the founding of peri- 
odicals, serious writing for periodicals, li- 
brary subscriptions to periodicals, and orga- 
nized collecting of their entire runs by librar- 
ies. Taken for granted like any mom, Readers ' 
Guide is rarely appreciated as an instigator of 
revolution in information access and periodi- 
cal and reference publishing. It differed from 
most revolutions in that it exceeded its own 
early expectations, its effects were overwhelm- 
ingly positive, and they endured. 



208 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



"A Monthly Cumulative Index to Ten Important 
Periodicals." Supplement to Cumulative Book 
Index, 1901. Minneapolis: H.W, Wilson Co. 

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. 1901- . 
Publisher: H,W. Wilson Co. Place of Publica- 
tion: Minneapolis, 1901-1913; White Plains, 
N.Y„ 191 3-17; Bronx, NY, 1917- Current fre- 
quency: Semi-monthly, March, April, Septem- 
ber, October, December; Monthly, January, 
February, May through August, November. 
Quarterly cumulative issues; annual cumula- 
tive bound volumes. Cumulations: 1900-1904; 
1905-1909; 1910-1914; 1915-1918; 1919- 
1921; 1922-1924; 1925-1928; 1929-June 1932; 
July 1932-June 1935; July 1935-June 1937; 
July 1937- June 1939; July 1939-June 1941; 
July 1941-Jutie 1943; July 1943-April 1945; 
May 1945-April 1947; May 1947-April 1949; 
May 1949-March 1951; April 1951 -March 
1953;AprUl953-February 1955; March 1955- 
February 1957; March 1 957-Febmary 1959; 
March 1959-February 1961; Match 1961-Feb- 



ruary 1963; March 1963-February 1965; an- 
nual thereafter. Editors: Marion E. Potter, 1901— 
1902; Anna Lorraine Guthrie, 1903-1914; 
Marion A. Knight, 1914-1918; Elizabeth J. 
Sherwood, 1918-1924; Alice M.Dougan, 1924- 
1945; Sarita M. Robinson, 1945-1963; Zada 
Limerick, 1963-1979; JeanM. Marra, 1979- . 

Abridged Readers' Guide. 1935- Bronx, NY: H.W. 
Wilson Co. Frequency: Nine per year. Cumula- 
tions: Three per year and annual. 

Nineteenth Century Readers' Guide 1890-1S99, ed- 
ited by Helen Grant Cushing. Bronx, NY: H.W. 
Wilson Co, 1944. 

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature on 
Wilsonline. Online: January 1983- . 

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature on 
misondtsc. CD-ROM: January 1983- . 

Readers' Guide Abstracts. Microfiche: 1984- . 

Readers' Guide Abstracts, Print Edition. Hard copy: 
September 1988- . Frequency: Ten per year. 
Cumulations: Semi-annual. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The most useful source of information on 
the development of Readers' Guide to Peri- 
odical Literature, is RG itself, especially the 
editors* prefaces published in early cumula- 
tions and several articles published by long- 
ago Wilson employees, most in the journal 
now entitled Wilson Library Bulletin. Among 
these articles are those by Beatrice B. 
Rakestraw, Sarita Robinson, and Marion E. 
Potter. Two other sources are also crucial: 
John Lawless company history and Arthur 
Plotnik's encyclopedia article. The latter dis- 
cusses both Wilson the company and Wilson 
the man. Plotnik apparently had access to a 
company archive not available to this author. 
It is not clear that access to such an archive 
would be especially revealing since few criti- 
cal decisions seem to have been made over the 
years; until recently, when electronic access 
was provided and Readers ' Guide Abstracts 
was introduced, format, scope, and purpose 
had hardly changed since the index's earliest 
days. 



Andrews, Charles R. "Cooperation at its Best: The 
Committee on Wilson Indexes at Work." ^£24 
(Winter, 1984): 155-61. 

Cheney, Frances Neel. "Wilson Publications as Ref- 
erence Tools." Wilson Library Bulletin 22 (June, 
1948): 801-05. 

Cushing, Helen Grant. "Preface." Nineteenth Cen- 
tury Readers' Guide 1890-1899. New York: 
H.W. Wilson Co., 1944. 

Davis, Mary Ellen Kyger, and John F. Riddick, 
"Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature and 
Magazine Index: A Comparison." Reference 
Services Review 1 1 (Winter, 1983): 43-50. 

G[uthrie], A[nna] L[orraine]. "Preface." Readers' 
Guide to Periodical Literature 1905-1909. Min- 
neapolis: H.W. Wilson Company, 1910. 

"Halsey W. Wilson, Publisher, Dead" [obituary]. 
New York Times (March 2, 1954) p. 25. 

Katz,Bill. "Magazines." Library Journal 93 (Febru- 
ary 1,1968): 527. 

. "Motherly Index." Library Journal 92 (Feb- 
ruary 1,1967): 555. 

Kesselman, Martin. "Online Update." Wilson Li- 
brary Bulletin (December, 1983): 286-87. 

Lawler, John. The H. W. Wilson Company: Half a 
Century of Bibliographic Publishing. Minne- 
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1950, 
"Nineteenth Century Readers' Guide." Wilson Bul- 
letin for Libraries 13 (October, 1938): 143. 



READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE 209 



Pearson, Lois R. "In the News: Publisher Restores 
Nine Periodical Titles to Readers' Guide on 
RASDCommittee'sAdYice."/4wertawiZ/Zjrar- 
ies 9 (February, 1978): 69. 

Peet, Creighton. "Profiles: AMousetrapintheBronx." 
New Yorker 13 (October 29, 1938): 25-28. 

Plotnik, Arthur. "H.W. Wilson." Encyclopedia of 
Library and Information Science, edited by 
Allen Kent, Harold Lancour, and Jay E. Daily. 
New York: Marcel Dekker, vol. 10, 1973, pp. 
250-78. 

Poland, Myra, Henry J. Carr, and O. R. Howard 
Thomson. "Report on Periodical Indexing." 
Library Journal^ (December, 1914): 903-04. 

Potter, Marion E. "Whodunit?" Wilson Library Bul- 
letin 25 (April, 1951): 593-96, 605. 

"Preface." Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature 
1900-1904. Minneapolis: H.W. Wilson Co., 
1905, pp. [vii]-ix. 

Rakestraw, Beatrice B. "Making a Wilson Index.." 
Wilson Library Bulletin 22 (June, 1948): 796- 
800. 

"The Readers' Guide: 1901-1951; The First Fifty 
Years." Wilson Library Bulletin 25 (April , 1 95 1 ): 
591-92,605. 



Rettig, James. Review of Readers' Guide Abstracts, 
Print Edition. Wilson Library Bulletin 63 (Janu- 
ary, 1989): 128. 

Robinson, Sarita. "Are We Indexing the Right Maga- 
zines?" WilsonLibraryBulletin 25 (April, 1 95 1): 
597-98. 

. Subject Headings: Their Selection and Use 

in 'Readers' Guide,"' Special LibrariesAS (May- 
June, 1954): 203-05. 

S[herwood], Elizabeth] J, "Preface. "Readers ' Guide 
to Periodical Literature 1915-1918. New York: 
H.W. Wilson Co., 1919. 

Whiteley, Sandy, ed. "Reference Books Bulletin: 
Featured Reviews: Wilsondisc: Readers' Guide 
to Periodical Literature (CD-ROM)." Booklist 
84 (December 1, 1987): 609-12. 

W ilson, H.W. "Preface ." Readers ' Guide to Periodi- 
cal Literature 1910-1914. White Plains, NY: 
H.W. Wilson Co., 1915. 

Wilson, H[alsey] W[illiam]." Current Biography 
(1948): 679-82. 



NOTES 



1 Bill Katz, "Motherly Index," Library Journal, 92 (1 

February 1967): 555. 

2 John Lawler, The H, W. Wilson Company: Haifa Cen- 

tury of Bibliographic Publishing (Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 1950); Creighton 
Peet, "Profiles: A Mousetrap in the Bronx," New 
Yorker 13 (29 October 1938): 25-28; ArthurPlotnik, 
"H.W. Wilson," in Encyclopedia of Library and 
Information Science, vol. 10 (New York: Marcel 
Dekker, 1973), 250-78; "Wilson, H(alsey) 
W(illiam)," in Current Biography 1948 (Bronx, 
NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1949), 679-82. 
2 Lawler, 9-19; "Halsey W. Wilson, Publisher, Dead," 
New York Times (2 March 1954), 25. 

4 Lawler, 25-28; "Wilson, H(alsey) W(illiam)," 680. 

5 The title page of the first CBI, dated February 1, 1898, 

is reproduced in Plotnik, 252. 

6 For example; Peet, 25. 

7 John Lawler, 25; "Preface," in Readers' Guide to 

Periodical Literature 1900-1904 (Minneapolis: 
H.W. Wilson Co., 1905), [vii]; Carl Vitz, "Brett, 
William Howard," in Encyclopedia of Library and 
Information Science, vol. 3 (New York: Marcel 
Dekker, 1970), 264. 

8 Plotnik, 254; Beatrice B. Rakestraw, "Making a Wilson 

Index," Wilson Library Bulletin, 22 (June 1948): 
796. Rakestraw's article includes a photograph of 
a combiner intent upon her rows of linotype slugs. 

'Lawler, 26-27. 

10 Ibid., 28-29; ArthurPlotnik, 255. 

"Peet, 25. 

"John Lawler, 27-28, 31-32, 



13 George I. Lewicky, Vice-President and Director of 

Indexing Services, H.W. Wilson Co., interview 

with the author, 19 April 1990. 
M Lawler, 37; Plotnik, 256, 
15 Lawler, 38; Plotnik, 256; "Preface," 1905, [vii]. 
l6 "The Readers' Guide: 1901-1951: The First Fifty 

Years," Wilson Library Bulletin, 25 (April 1951): 

591. 

17 Ibid. 

18 Ibid. 

1 »"Preface,"1905, [vii]; [Title page], Readers ' Guide to 
Periodical Literature 1900-1904 (Minneapolis: 
H.W. Wilson Company, 1905). 

20 [Title page], Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature 

iP05-yP0P(Minneapolis:H.W.WilsonCo.,19IO). 

21 [Title page], Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature 

1910-1914 (Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1915); 
H.W. Wilson, "Preface," Readers' Guide to Peri- 
odical Literature 1910-1914 (White Plains, NY: 
H.W. Wilson Company, 1915), [v]. 

n [Title page], Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature 
1914-1918 (Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1919); 
[Title page], Readers ' Guide to Periodical Litera- 
ture 1919-1921 (Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson 
Co., 1 922); [Title page], Readers ' Guide toPeriodi- 
cal Literature 1922-1924 (Bronx, NY: H.W. Wil- 
son Co., 1925); [Title page], Readers' Guide to 
Periodical Literature ;P25-7P.2S (Bronx, NY: H.W. 
Wilson Co., 1929). 

23 [Cover], Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature^ 90 
(10 March 1990). 

2 " Elizabeth] J. S[herwood], "Preface," Readers ' Guide 
to Periodical Literature 1915-1918 (Bronx, NY: 
H.W. Wilson Co., 1919): unpaged. 



210 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



3J Lewicky, interview with the author, 19 April 1990. 

26 A[nna] L[orraine] G [uthrie] , "Preface," Readers ' Guide 
io Periodical Literature 1905-1909 (Minneapolis: 
H.W. Wilson Co., 1910): unpaged. 

2 'Marion E. Potter, "Whodunit?," Wilson Library Bulle- 
»n,25(Aprill951):593. 

2, G[uthrie], "Preface," unpaged. 

a 'Lawler, 101. 

30 Potter, 595-96. 

ai Sarita Robinson, "Subject Headings: Their Selection 
and Use in 'Readers' Guide,'" Special Libraries,45 
(May-June 1954): 203-05. 

32 Lawler, 106. 

33 Jean M. Marra, Editor, Readers ' Guide to Periodical 
Literature, interview with the author, 19 April 
1990. 

a *Lawler, 90-93; Rakestraw, 799-800; Mary EllenKyger 
Davis and John F. Riddick, "Readers' Guide to 
Periodical Literature and Magazine Index: A Com- 
parison," Reference Services Review, 1 1 (Winter 
1983): 45. 

11 Davis and Riddick, 46; Marra, interview with author, 
19 April 1990. 

J *See, for example: Myra Poland, Henry J. Carr, and O. 
R. Howard Thomson, "Report on Periodical Index- 
ing," Library Journal, 39 (December 1914): 903- 
04; ICatz, "Motherly Index," 555; Lois R. Pearson, 
"In the News; Publisher Restores Nine Periodical 
Titles to Readers' Guide on RASD Committee's 
Advice," American Libraries, 9 (February 1978): 

57 Sarita Robinson, "Are We Indexing the Right Maga- 
zines?," Wilson Library Bulletin, 25 (April 1951): 
597-98. 



38 Charles R. Andrews, "Cooperation at its Best: The 
Committee on Wilson Indexes at Work, 1 ' RQ, 24 
(Winter 1984): 155. 

w Ibid., 155-61; Davis and Riddick, 44. 

40 Lewicky, interview with author, 19 April 1990. 

41 Pearson, 69. 

42 Lewicky and Marra, interviews with the author, 19 

April 1990. 

43 Lawler, 79-79; Plotnik, 262. 

« «p re f ace) » i n International Index to Periodicals 1907- 
/P7.5 (White Plains, NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1916): 
unpaged (originally published underthe title: R ead- 
ers ' Guide to Periodical Literature Supplement)', 
Elizabeth] J. Sfherwood], "Preface," in Interna- 
tional Index to Periodicals 1916-1919 (Bronx, 
NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1920): unpaged (originally 
published under the title: Readers ' Guide to Peri- 
odical Literature Supplement). 

45 E[sther] A[nne] Sfmith], "Preface," in International 
Index to Periodicals 1920-1923 (Bronx, NY: H.W. 
Wilson Co., 1924): unpaged. 

^"Nineteenth Century Readers' Guide," in Wilson Bul- 
letin/or Librarians, 13 (October 1938): 143;Helen 
Grant Gushing, "Preface," Nineteenth Century Read- 
ers' Guide 1890-1899 (Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson 
Co., 1944): [v]-vii. 

'"Lewicky, interview with author, 19 April 1990. 

48 According to postal statements in 1990 issues. 

49 Potter, 593. 

50 Davis and Riddick, 48-50. 

51 Lawier, 59-60. 

52 Ibid., 115-35; Plotnik, 257, 267-68. 



_£*: 



m 



Demystifying Parliamentary 
Procedure: Robert's Rules of Order 



Sarah B. Watstein 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Today, while specific editions and revisions 
may vary from institution to institution, there 
is virtually no library in the United States 
without both a reference copy and multiple 
circulating copies of Robert 's Rules of Order, 
Without question, Robert's Rules of Order 
(hereinafter referred to as Robert's), one of 
the most phenomenally successful reference 
books of all time, is the standard primary 
source of information on parliamentary pro- 
cedure. From its original publication in 1876 
to the 1 990s, Robert 's continues to be not only 
an obvious purchase for academic, public, 
school, and special libraries, but also the obvi- 
ous source for answering certain kinds of 
reference questions on a regular basis. 

Over the years, Robert's has served an 
extraordinarily varied audience. It functions 
as a guide to the parliamentarily perplexed 
who serve on committees as part of their jobs 
or as members of organizations or associa- 
tions and those who attend or chair business 
meetings of such groups. To the social scien- 
tist, Robert's, by its own declaration printed 
on inside jacket cover of the 1970 edition, 
serves as the book to "help get things done in 
accord with the American spirit," and thereby 
functions as a teaching manual of democratic 
theory. Students of public policy and of legis- 
lative behavior also find Robert's useful, as 
does the mathematically oriented political 
scientist for whom Robert 's "offers for study 
a remarkable and fascinating system of queue- 



ing rules," 1 It is interesting to note that Henry 
Robert did not aim his book at beginners. 
Defects in early editions, including coverage 
of many topics twice, imperfect consistency, 
incompleteness, inclusion of obscure motions 
and/or points, awkward syntax, the lack of 
sample material, and the inclusion of -unim- 
portant introductory material no doubt dis- 
couraged many a beginner over the years! 

Reputation and Influence 

Praise and respect for Robert 's have in- 
creased with each new edition or major revi- 
sion since. In her 1970 profile of General 
Henry M. Robert, Barbara A. Bannon noted 
that "'Robert's Rules of Order' has now sold 
well over 2,600,000 copies in seven earlier 
editions, and is doing just fine in its new first 
major revision in fifty-five years, with a first 
printing of 100,000 copies." 2 In his review of 
the 1970 edition, Bernard N. Grofman noted 
that to "virtually all Americans Robert 's Rules 
IS parliamentary procedure and using any 
other manual would be sacrilege. ... it has 
been seriously suggested that only the Bible 
has had a greater influence on the organiza- 
tional behavior of Americans." 3 

The influence of Robert's is evidenced 
not only by its commercial success but also by 
its inclusion in nearly any historical sketch of, 
orcore bibliography on, parliamentary proce- 
dure. Hundreds of manuals of parliamentary 
procedure have been published over the years. 
A historical sketch of parliamentary proce- 



2 1 2 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



dure begins, properly, with the basic prin- 
ciples of parliamentary procedure as defined 
and practiced as early as the fifth century b.c. 
in Athens. The English tradition evolved 
through precedent from as early as the thir- 
teenth century, and was fairly well developed 
by the eighteenth century. A compilation of 
these rulings was published by John Hatsell, 
clerk of the House of Commons, in two vol- 
umes (one in 1776 and the second in 1781), 
and later reissued in four volumes. These 
volumes were the principal source of Thomas 
Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Prac- 
tice, published in 1801, The three principal 
writers on the subject ofparliamentary proce- 
dure in the United States prior to the twentieth 
century were Jefferson, Cushing, and Robert. 

Other Guides to Parliamentary 
Procedure 

Thomas Jefferson's Manual of Parlia- 
mentary Practice continues to be the principal 
parliamentary guide of the United States Sen- 
ate and the House of Representatives, adopted 
by the Senate in 1801 and by the House in 
1837. Luther Steams Cushing's A Manual of 
Parliamentary Practice R ules ofProceedings 
and Debate in Assemblies was published in 
1845. Generally known as "Cushing's 
Manual/' it was considered more appropriate 
to the needs of nonlegislative groups than 
Jefferson's Manual. The most widely used 
book on parliamentary procedure today, how- 
ever, is that of Henry M, Robert. 

Hundreds of rule-and-guidebooks for 
making meetings work are currently in print, 
offering quick answers and shortcuts, up-to- 
date methods, frameworks for deciphering 
meetings and making choices, tricks and tech- 
niques, ploys and stratagems with which indi- 
viduals can maneuver meetings to their ad- 
vantage. These rule-and-guidebooks are, in 
essence, spin-offs of Robert's and other "ob- 
solete" nineteenth-century parliamentary pro- 
cedure guides. These spin-offs exist because 
the layperson views parliamentary procedure 
as a jungle and a jumble; and passage through 
the maze of parliamentary rules and proce- 



dures is often confused at best, requiring the 
use of quick guides which are short and clear, 
in easy-to-understand language, with frequent 
checklists and charts. Not all spin-offs are 
useful to the layperson; many serve to confuse 
rather than simplify procedures. Sticking to 
the standard Robert 's and leaving spin-offs on 
the shelf often proves to be the most efficient 
and effective way of learning the fine points of 
conducting a meeting. 

Consideration of competing works must 
include mention, in addition to spin-offs, of 
restatements of Robert 's. These are as numer- 
ous as spin-offs, and include Auer's Essen- 
tials of Parliamentary Procedure (3rd ed., 
New York; Prentice Hall, 1 959) and Demeter 's 
Manual of Parliamentary Law and Procedure 
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1969). Other titles 
such as Sturgis' Sturgis Standard Code of 
Parliamentary Procedure (3rd ed., New York: 
McGraw-Hill, 1988)seekto simplify Robert's 
Mules. Still other titles offer down-to-earth, 
common-sense approaches, pleading for no 
more formal use of Robert's than necessary, 
such as FarwelPs The Majority Rules: A 
Manual of Procedure for Most Groups 
(Pueblo, CO: High Publishers, 1980). "Mod- 
ern" guides include Jones's Parliamentary 
Procedure at a Glance (New York: Dutton, 
1971); Keesey's Barnes & Noble Book of 
Modern Parliamentary Procedure (New 'York: 
Harper & Row, 1984); Riddick and Butcher's 
Riddick's Rules of Procedures (New York: 
Scribner, 1988); and Suthers' TheNew Primer 
in Parliamentary Procedure (Chicago: 
Dartnell, 1 965). Despite the existence of alter- 
natives, in his survey entitled "A Historical 
Sketch of Parliamentary Procedure," Ray E. 
Keesey notes that "None of the guides to 
parliamentary procedure since Robert 'sRules 
of Order has had as wide an acceptance as 
his." 4 

The Value of Procedure 

Parliamentary law is a complex subject, 
the comprehensive knowledge of which re- 
quires considerable study as well as practical 
experience and an understanding of its prin- 



ROBERTS RULES OF ORDER 213 



ciples.Athoroughunderstandingofthisrefer- 
ence landmark is inseparable from an appre- 
ciation of parliamentary law and procedure, 
for it is through such an appreciation that 
respect for Robert 's is both kindled and fuel- 
ed. 

In medieval England, the sovereign sum- 
moned his parliament, a general or great coun- 
cil of state. The parliament consisted of an 
assemblage of persons (members of the nobil- 
ity, clergy, and commons) who sat for a period 
of time until it was dissolved. Today the word 
"parliament" has come to mean an assembly 
representing a group or the members of an 
organization and usually convened for the 
expression of opinion, enactment of policy, 
and the transaction of other business. "Delib- 
erative assembly," on the other hand, refers to 
a nonlegislative organization that conducts 
meetings according to parliamentary law. 

The introduction to Robert 's Rules of Or- 
der Newly Revised distinguished parliamen- 
tary law from parliamentary procedure. The 
former is defined as "the name given to the 
rules and customs for carrying on business in 
the English Parliament which were developed 
through a continuing process of decisions and 
precedents somewhat like the growth of com- 
mon law." 5 Today parliamentary law is under- 
stood as the body of rules and precedents used 
to govern the proceedings of deliberative as- 
semblies and other organizations. 

Although frequently used synonymously 
with parliamentary law, the term "parliamen- 
tary procedure" "refers ... to parliamentary 
law as it is followed in any given assembly or 
organization, together with whatever rules of 
order the body may have adopted." 6 Mere 
mention of parliamentary procedure brings to 
mind the mysterious jargon of the professional 
parliamentarian: "I rise to a point of order;*' "I 
move to amend the motion;" "I doubt the 
quorum;" "The Chair requests order." Presid- 
ing and leadership practices blur: calling the 
meeting to order, accepting the minutes, trans- 
acting business, adjournment. Duties of mem- 
bers seem equally confusing to the uninitiated: 
role in debate, role in voting, personal privi- 
lege, not to mention honorary, in good stand- 



ing, ex officio, or absent members! Despite 
being arcane, it is generally believed that 
parliamentary procedure as codified by 
Robert 's has been important in shaping and 
refining basic American notions of due pro- 
cess and majority and minority rights as ap- 
plied to group activities. In his preface to the 
1970 edition, Grofman noted that "Robert's 
may be regarded as an implicit theory of 
democracy. For many Americans, its proce- 
dures are synonymous with practical democ- 



"7 



racy. 

Henry Martyn Robert 

Outside the ranks of professional parlia- 
mentarians, few who can recite which divided 
motions can't be amended often do not know 
who Robert was, let alone if there wasaRobert 
at all! Henry Martyn Robert (1837-1923), a 
scholarly looking nineteenth-century military 
man, is best known today for taking on the task 
of codifying and simplifying the rules and 
procedures of the United States House of 
Representatives. Born on May 2, 1 837, Henry 
M, Robert came originally from Robertville, 
South Carolina. When Robert was 13, his 
father, who had come to the conclusion that 
slavery was morally wrong, freed his slaves 
and moved the family to Ohio. At 16, Henry 
received an appointment to West Point. After 
graduating from the military academy in 1857, 
Robert went on to pursue a military career, 
being commissioned in the Corps of Engi- 
neers and serving with distinction in the Union 
anny and becoming Chief of Engineers in the 
U.S. Army. During the Civil War (1861—65) 
he constructed defenses for Washington, D.C., 
Philadelphia, and the port of New Bedford, 
Massachusetts. In '863, at the age of 26, while 
stationed at New Bedford to help in the de- 
fense of the local whaling fleet against Con- 
federate raiders, he was asked to preside over 
his first meeting, a turbulent meeting of his 
Baptist church. This experience changed his 
life and affected the lives of his descendents. 
Henry plunged in, confident that the assembly 
would behave itself. However it did not, and 
he resolved to learn something about parlia- 



214 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



mentary law and procedure. Over the years he 
became aware of how many different inter- 
pretations of parliamentary procedure there 
were. As a Major serving in the turbulent 
frontier atmosphere of San Francisco in 1 867, 
he observed that California immigrants from 
every state in the union had a different idea of 
what was correct. He began to read all the 
manuals on parliamentary procedure he could 
find. Gradually, he became convinced of the 
need for a new book, based on the rules and 
practices of Congress, but adapted for the use 
by societies of ordinary American laypeople. 

The First Edition 

It was not until 1874 that Robert had the 
time to write his manual. By this time he had 
been transferred to Milwaukee. Barbara A. 
Bannon has provided a detailed history of the 
publishing of Robert's Rules of Order, based 
in part on her interview with the third Henry 
M. Robert. She notes that the General initially 
took the work to a job printer, Burdick and 
Armitage, at his own expense and had it printed 
andproofread 1 6 pages at a time, with the type 
from those pages then being redistributed and 
used again for the next sixteen. The manu- 
script was submitted to D. Appleton & Com- 
pany of New York and rejected. A second 
publisher, S.C. Griggs of Chicago, also re- 
turned the manuscript with, as Bannon de- 
scribes, "a letter of polite, vague interest but 
with the pages uncut." 8 Persistent, the General 
offered S.C. Griggs the 4,000 copies he had 
"ready-printed," to be bound by Griggs at his 
own expense, with the proviso that 1 ,000 of 
them could be given away free to educators, 
legislators, church leaders, and other promi- 
nent persons in the United States. Thepublish- 
ing house decided to take the chance. 

Originally entitledPockei Manual of Rules 
of 'Order for Deliberative Assemblies^ the book 
carried the simpler Robert 's Rules of Order as 
the publisher's second, descriptive title on the 
jacket. The established Cushing manual, pub- 
lished in 1845, was its primary competition. 
The Pocket Manual was immediately suc- 



cessful. Within four months of publication in 
1876, Griggs had sold out the entire lot; the 
General had estimated that it would take two 
years to dispose of 4,000 copies. The book was 
out of print for one month. It came back into 
print by the end of July 1876, with some 16 
additional pages. In 1893 a third edition, num- 
bering 218 pages, was published. In 1896 
Scott, Foresman and Company of Chicago 
acquired the rights to the book and has been its 
publisher ever since. 

In 1 9 1 5 , Robert's Rules of Order Revised 
was published. This first complete revision 
was the product of three years of work by the 
General, then retired from military service. 
Bannon notes that by that time the book had 
already sold half a million copies. 9 The book 
went through numerous editions during the 
General's lifetime. 

Editions under Other Editors 

Subsequent editions were handled by the 
Genera] ' s second wife and the wife of his son, 
the second Henry, after the deaths of the two 
men. Bannon notes that "Conscientiously, each 
generation of the Robert family since the 
General has tried to keep up with a volumi- 
nous correspondence developing out of the 
book." 10 

The General died in Hornell, New York, 
on May 11, 1923. His spirit lives on through 
the numerous subsequent editions, revisions, 
and spin-offs of his work. His Parliamentary 
Practice, originally published in 1921 and 
Parliamentary Law, originally published in 
1922, were still in print in the 1 980s as, respec- 
tively, Parliamentary Practice; An Introduc- 
tion to Parliamentary Law and Parliamentary 
Law (both New York: Irvington, 1975). 

Among the many editions and printings of 
Robert 's Rules of Order, several stand out — 
the original edition of 1876; the editions is- 
sued in Robert's lifetime (2nd in 1 876, 3rd in 
1893); revisions (1915 which superseded the 
last of the three earliest editions, and 1 970, the 
first complete revision since 1915); and the 
current, "Modern Edition,"published in 1989. 



ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER 215 



An understanding of the style, spirit and intent 
of the original edition is important, because 
successive editions and revisions have been 
written to be in complete harmony with the 
preceding editions so that they can replace 
those editions "with no disturbance of estab- 
lished practice in organizations that have used 
the preceding edition." 11 The preface to the 
1970 edition of Robert 's Rules of Order Newly 
Revised explained: 

"Since this book superseded all previous edi- 
tions, such replacement is automatic in cases 
where the organization's bylaws prescribe as 
its parliamentary authority 'Robert's Rules of 
Order Revised,' or 'the current edition of 
Robert's Rules of Order,' or the like, without 
specifying a particular edition. If the bylaws 
specify a particular edition, however, such as 
the '1951 Edition,' or the 'Seventy-Fifth An- 
niversary Edition,' amendment of the bylaws 
is necessary." 12 

Darwin Patnode's preface to "Modern 
Edition" of 1 989 indicates that it too continues 
the very process that led to the succession of 
previous editions, insofar as reorganization, 
expansion, and clarification are concerned. 

The original edition contained not only an 
explanation of the methods of organizing and 
conducting meetings, the duties of officers, 
and the documents of an organization, but also 
the rules governing motions, including their 
forms, objects, characteristics, and other de- 
tails. A "Table of Rules Relating to Motions" 
supplemented the text, enabling the presiding 
officer of a meeting to decide many parlia- 
mentary questions by a quick reference with- 
out turning a page or using an index. Numer- 
ous footnotes concerning legislative proce- 
dures were included. A lengthy introduction 
dealing with legislative procedure began the 
book. The goal of the text proper — to provide 
firm and uniform rules of order for delibera- 
tive assemblies throughout the land, was met, 
and, as its popularity attests, met very success- 
fully. 

Robert said the object of his book was 

to assist an assembly to accomplish the work 
for which it was designed, in the best possible 
manner. To do this it is necessary to restrain 



the individual somewhat, as the right of an 
individual in any community, to do what he 
pleases, is incompatible with the interests of 
the whole. Where there is no law, but every 
man does what is right in his own eyes, there 
is the least of real liberty. Experience has 
shown the importance of the definiteness in 
the iaw; and in this country, where customs are 
so slightly established and the published manu- 
als of parliamentary practice so conflicting, 
no society should attempt to conduct business 
without having adopted some work upon the 
subject, as the authority in all cases not cov- 
ered by their own special rules." 

Robert continued to make countless modi- 
fications from one printing to the next, insert- 
ing new rules, sometimes even reversing ear- 
lier rules, from a time shortly after the first 
printing to the end of his life. In 1 9 1 5, General 
Robert wrote, "The constant inquiries from all 
sections of the country for information . . . that 
is not contained in Rules of Order seems to 
demand a revision and an enlargement of the 
manual. To meet this want, the work has been 
thoroughly revised and enlarged, and to avoid 
confusion with the old Rules, is published 
under the title of 'Robert's Rules of Order 
Revised. ,mA Twenty years after the author's 
death, Robert's Rules of Order Revised was 
reissued, incorporating the changes he made 
after the 1915 edition was published. 

The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of 
Robert 's Rules of Order Revised, published in 
195 1 , was prepared, as noted on the verso of 
its title page, "as an important part of the 
program of constant attention and frequent 
revision given this standard work since its 
original publication." The edition contained 
two parts: "Rules of Order, A Compendium of 
Parliamentary Law, Based Upon the Rules of 
Practice of Congress," and "Organization and 
Conduct of Business: A Simple Explanation 
of the Methods of Organizing and Conducting 
the Business of Societies, Conventions, and 
Other Deliberative Assemblies." "The Order 
of Precedence of Motions" is given inside the 
front cover, and practical points about matters 
such as by-laws, the nominating committee, 
the parliamentarian, and special meetings were 
provided inside the back cover. In their pref- 



216 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



ace, Isabel H. Robert and Sarah Corbin Robert 
noted that Robert's Rules of Order is among 
the few books privileged to enjoy their great- 
est influence after 75 years because it is based 
upon the "same enduring principles on which 
our nation itself is founded — the right of the 
majority to decide, the right of the minority to 
be heard, the right of absentees to be pro- 
tected," 15 and because it "has responded to 
changing needs and conditions." 16 

Significant additions to the 1951 edition 
included an enlarged index and a new section 
on Practical Points (annual meeting, by-laws, 
the nominating committee, the parliamentar- 
ian, rotation in office, and special meeting) on 
the inside back cover. In addition, references 
to the Congress of the United States were 
updated to conform to then-current practice, 
making the book still more useful to organiza- 
tions that have adopted the rules as their par- 
liamentary authority. Excerpts from the writ- 
ing of General Robert are contained in the 
preface; these suggest his basic philosophy 
and indicate the enduring quality of his work. 

The 1970 Edition 

Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, 
published in 1970, represented the seventh 
edition of this standard guide to parliamentary 
rules, with charts, tables, and lists. This edition 
was the work of General Robert's daughter- 
in-law, Sarah Corbin Robert. She was assisted 
by her son, Henry M. Robert III; William J. 
Evans, a Baltimore lawyer; and James W. 
Geary, president of the California State Uni- 
versity, Northridge. The 594-page 1970 edi- 
tion represented the first complete revision 
since 1915, and only the second complete 
revision of the manual since it was first pub- 
lished. The 1 970 edition was also the first new 
edition in nearly 20 years. A replacement for 
the seventy-fifth anniversary edition, the 1970 
edition was published in February on the ninety- 
fourth anniversary of the first publication of 
the book. Ten years in preparation, the book 
was 75 percent rewritten for clarification and 
easier use, and almost twice the length of the 
seventy-fifth anniversary edition. 



Although the 1 970 edition revision super- 
seded the preceding edition of Robert 's Rules 
of Order Revised, it was "written to be in 
complete harmony with" that edition. The 
verso of the title page also included the follow- 
ing notice: "This book automatically replaces 
Robert 's Rules of Order Revised as the parlia- 
mentary authority in organizations whose 
bylaws prescribe 'Robert's Rules of Order 
Revised,' or 'the current edition of Robert's 
Rules of Order,' or the like; without specify- 
ing a particular edition." 

As did earlier editions, the 1970 edition 
maintained the virtues of its predecessors, 
continuing to be relevant to those who under- 
stood the admonition with which the book 
opened: "Where there is no law, but every man 
does what is right in his own eyes, there is the 
least of liberty." 17 As were its predecessor 
the 1970 edition was characterized as neces- 
sary to the conduct of American bodies deal- 
ing with legislation or regulations of any sort. 

Overall, the 1 970 edition was more mod- 
ern, complete, comprehensive, better orga- 
nized, more clearly presented, more efficient, 
and far easier to use than previous editions. 
Notable additions or elaborations in the 1970 
edition included a compendium of charts, 
tables and lists placed conveniently and con- 
spicuously in the center of the book; the inclu- 
sion of a section on "Disciplinary Procedures" 
as a final chapter; an enlarged and improved 
index; and an introduction offering brief-but- 
sound accounts of the origins of parliamentary 
law in Great Britain, of the transfer of British 
procedures to America, and of the genesis of 
Robert's work. Additional enhancements in- 
cluded a larger size and a change in type face, 
both of which contributed to greater clarity 
and a contemporary feeling as well as en- 
hanced legibility. Most significant, however, 
are the facts that the 1970 edition was almost 
completely rewritten in simpler, clearer terms 
and that the material was reorganized so as to 
be in accord with the natural flow of business 
and meetings. Careful review indicates that 
the entire text of earlier editions was re-exam- 
ined, reworded, and supplemented where nec- 
essary to, as the 1970 "Preface" says, "make 



ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER 217 



the work more useful in its basic function as a 
reference manual suitable for adoption by 
organizations as parliamentary authority." 18 
The 1970 edition was designed so that one 
could read it through and acquire a good 
picture of parliamentary procedure with mini- 
mum reference to concepts not previously 
explained. 

Critical Reception of the 1970 
Edition 

Reviewers praised the edition for taking 
the mystery out of parliamentary procedure 
for a significantly larger sector of the popula- 
tion. Many reviewers noted that people could 
even teach themselves certain parts of it, and 
that the revision enabled users to feel at home 
with the subject and not to be afraid of or 
intimidated by it. Three examples of revision 
illustrating improvements which led to im- 
proved user satisfaction include: (l) charts 
and tables which are simple to use, and pro- 
vide quick reference to form, precedence, and 
applicability of motions (as contrasted to charts 
which were nearly impossible to use, with 
stars, asterisks, footnotes and fine print, in- 
cluded in previous editions); (2) the logical 
arrangement of material in the order one would 
usually encounter (as contrasted to the para- 
graph format in earlier editions); and (3) the 
clear explanation of the basic classification 
scheme, providing for each motion a section in 
outline form clearly and succinctly setting 
forth the motion's basic operational charac- 
teristics and its uses (as contrasted to the 
ambiguous classification and presentation of 
motions in earlier editions). 

Negative criticism of the 1970 edition 
was scant; nonetheless, certain points deserve 
mention. The stated intentions of the editors 
were to combine in the 1970 edition a defini- 
tive reference work and teaching edition. Many 
reviewers felt that although the 1 970 edition 
succeeded as a definitive reference work, it 
did not succeed as a teaching manual. The 
continuing presence of some archaic termi- 
nology, some unnecessarily complex and con- 
fusing rules, and some rules which could best 



be disposed of served to minimize this edition's 
potential as a teaching manual. Reading from 
coverto coverto learn the basics ofparliamen- 
tary procedure was not recommended. Fur- 
thermore, some reviewers felt that the 1970 
edition was not a genuine revision and mod- 
ernization of American parliamentary prac- 
tice. These reviewers noted that fealty to the 
dead General and a desire to maintain termi- 
nological accord with the U.S. House of Rep- 
resentatives limited the editors in the scope of 
their revision and in the extent of their mod- 
ernization. 

The 1989 Edition 

Robert 's Rules of Order Modem Edition, 
published in 1989 and edited by Darwin 
Patnode 4 aprofessionalparliamentarian, "tries 
to retain the best of the original style and 
content of Robert's ideas and supplement them 
with modern language and rules, seeking a 
golden mean." 19 The Preface continues to 
advise that "In most sections, the opening 
material is that of Robert, and gradually addi- 
tional material merges with it." 20 Specific 
points of departure from earlier editions in- 
clude: (1) the elimination of obsolete foot- 
notes; (2) the incorporation of relevant foot- 
notes into the text; (3) the elimination of 
"innumerable and maddening" cross-refer- 
ences; (4) the provision of additional defini- 
tions to facilitate a clear understanding of 
terms Robert assumed the reader knew; (5) the 
insertion of sample bylaws; (6) the addition of 
longer sample minutes; and (7) the omission 
of superfluous introductory material. In addi- 
tion, Patnode claims to have reworked Robert 's 
awkward syntax; to have modernized spell- 
ing, punctuation, and typography; and to have 
improved the table of motions. Furthermore, 
material in the text was "altered slightly to 
have a more logical sequence." 21 Patnode ac- 
knowledges changing the rules in some cases, 
always, however, being guided by the spirit of 
the original rules. 

Any review of the publishing history of 
Robert J s needs to consider the question, which 
edition is the definitive printing for reference? 



2 18 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



In his preface to the 1989 edition, Patnode 
addresses this quandary: "when an 
organization's bylaws designate as parliamen- 
tary authority Robert 's Rules of Order without 
specifying an edition, there can easily be dis- 
agreement astowhataparticularrulesays,not 
only because several different printings con- 
tain somewhat different rules, but also be- 
cause Robert was not always perfectly clear or 
consistent within a given printing. 22 Patnode 
goes on to advise "An organization wishing to 
follow the spirit of the original rules of Henry 
M. Robert would do well to adopt as its parlia- 
mentary authority the Modern Edition of 



Robert 's Rules of Order." 2 * Patnode 's counsel 
can be viewed as self-serving, especially since 
Scott, Foresman issued aninth edition in 1990, 
Its title page credits this edition to the same 
team responsible for the 1970 edition, al- 
though the dustjacketnotesthaf'SarahCorbin 
Robert was the daughter-in-law of the original 
author." Just released at this writing, the 1990 
edition has yet to be reviewed, let alone tested 
through application. Meanwhile, others will 
imitate it, but no other manual is likely to 
demystify parliamentary procedures as thor- 
oughly or as clearly. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

The list below excludes reissues and re- 
prints and confines itself to new editions. 
Readers may also wish to refer to the chart of 
editions and reprints in Margaret A. Banks' 
article '"Robert's Rules of Order;' Editions, 
Reprints* and Competitors," cited below in the 
bibliography. 

Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative 
Assemblies Robert 's Rules of Order, by Henry 
Martyn Robert. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Com- 
pany, 1876. 176p. 

Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative 
Assemblies, by Henry M. Robert. 2nd ed. Chi- 
cago: S.C. Griggs, 1876. 192p. 

Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative 
Assemblies, by Henry M. Robert, 3rd ed. Chi- 
cago: S.C. Griggs, 1893. 21 8p. 

Robert's Rules of Order Revised, by Henry M. Rob- 
ert. Chicago: Scotl, Foresman, 1915. 323 p. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Robert 's Rules of Order Revised for Deliberative 
Assemblies, by Henry M.Robert. Chicago: Scott, 
Foresman, 1943. 326p. 

Robert 's Rules of Order Revised. Seventy-Fifth An- 
niversary Edition, by Henry M. Robert. Chi- 
cago: Scott, Foresman, 1951. 326p. 

Robert 's Rules of Order Newly Revised. A New and 
Enlarged Edition by Sarah Corbin Robert with 
the Assistance of Henry M. Robert III, James 
W. Cleary and William Evans. Glenview, IL: 
Scott, Foresman, 1970. 594p. 

The Scott, Foresman Robert 's Rules of Order Newly 
Revised. 8th ed., by Sarah Corbin Robert. 
Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1981. 594p. 

Robert's Rules of Order Modern Edition, edited by 
Darwin Patnode. Nashville, TN: ThomasNelson, 
1989. 155p. 

The Scott Foresman Robert 's Rules of Order Newly 
Revised. 9th ed., by Sarah Corbin Robert and 
others. Scott, Foresman, 1990. 706 p. 



The secondary literature onRobert 's Rules 
of Order is not as vast as one might expect for 
a book of its age and influence. This is due, in 
part, to its longtime bestseller status; its popu- 
larity has discouraged ongoing critical exami- 
nation, despite the appearance of new edi- 
tions. Furthermore, a limited number of per- 
sons have an abiding interest in parliamentary 
procedure and the literature of that field is 
itself limited. The best of the secondary litera- 
ture on Robert's is found in two sorts of 
sources — material which assists readers in 



distinguishing editions and reprints of Robert 's 
from one another, and materials which de- 
scribe the principal competitors of Robert's. 
Description and analysis in these items is 
generally thorough and strong, in contrast to 
reviews of Robert's in law, library, or public 
administration literature. Such reviews tend to 
be superficial and, at best, only marginally 
critical. The most significant items available 
are the works by Banks, O'Connell, and 
Sikkink. Biographical information on Robert 
can be found in the introductions to the various 



ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER 219 



editions noted above and in introductions to 
reprints listed in Banks' '"Robert's Rules of 
Order:' Editions, Reprints, and Competitors." 

Aly, Bower. Review of Robert 's Rules of Order 
Newly Revised '(1970 ed.). Quarterly Journal of 
Speech 56 (December 1970): 454-55, 

Bannon, Barbara A. "Authors &. Editors: General 
Henry M. Robert." Publishers Weekly 197 
(March 16, 1970): 15-16. 

Banks, Margaret A. '"Robert's Rules of Order: 1 
Editions, Reprints, and Competitors." Law Li- 
brary Journal 80 (Spring, 1988): 177-92. 

. "Robert's Rules of Order: A Multiplicity of 

Editions and Reprints." Canadian Library Jour- 
nal 39 (1982): 367-71. 

. "Robert's Rules of Order: A Survey of 

Paperback Reprints." National Parliamentar- 
ian 40 (1979): 22-23. 

Cinquemani, Frank L. "Robert's Revised: Parlia- 
mentary Practice in Perspective." RQ 16 (Fall, 
1976): 55-58. 

Geary , James W. "A Commentary on Robert's Rules 
of Order Newly Revised." Parliamentary Jour- 
nal 9 (April, 1968): 3-9. 

Glixon, D,M. Review of Robert 's Rules of Order 
(New Revised) (1970 ed.). Saturday Review 53 
(May 16, 1970): 44. 

Grofman, Bernard N. Review of Robert's Rules of 
Order (New Revised) (1970 ed.). American 
Political Science Review 64 (December, 1970): 
1288-90. 

Holle, Susan, and Bohdan S. Wynar, eds. Best Refer- 
ence Books 1970-1980: Titles of Lasting Value 
Selected From American Reference Books An- 
nual Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1981. 



Keesey, Ray E. "A Historical Stretch of Parliamen- 
tary Procedure." In his Modern Parliamentary 
Procedure, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1974, 
pp. 21-25. 

Knowles, Malcolm S. "Move Over Mr. Robert." 
Adult leadership 1 (June, 1952): 2-4. 

O'Brien, Joseph F. "Henry M. Robert as Presiding 
Officer," Quarterly Journal of Speech A2 (April, 
1956): 157-62. 

O'Connell, Brian, "Robert's Rules of Order 
Demystified." In The Board Member's Book: 
Making a Difference in Voluntary Organiza- 
tions, 105-15. New York: Foundation Center, 
1985. 

Revelle, Keith, "A Collection for La Raza." Library 
Journal 96 (November 15, 1971): 3719-26. 

Review of Robert 's Rules of Order. Publishers Weekly 
192 (July 21, 1967): 58. 

Review of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised 
(1970 ed,). American Reference Books Annual 
(1971): 145. 

Review of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised 
(1970 ed.). Booklist 6 (May 15, 1970): 1141. 

Sikkink, Don. "Fundamental Change in Parliamen- 
tary Procedure." Paper presented at the Annual 
Meeting of the Speech Communication Asso- 
ciation, 58th, Chicago, December 27-30, 1972. 
ED 072474. 

Wasylenko, Lydia W. Review of Robert's Rules of 
Order (Bantam Books edition, c 1982, 1986). In 
American Reference Books Annual 19 (1988), 
278. 

Wyllie, Stanley Clark, Jr. Review of Robert 's Rules 
of Order Newly Revised (1970 ed.). Library 
Journal 95 (June 1, 1970): 2123. 



NOTES 



1 Bernard N. Grofman, review of Robert 's Rules of Order, 

New Revised, 1 970 ed., American Political Scince 

Review 64 (December 1970): 1289. 
Barbara A. Bannon," Authors & Editors: General Henry 

M. Robert," Publishers Weekly 197 (L6 March 

1970): 15. 
'Grofman, 1288-89. 

* Ray E. Keesey, "A Historical Sketch of Parliamentary 

Procedure," in Modern Parliamentary Procedure 
by Ra'y E. Keesey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 
1974), 25. 

5 Henry M. Robert, Robert 's Rules of Order Newly Re- 
vised (Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1 970), xxvii, 

6 Ibid,,xxviii. 

7 Grofman, 1289. 

* Bannon, 16. 
'Ibid. 
10 Ibid. 

' ' Robert, Robert 's Rules of Order Newly Revised, xxiii. 



12 Ibid. 

13 Henry M. Robert, Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for 

Deliberative Assemblies: Robert 's Rules of Order 

(1 876), cited by Isabel H. Robert and Sarah Corbin 

Robert, Robert 's Rules of Order Revised (Chicago: 

Scott Foresman, 1951), 14. 
N Ibid. 
15 Isabel H. Robert and Sarah Corbin Robert, "Preface," 

[aRobert 's Rules of Order Revised (Chicago: Scott, 

Foresman, 1951): 13. 
t6 Ibid. 
17 Ibid., 14, 

" Robert, Robert 's Rules of Order Newly Revised, xxii. 
"Darwin Patnode, ed., Robert 's Rules of Order Modern 

Edition (Nashvil le, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1 989), 15. 
23 Ibid. 
21 Ibid,, 16. 
32 Ibid., 16-17. 
"Ibid, 17. 



"Wings of Flight": Roget's Thesaurus 
of English Words and Phrases 



Marta Lange 



The man is not wholly evil— he has a 
Thesaurus in his cabin. 

— Sir James Barrie, describing 

Captain Hook 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Peter Mark Roget published his Thesaurus of 
English Words and Phrases in 1852, calling it 
a "desideratum hitherto unsupplied in any 
language; namely, a collection of the words it 
contains and of the idiomatic combinations 
peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical 
order as they are in a Dictionary, but according 
to the ideas which they express." 1 It was a tool 
Roget hoped would not merely assist in com- 
munication but would actually give thought 
"wings for flight." 2 

A medical doctor and Renaissance man 
whose intellectual interests spanned the sci- 
ences, Roget labored almost fours years to 
produce this work and saw 25 editions or 
printings published before his death at the age 
of 91. Tens of millions of copies have been 
sold since that time, making this work one of 
the most ubiquitous in the English-speaking 
world. The word thesaurus, derived from the 
Greek 0Tqcaupog (thesauros) meaning a "trea- 
sure," "store," or "collection,' 1 is now a com- 
mon noun in the English language. Few refer- 
ence titles are as closely identified with a 
single individual as the Thesaurus is with 
Roget. This landmark work closely reflects 
both the nature of Roget and the time in which 
he lived. It is through understanding both that 
an appreciation of the Thesaurus can be gained. 



Peter Mark Roget 

Roget was born in London in 1779, the 
only son of Catherine Romilly and the Rever- 
end Jean Roget, a native of Geneva, Switzer- 
land, and pastor of a French Protestant church. 
Jean died when his son was only four, and 
Peter was brought up by his mother "who was 
admirably qualified for the task, not only by 
her mental accomplishments, but by a system- 
atic habit of mind, which was inherited by her 
son in a marked degree." 3 

By the time Peter was 14, Catherine was 
concerned about the direction of his educa- 
tion. His interests and talents lay consistently 
in the areas of science and mathematics, yet 
there was no such occupation as scientist in 
1793. Catherine therefore chose medicine as 
the profession Peter would pursue. It was a 
subject that she found fascinating and a field 
which proved "profitable to the practitioner, 
even if not to the patient." 4 She moved the 
family to Edinburgh whose university had the 
best medical and scientific programs in the 
English-speaking world. Peter enrolled at age 
fourteen and received his M.D. degree at 19. 

For the next three years Peter experienced 
what was perhaps the most adventurous part 
of his life. He traveled to the Pneumatic Insti- 
tution in Clifton, where Dr. Thomas Beddoes 
andHumphrey Davy were experimenting with 
early forms of anesthesia by treating various 
ailments through respiration of nitrous oxide, 
or "laughing gas." Roget's own experience 
with the gas left him bewildered and fright- 
ened. He felt his equilibrium had been de- 



ROGET'S THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES 221 



stroyed and that, under the influence of the 
gas, his senses were in a state of confusion. For 
one so properly trained to be a model profes- 
sional man, such an experience was plainly 
destructive. In his years at Edinburgh, "Peter 
had been convinced that his future lay in 
regularity and order, not in disequilibrium and 
confusion." 5 

In the fall of 1800 Peter experimented 
with creating a "Frigidarium," an idea con- 
ceived by Jeremy Bentham for cold storage of 
foods. He lived in Bentham' s house, but desir- 
ing more privacy, disenchanted with living in 
such an unconventional household, and con- 
vinced that Bentham was a man who would 
never finish what he started to do, Roget 
moved out to his own apartment. 6 

After his return from an 1803 trip to 
France that almost ended in his imprisonment 
when war broke out between France and En- 
gland, Roget moved to Manchester to set up a 
medical practice where the ratio of physicians 
to populace was not as high as that in London. 
He was appointed one of the physicians to the 
Infirmary and assisted in creating a medical 
school there. In 1806 he delivered a series of 
1 8 lectures on physiology to medical students. 
The syllabus of his course showed that his 
"chief interest in the new science of physiol- 
ogy lay in the organization and order of the 
several aspects of that subject and in the 
relationship of the subject to such kindred 
fields as anatomy." 7 This interest in relation- 
ships and classification characterized his work 
and led eventually to the classification of ideas 
and words in the Thesaurus. 

Roget resigned his post at the Infirmary in 
1808 and moved to London. He immersed 
himself in work, and for the next 60 years he 
practiced as a physician, participated actively 
in the burgeoning scientific societies, wrote 
scientific papers, and lectured on physiology 
and related topics . Roget established a consid- 
erable medical practice in London, where he 
also helped open aneighborhood charity medi- 
cal clinic, and served as physician to the 
Spanish embassy. Appointed by King George 



IV in 1 827 to a commission studying London' s 
water quality, Roget recommended that water 
be filtered through sand, a method still in use 
today. 8 The crowning point of his medical 
career came in 1831 with his election to the 
Royal College of Physicians. 9 

Roget took a more than usually active part 
in a number of organizations, including the 
Royal Institution, Medical and Chirurgical 
Society, and many others. 10 As a founding 
member of the Medical and Chirurgical Soci- 
ety, he tended to bookkeeping and oversaw 
the publishing of several volumes of the 
Society' s transactions. As elected secretary of 
the Royal Society, he edited the Proceedings 
of the Society and prepared for publication the 
abstracts of papers communicated to the Soci- 
ety. 11 

Throughout his career Roget contributed 
papers to the advancement of scientific knowl- 
edge. His total bibliography numbers over 100 
items, including many treatises written in 
simple English explaining science at the 
layperson's level. Fourteen of Roget's ar- 
ticles, ranging in subject matter from "Ant," 
"Cranioscopy," "Deaf and Dumb" to "Kalei- 
doscope," were published in the supplement 
to the fourth, fifth and sixth editions of the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica. These articles were 
"important in increasing his stature as an au- 
thority in physiology and as an all-around 
savant." 12 He demonstrated his bent for find- 
ing relationships and shaping facts into or- 
ganic laws in a major article on physiology 
published in the seventh edition of the 
Britannica. He produced several treatises on 
electricity, galvanism, magnetism, and electro- 
magnetism, evidence of his continuing fasci- 
nation with science and mathematics. 13 

Roget's Animal and Vegetable Physiol- 
ogy Considered with Reference to Natural 
Theology, a two-volume work appearing in 
1834, marked the peak of his professional 
career. This work was the fifth in the series of 
the Bridgewater Treatises, commissioned by 
the Earl of Bridgewater to propound "the 
power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as 



222 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



manifested in the creation." 14 The treatise 
offered no original discoveries but brought a 
sense of unity to physiology and comparative 
anatomy, In an age of growing scientific dis- 
covery and change, however, its view that 
evolution could not work separately from an 
all-knowing God was already in question by 
the time it was published. 

Roget served as secretary of the Royal 
Society for 20 years, a tenure not without its 
stormy clashes. As early as 1830, Charles 
Babbage and others charged the Society with 
dilettantism, private interest, nepotism, and 
snobbery. 15 For over ten years a series of 
complicated disputesand arguments advanced 
until they emerged as a large-scale revolt of 
young scientists against the old guard. The 
pressure for reform mounted, and Roget re- 
signed as secretary on November 30, 1 847. 1(S 

A Fascination for Order 

Finding himself possessed of more lei- 
sure after his retirement, Roget turned his 
attention to a project which he had begun in 
1805, that of classifying and organizing the 
English language. The Thesaurus began as a 
noteb ook Roget carried around with him since 
his earliest days of lecturing. He arranged 
words within it to help him express himself as 
effectively as possible. Now in his seventies, 
he would draw upon a lifetime of experience 
in lecturing, writing, and editing to make this 
list into a coherent system others could use. 17 
Ironically it is this list, not any of his scientific 
achievements, that made Roget a household 
word. 

At first glance it is not apparentthat Roget 
had any particular talent equipping him to 
tackle such an ambitious project. He demon- 
strated no literary interest, no linguistic train- 
ing, no fascination with language for 
language's sake. What he did demonstrate 
over his entire lifetime, however, was a con- 
cern with order; it was "the organization of 
knowledge (rather than the making of pro- 
found discoveries, for which he lacked the 



imagination), that was Roget's forte, and which 
he was able to put to good use in compiling the 
Thesaurus"™ 

Roget's fascination for order was charac- 
teristic of the age in which he lived. The 
successful emergence of modern science de- 
pended upon the development of a workable 
classification of its elements, andsystematists 
worked out schemes for classifying the plant 
and animal kingdoms and chemical elements. 
In the same vein, Roget would labor for four 
years (1848-1852) to organize and classify 
human ideas into an outline of commonly 
understood terms. 

Although he believed that his work filled 
a unique niche in the history of word tools, 
Roget was certainly aware of other related 
publications. By the time the Thesaurus was 
published, three types of language literature 
existed: philosophical treatises on the rela- 
tionship between thought and language, and 
on the possibilities of creating a universal 
language; prescriptive grammars, including 
style manuals and synonym books; and writ- 
ings in the emerging field of linguistics. Roget 
probably drew from all three areas when con- 
structing his Thesaurus. 19 

While he stressed the utility of the The- 
saurus for writers, Roget also saw his book as 
a tool for philosophers: 

Metaphysicians engaged in the more pro- 
found investigation of the Philosophy of Lan- 
guage will be materially assisted by having 
the ground thus prepared for them, in a previ- 
ous analysis and classification of our ideas; 
for such classification of ideas is the true basis 
on which words, which are their symbols, 
should be classified. It is by such analysis 
alone that we can arrive at a clear perception 
of the relation which these symbols bear to 
their corresponding ideas, or can obtain a 
correct knowledge of the elements which en- 
ter in to the formation of compound ideas, and 
of the exclusions by which we arrive at the 
abstractions so perpetually resorted to in the 
process of reasoning, and in the communica- 
tions of our thoughts. 20 

He also expressed his philosophy that 
"the use of language is not confined to its 



ROGET'S THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES 223 



being the medium through which we commu- 
nicate our ideas to one another; it fulfills a no 
less important function as an instrument of 
thought; not being merely its vehicle, but 
giving it wings for flight." 21 Roget also felt it 
of utmost importance that strict accuracy should 
regulate use of language. He further worried 
that 

false logic, disguised under specious phrase- 
ology, too often gains the assent of the un- 
thinking multitude, disseminating far and wide 
the seeds of prejudice and error. ... A misap- 
plied or misapprehended term is sufficient to 
give rise to fierce and interminable disputes; a 
misnomer has turned the tide of popular opin- 
ion; a verbal sophism has decided a party 
question; an artful watchword, thrown among 
combustible materials, has kindled the flame 
of deadly warfare, and changed the destiny of 
an empire. 22 

Roget shared the dream of a number of 
earlier writers for a set of symbols upon which 
to base a universal language. To Roget, none 
of these earlier schemes seemed practical, yet 
he considered their ultimate goal highly desir- 
able. Science was developing and expanding 
during his lifetime, and scientists were seek- 
ing a new international language for commu- 
nication. Rather than basing this language on 
a set of symbols or characters, Roget believed 
that such a language should be developed 
through the organization of ideas based on a 
consensus of current speaking and writing 
practice. He felt that his own analysis of the 
language could assist in determining the prin- 
ciples on which aphilosophical language might 
be constructed, and once constructed, adopted 
by every civilized nation. Nothing, thought 
Roget, could do more "to bring about a golden 
age of union and harmony among the several 
nations and races of mankind. 



"23 



A Multi-Purpose Tool 

What Roget conceived as aphilosophical 
arrangement of ideas expressed by language 
was also meant as a practical tool for the 
precise use of language. At the time of its 



publication, practical language works in En- 
glish fell into three categories: prescriptive 
grammars, dictionaries, and collections of 
synonyms. Their collective purpose was to 
establish an acceptable level of good taste in 
conversation and in writing. The popularity of 
these works corresponded with the rise in 
England of a middle class concerned with 
bettering its own fortunes, and with binding 
town and country populations togetherthrough 
education and study of the English language. 24 

The Thesaurus is not aprescripti ve gram- 
mar, but there is some relationship between 
Roget's goals and those of the various gram- 
mars published. Those works sought to de- 
velop grammatical standards as well as to 
purify the English language which some felt 
had been adulterated by French words and 
phrases . Roget also sought to create a standard 
for regulating language, but his concern was 
more toward regulating the appearance of 
new words, not grammatical structure. 25 

The Thesaurus is not a dictionary, for an 
ordinary dictionary simply explains the mean- 
ing of words or the i deas words are intended to 
convey. The Thesaurus is exactly the oppo- 
site: the idea being given, it identifies the word 
or words by which that idea may be best 
expressed. Believing that "we cannot but be 
often conscious that the phraseology we have 
at our command is inadequate to do them 
justice," 26 Roget said his work would offer the 
writer a helping hand, for 

it is in words that he clothes his thoughts; it is 
by means of words that he depicts his feelings. 
It is therefore essential to his success that he be 
provided with a copious vocabulary, and that 
he possess an entire command of all the re- 
sources and appliances of his language. To the 
acquisition of this power no procedure ap- 
pears more directly conducive than the study 
of a methodized system such as that now 
offered to his use. 27 

Roget expressly stated that the Thesaurus 
was not a collection of synonyms, and indeed 
it made no attempt to differentiate among 
apparently synonymous words, 28 Roget' s con- 
cern was solely with classifying and arranging 



M 



224 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



words according the their current sense and 
usage, knowledge of which he presumed the 
reader to possess. In assuming this knowledge 
Roget may have been operating with breath- 
taking optimism, for he was misunderstood 
even by early reviewers who equated his work 
with previous synonymies. 

The Thesaurus' s Antecedents 

English synonymies before 1852 tended 
to be one of two types: word-finding lists and 
those that tried to explain the distinctions 
among words. 29 Twenty different titles on 
English synonymy were published prior to the 
appearance of the Thesaurus, the first in 1766. 

In 1805, William Perry's Synonymous, 
Etymological, and Pronouncing English Dic- 
tionary greatly extended the traditional defi- 
nition of synonym (as one of two or more 
words of identical meaning, or of apparently 
identical meaning) and broadened it to include 
a group of words which have resemblances in 
meaning. 30 

English Synonymes Discriminated, by 
William Taylor (1813), used etymologies to 
explain the original meanings of words and 
thereby establish synonymous relationships. 
English Synonymes Explained, in Alphabeti- 
cal Order; with Copious Illustrations and 
Explanations Drawn from the Best Writers, by 
George Crabb (1816), was the most ambitious 
precursor to the Thesaurus. Crabb's chief 
contributions were the addition of an etymol- 
ogy, the addition of a statement as to how far 
words are equivalent in meaning, and the 
arrangement of words from the most compre- 
hensive to the least comprehensive. 3 ' Although 
Crabb's work was far from perfect — his syn- 
onymies were often confused and inconsistent 
and his etymologies often faulty — his work 
enjoyed greatpublic favor for many decades. 32 

A Selection of English Synonyms, by Miss 
Elizabeth Jane Whately (1851) proposed that 
words must often be regarded as signs not of 
real things but of notions of things, and must 
have a fixed and generally accepted content. 



While Whately was not the first to discrimi- 
nate meanings of synonyms, she was the first 
in England to make that the avowed aim of a 
book of synonyms and to distinguish clearly 
between the meaning of a word and the thing 
or idea for which it stood. 33 

One year after Whately' s work was pub- 
lished, the first edition of the Thesaurus of 
English Words and Phrases, Classified and 
Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of 
Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition ap- 
peared. Despite the plethora of word books 
already in existence, it enjoyed immediate 
acceptance and provoked new interest in op- 
posite and contrasted terms. Roget adapted 
from previous synonymies the technique of 
grouping large collections of synonymous 
words together, but he offered no definitions, 
no etymologies, no discriminating explana- 
tions between words, no citations to reputable 
authors. 

Roget's Classification Scheme 

Roget devised his detailed classification 
of words from Georges Cuvier's zoological 
classification then used in natural history. He 
divided his work into six main categories 
(classes), each of which is divided further into 
sections (orders), subsections (genera), and 
heads of signification (species). 34 The sec- 
tional divisions he formed corresponded to the 
natural families in botany and zoology, with 
the filiation of words being analogous to the 
filiation of plants and animals within these 
families. 35 All of these divisions, 1,000 in all, 
were laid out in outline and tabular form and 
numbered. Each number designated aparticu- 
lar paragraph of the book, a particular idea 
under which the reader could find all words 
expressing that idea. The major portion of the 
book was arranged in numerical order, pre- 
senting an initially confusing format. For the 
convenience of the reader, Roget provided a 
tabular synopsis of categories at the beginning 
of the work. He also appended a short alpha- 
betical index to the text, though it was not his 



ROGET'S THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES 225 



intent that the index ever become the predomi- 
nant portion of the work. 

Roget's chief goal in constructing his 
classification of ideas was to obtain the great- 
est amount of practical utility. The diagram 
below offers a useful picture for understand- 
ing his overall scheme. 

Just as Cuvier ' s classification scheme was 
fixed in form, so was Roget's. The intent 
behind this fixed design for language may be 
analogous to the fixed design of nature in the 
minds of natural theologists. Once the rela- 
tionships among the various parts of the natu- 
ral world had been set down in stable classifi- 
cation schemes, human understanding of that 
world, and God's purpose in it, was consider- 
ably increased. A permanent design outlining 
the organization of the totality of ideas , the 
components of the internal world, would in- 
crease human understanding both of human- 
ity and of God's purpose for humanity. 36 



Roget felt that the terminology compos- 
ing the framework of his classification was a 
series of natural signs easily comprehensible 
from language usage of the time. Although he 
never explained why he chose the six particu- 
lar primary classes utilized in the Thesaurus, 
it is possible to trace someportion of his intent 
to previous writings. Three of the primary 
classes — matter, intellect, and volition — may 
be derived from his perception of the laws of 
physiology described in the introductory chap- 
ter of his Bridgewater Treatise. "The second 
class of laws comprise those which are founded 
on the relation of means to an end; and which 
are usually denominated final causes. They 
involve the operations of mind, in conjunction 
with those of matter. They presuppose inten- 
tion or design; a supposition which implies 
intelligence, thought, motives, volition . . " 3? 
All six classes, including abstract relations, 
space, and affection, are also implied in Tho- 



ROGET'S CLASSIFICATION SCHEME 

(Excerpts) 

PRIMARY CLASSES 



Abstract 
Relations 



n 

Spa;e 



SECTIONS 



m 

Matter 



IV 
Intellect 



T I 



v 

Volition 



VI 
Affection 



Space in 
General 



250 
Convexity 



Dimensions Form 

SUBSECTIONS 



Motion 



General 



Special 



Superficial 



HEADS OF SIGNIFICATION 



251 
Flatness 



252 
Concavity 



253 
Sharpness 



254 
Bluntness 



Figure 1 
A Sample from Roget's Classification Scheme. 



226 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



mas Reid's An Inquiry into the Human Mind 
on thePrinciples of Common Sense (1 764), an 
essay discussing the principle ofnaturaf signs 
of language. 38 

In selecting words for his text, Roget felt 
his purpose was to offer as many terms as 
might be wanted, leaving the proper selection 
entirely to the discretion and taste of the reader. 
He therefore included not only single words, 
but also phrases; vulgar terms, if used in 
general conversation; words and phrases bor- 
rowed from other languages; and neologies 
coined in the arts andsciencesif made familiar 
through common use. He omitted purely sci- 
entific and technical terms along with com- 
mon proverbs. 

Roget addressed and resolved the many 
problems confronting an organizer of words. 
Recognizing that many words could fall in 
more than one categoiy, he used numerous 
cross-references and also listed some words 
under more than one head. In order to prevent 
needless length, he generally omitted conju- 
gate words, or different parts of speech from 
the same root 

Roget was the first to focus on antonymic 
as well as synonymic relationships among 
words. Hedidnot, however, call similar words 
"synonyms," since he insisted that there are n o 
real synonyms in the sense of two words 
having identical meanings. Instead he called 
them "analogous" words. He referred to con- 
trasting words as "correlative." The term "ant- 
onym" would not be used until 1867. 39 

Roget arranged the Thesaurus in two par- 
allel columns so that correlative ideas could be 
easily contrasted. (This layout was maintained 
in the copyright edition until 1962.) The cor- 
relative expressions were either intermediate 
terms whose meaning falls between two oppo- 
site ideas (beginning — middle — end), the 
negative to each of two opposite positions 
(convexity — flatness- — concavity), orthe stan- 
dard with which each extreme is compared 
(insufficiency — sufficiency— redundance), 
While these forms of correlative expressions 
would suggest use of triple rather than double 



columns within the text, Roget found this 
format impractical and remained with two, 40 It 
is in addressing the correlative nature of words 
that Roget advanced the linguistic theory that 
"the study of correlative terms existing in a 
particular language may often throw valuable 
light on the manners and customs of the na- 
tions using it." 41 

The First Edition 

The first edition of the Thesaurus was 
published by Longman, Brown, Green, and 
Longmans in May 1 852, when Roget was 73. 
"It was a handsome volume, a generous oc- 
tavo, printed on good quality paper, with the 
text well spaced-out." 42 Roget' s work in a 
multitude of scientific and literary societies 
had made him a fairly well known figure, and 
his Thesaurus sold out of the 1,000 copies 
printed, 

Several British journals reviewed the The- 
saurus within its first year. Most were favor- 
able if not particularly analytical. Many were 
not quite sure what to make of this new work. 
"Whatever may be thought, however, of the 
general aim of Dr. Roget's work, there can be 
no doubt as to the ability of its execution," said 
The Athenaeum. , 43 This unsigned review also 
suggested that some terms included were al- 
ready obsolete, and that more care and dis- 
crimination could have been taken in the over- 
all selection process. Regarding the book's 
classification system, the reviewer seemed to 
feel that if such a scheme proved useful for the 
writing of a former secretary of the Royal 
Society, it would certainly be quite useful to 
others. 

The Critic observed that "this is at least a 
curious book, novel in its design, most labori- 
ously wrought, but, we fear, not likely to be so 
practically useful as the care, and toil, and 
thought bestowed upon it might have de- 
served." 44 The Eclectic Review regarded the 
book very highly, saying that "the utility of 
such a work is much greater than appears on 
the surface." 45 It continued, 



ROGET'S THESA URUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES 227 



We can assure our readers that it would be 
unjust to the author to represent his book as a 
merely dry catalogue of words. It is full of 
suggestions. It exhibits the extraordinary rich- 
ness, fulness, and flexibility of the English 
language .... We recommend it specifically 
to writers who ... are so indolent, conceited, 
so ignorant, or so negligent, as to damage the 
purity of their mother-tongue by a habit of 
arbitrarily fabricating new words and a new 

fangled phraseology We should rejoice if 

our warm commendation promoted the circu- 
lation of so thoroughly useful a book. 46 

The Westminster Review, founded by Jer- 
emy Bentham, published its review in April 
1853 after the Thesaurus had been in print for 
nearly a year. Stating that no literary man 
should be without such a help, it added that 
"the labour must have been immense, but the 
author's reward is sure. Roget will rank with 
Samuel Johnson as a literary instrument-maker 
of the first-class." 47 

Within a few years of its appearance the 
Thesaurus was being defended as a staple 
without which no serious scholar could live. 
One of the few reviews critical of its purpose 
appeared in the North American Review in 
1854. The writer, identified as E.P. Whipple 
by Samuel Austin Allibone, 48 ridiculed the 
Thesaurus as a tool engendering mediocrity in 
writing: 

Seriously, we consider this book as one of the 
best of a numerous class, whose aim is to 
secure the results without imposing the tasks 
of labor, to arrive at ends by a dexterous 
dodging of means, to accelerate the tongue 
without accelerating the faculties. It is an 
outside remedy for an inward defect. In our 
opinion, the work mistakes the whole process 
by which living thought makes its way into 
living words, and it might be thoroughly mas- 
tered without conveying any real power or 
facility of expression. 49 

While Whipple asserted that the Thesaurus in 
the hands of a novice writer may result in 
anguished prose, it has also been shown to 
hone the writing of professionals. As one 
example, Dylan Thomas, a proven master of 
expression, used the Thesaurus as a source of 
words during his composition of "Poem on his 
Birthday;' in 1951. 50 



Later Editions Edited by Roget and 
His Descendants 

Longman published a second edition of 
1,500 copies in March 1853. The third, de- 
scribed as a cheaper edition, enlarged and 
improved, appeared in February 1855. For 
this edition Roget revised parts of the text, 
added thousands of new expressions, and in- 
troduced 20 subsidiary heads marked as "(a)" 
to fill gaps he had found in his scheme. This 
edition was then stereotyped and used for 
subsequent printings until the plates were worn 
outRogetpersonally saw 25 new editions and 
printings through the press, and he collected 
additions and changes up to his death in Sep- 
tember 1869. 

His son John Lewis Roget, a lawyer who 
was active as an art critic and watercolorist, 
then took over as editor. He compiled his 
father's multitudinous handwrittennotes from 
the margins and spaces of the Thesaurus for 
his new edition published in 1879. Without 
changing Roget' s system of classification in 
any way, he nevertheless made his own dis- 
tinctive contribution to the evolution of the 
Thesaurus, To keep the book within reason- 
able limits while adding large numbers of 
words, he confined use of words to a single 
primary heading and extended the use of cross- 
references, a practice continued by subse- 
quent editors. John Roget' s other major addi- 
tion to the Thesaurus was the significant ex- 
pansion of the alphabetical index. Roget him- 
self felt that readers would consult the system 
of classification first and give little impor- 
tance to the index. John Roget believed, how- 
ever, that almost everyone who used the book 
found it more convenient to consult the index 
first. His new index contained not only all the 
words in the text but also all the phrases which 
had previously been excluded. 31 The index 
took up almost half of the new edition. 

John Roget supervised frequent reprints 
of the Thesaurus, New words reflecting topics 
of the day, such as "veldt," "Afrikander," and 
"Gatling gun," were added to the text and 
listed in a supplementary index. Upon John 



228 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



I 
8 



Roget's death in 1 908, his son Samuel Romilly 
Roget took over as editor. Samuel Roget, an 
engineer, made no changes in layout but greatly 
expanded the vocabulary of the book and 
extended the system of cross-references. He 
promoted the Thesaurus energetically, ce- 
menting its place as a landmark work. The 
crossword puzzle craze of the 1920s gave its 
sales an enormous boost. Between 1911 and 
1929, a least one printing was made per year, 
with five in 1925 when Samuel Roget brought 
out his own new enlarged edition. According 
to a reviewer in Dial, "Mr. Samuel Romilly 
Roget, his father and grandfather, seem in this 
volume, to have perfected perfection." 52 For 
the 1936 edition the index was checked line by 
line. New plates were made and used for 
frequent reprints even in the war years. 53 

Editions by Others 

Samuel Romilly Roget carried on the 
family's work until 1952 when he sold the 
family rights to Longmans, Green and Co. 
With his death in 1953, the family connection 
with the Thesaurus came to an end. Exactly 
100 years from the date of the first edition, 
Longmans commissioned Robert A. Dutch, 
OBE, to bring the Thesaurus up to date. Dutch 
entirely rewrote the text and recompiled the 
index while remaining true to the organic 
structure of the original. In his introduction, 
Dutch stated: 

it is Roget's great merit that he devised a 
system of categories, logically ordered, that is 
both workable and comprehensive. As edition 
followed edition, more and more words were 
drawn in without destroying the framework. 
In the course of a century of testing, modifica- 
tions have been made only in matters of detail. 
The present editor's experience confirms that 
of his predecessors. 54 

While Roget's framework still proved useful 
for organization, Dutch felt that the system of 
classification itself was of little interest to 
most modem readers who wanted a purely 
practical, not philosophical, communication 
tool. Dutch, therefore, made many changes to 



the format so that the classification system 
became more transparent for the reader. 

In previous editions contrasting heads 
had been arranged in opposite, parallel col- 
umns. Heads that had no opposite were printed 
the whole width of the page. Dutch kept the 
parallel columns but printed the heads con- 
secutively. He completely recast the ordering 
of words in each head so that close synonyms 
could be grouped more consistently together 
to lead the mind "by easy transitions from one 
nuance to another without distraction." 55 He 
introduced some new heads and renamed or 
eliminated others, resulting in a reduced total 
of 990 rather than the original 1,000. Dutch 
added some 50,000 new words and a large 
number of cross-references, swelling the total 
size of the volume to almost double that of the 
1936 edition of Samuel Roget. 

Dutch's most significant contribution to 
the evolution of the Thesaurus was the use of 
keywords printed in italics at the beginning of 
each paragraph. The keyword showed readers 
where to begin their search within a head. The 
keyword was used in all cross-references and 
in the index references, enabling readers to 
pick out the most suitable of several locations 
for the meaning they sought. 56 This new edi- 
tion was judged to present a fuller and more 
up-to-date vocabulary in a more convenient 
and readily accessible form. 57 

The Thesaurus was revised again in 1982 
by Susan M. Lloyd, a modern language teacher 
and former library worker. She viewed her 
new edition as an overhaul of an efficient and 
valuable machine rather than an attempt to 
completely rebuild it. She refined parts, re- 
placed parts, and took advantage of computer 
technology to ensure the reliability of the 
cross-references and index, Her main task 
was to incorporate the huge number of new 
expressions that had been generated over a 
rapidly changing 20 years. She added over 
20,000 new terms of the sciences and technol- 
ogy (data processing, space travel, sources of 
energy), commerce and industry (ergonom- 
ics, market research, cost-benefit analysis, 
hardsell), and medicine (transplant, test-tube 



ROGETS THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WOWS AND PHRASES 229 



baby). She also listed terms describing society 
and societal changes. She paid special atten- 
tion to subject areas reflecting her own inter- 
ests: ecology and conservation (recycling, 
greenhouse effect), sociology and politics (su- 
perpowers, sexism, cover-up, streaking, drug- 
taking), and civil rights (feminism, blackpower, 
gay lib). 5 * 

Lloyd's work proved briefly controver- 
sial as journalists charged the Thesaurus of 
being "feminized." 59 In her preface Lloyd 
states that "in listing nouns denoting people, 
we have borne in mind the fact that according 
to recent research the particle 'man,' in such 
words as 'mankind,' is not always taken, as 
formerly, to include men and women. Care 
has therefore been taken to include female 
terms as well, or general terms such as 'chair- 
person,' where they exist." 60 Other reviews of 
Lloyd's work questioned her omission of vul- 
gar words andracial epithets, a decision made, 
according to Lloyd, since those terms are 
already familiar and since "inclusion gives 
them an aura of respectability."* 1 

While many reviews challenged Lloyd's 
inclusion or exclusion of words, Thelndexer 
challenged what it considered a major flaw in 
the format: the nonalphabetical arrangement 
of subheadings. This arrangement could cause 
the reader to peruse as many as 241 possible 
points of entry to locate a word/meaningbeing 
sought, and was in direct violation of British 
indexing standards. 62 

Some thirty million copies of the Thesau- 
rus had been sold by the time Betty Kirkpatrick 
began work on the most recent revision of the 
Thesaurus in January 1 985." Within her new 
edition published in 1987, Kirkpatrick added 
1 1,000 entries, placing greater emphasis than 
in the past on technology, international cui- 
sine, and health. A former editor of the Cham- 
bers 20th Century Dictionary and a native of 
Scotland, she included Scottish words that are 
universally used and recognized. She was also 
the first reviser to include four-letter words. 
Few other changes from Lloyd's edition were 
made. The Indexer again lamented the non- 
alphabetization of subheadings and found this 



edition's typeface and page make-up more 
difficult than in Lloyd's work. 64 

American Editions 

The publishing rights to the Thesaurus 
have always remained with Longman, yet 
even from the beginning other editions sprang 
forth from publishers in the United States as 
well as in England. The Reverend Barnas 
Sears edited the first American Thesaurus in 
1 854, omitting all "vulgar" words and phrases, 
even phrases as innocent as "to feather one's 
nest," "to run a muck," or "cool as a cucum- 
ber." Putnam 's severely criticized Sears for 
meddling with Roget's work on the basis that 
what he had left out was not vulgar but merely 
idiomatic and thus useful to writers. When 
Sears reinsertedthe "vulgar" words and phrases 
in his second edition of 1 8 55, he placed them 
in a separate category as an appendix. Putnam 's 
subsequently judged this practice to be "more 
likely to catch the eye of students andyounger 
readers' as they are now placed, than they are 
as they stand in Roget's original arrange- 
ment*' 65 Gould and Lincoln, Boston, contin- 
ued to issue printings of Sears' work until 
1867. 

In 1886 Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 
the major American publisher of the Thesau- 
rus, issued, with authorization from Longman, 
its first American edition, based on John 
Roget's 1879 work. 66 Crowell released sev- 
eral other printings revised and amended to fit 
American needs until 1911, when American 
lexicographer CO. Sylvester Mawson, revis- 
ing editor of Webster's New International 
Dictionary , issued a practically new book that 
deviated considerably from the original 
Longman edition. Mawson's work, completely 
revised and reset in 1922, was then called the 
"International edition" because of the number 
of non-English words included. The Interna- 
tional edition was further enlarged in 1930, 
1932, 1936, 1938, and 1939. Crowell then 
produced Roget's International Thesaurus: 
New Edition in 1946, and, after more than ten 
years of continuous revision, it published 



230 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Roget's International Thesaurus, Third Edi- 
tion, in 1962.* 7 The latest of Crowell's stan- 
dard American editions is Roget's Interna- 
tional Thesaurus, fourth edition, revised by 
Robert L. Chapman and published in 1977. 

Some publishers have issued more recent 
editions under license from Longman. In 1 965 
St. Martin's Press printed an Americanized 
edition of the 1962 Longman work. In 1984 
Penguin published an abridged paperback ver- 
sion of the 1982 Lloyd edition and in 1988 
Penguin released an abridgement of the 1987 
Kirkpatrick edition.* 8 

While all these editions retained Roget's 
basic classification system, many others 
dropped that system yet still used Roget's 
name. Among these were the Roget 's Pocket 
Thesaurus (New York; Pocket Books, 1946); 
Roget's Treasury of Words (New York: 
Crowell, 1924); New American Roget 's Col- 
lege Thesaurus in Dictionary Form (New 
York: New American Library, 1958); and 
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus (Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin, 1980). Roget's II is the 
electronic version of the Thesaurus currently 
available on CD-ROM as part of Microsoft 
Bookshelf. Longman highly disapproves of 
the use of "Roget" as a generic term and has 
recently registered the name as a trademark in 
several countries including the United King- 
dom.* 9 

Given the number of publishers and edi- 
tors who have connections with the Thesau- 
rus, along with national and international copy- 
right agreements and arguments, it is not sur- 
prising that there is no known bibliography 
capturing all the editions and printings of the 



Thesaurus. According to D. L. Emblen, Roget's 
biographer, it is doubtful that a clear and 
complete publication history will ever 
emerge. 70 

Future of the Thesaurus 

The future of the Thesaurusrmy be clearer, 
however; Longman will regularly revise the 
Thesaurus to ensure that the Longman edition 
remains up-to-date and authoritative. Longman 
lexicographers work closely with each editor 
to determine what should be included and/or 
removed. In between full revisions, Longman 
incorporates minor corrections into each new 
reprint. The next full Longman revision is 
planned for the mid-1990s. 71 

Computer capabilities make possible an 
expanded, continually updated database of 
words. Longman is looking forward to ex- 
ploiting the capabilities of technology by pro- 
ducing electronic versions of the Thesaurus. 12 
Through use of the computer, Robert Chapman 
has envisioned an entirely new tool, a 
"thessictionary," which would incorporate 
both thesaurus listings and dictionary defini- 
tions. 73 Susan Lloyd has seen opportunities to 
build a multilingual database in which any 
language in the world could be analyzed ac- 
cording to Roget' s classification. Such a data- 
base could be an imperfect forerunner to fi- 
nally achieving Roget's dream of a universal 
language, a language which would help bring 
about the golden age of union and harmony 
among the several nations and races of the 
world. 74 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified 
and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression 
of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition, by 
Peter Mark Roget. London: Longman, Brown, 
Green, and Longmans, 1852. 41 8p. 

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified 
and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression 
of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition, by 
Peter Mark Roget. 2nd ed., revised and en- 



larged. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and 
Longmans, 1853. 434p. 
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified 
and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression 
of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition, by 
Peter Mark Roget. 3rd ed., enlarged and im- 
proved. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and 
Longmans, 1855. 507p. 



ROGETS THESA URUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES 23 1 



Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified 
and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression 
of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition, by 
Peter Mark Roget. New Edition, Enlarged and 
Improved, partly from the Author's Notes, and 
with a full Index, by John Lewis Roget. London: 
Longmans, Green & Co., 1879. 667p. 

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified 
and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression 
of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition, by 
Peter Mark Roget. Enlarged by John Lewis 
Roget, newly revised and enlarged by Samuel 
Romilly Roget. London: Longmans Green & 
Co., 1925. 691p. 

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified 
and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression 
of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition, by 



Peter Mark Roget. Enlarged by John Lewis 
Roget. New ed., revised andenlargedby Samuel 
Romilly Roget London: Longmans, Green & 
Co.,1936.705p. 

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, by Peter 
Mark Roget. New Edition completely Revised 
and Modernized by Robert A. Dutch. London: 
Longmans, 1962. l,309p. 

Roget 's Thesaurus of English Words andPhrases, by 
Peter Mark Roget. New edition prepared by 
Susan M. Lloyd. London: Longman, 1982. 
l,247p. 

Roget 's Thesaurus of English Words andPhrases, by 
Peter Mark Roget. New edition prepared by 
Betty Kirkpatrick. London: Longman, 1987. 
l,254p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Significant secondary literature concern- 
ing Peter Mark Roget's Thesaurus remains 
relatively small despite the work's length of 
tenure and mass distribution. The bulk of the 
writing consists of short, descriptive reviews 
of the original and subsequent editions issued 
by Longman and other publishers. Only re- 
views of the original edition are included in 
this bibliography. Noteworthy reviews of sub- 
sequent Longman editions have been noted 
within the text. Two works of some depth 
stand out: Margaret Anderson's dissertation 
which delves into the intellectual history and 
organization of the Thesaurus, and D.L. 
Emblen's biography which places its writing 
and history within the context of Roget's life 
and the times in which he lived. Robert Dutch' s 
preface to his 1962 edition gives the best 
explanation of significant format changes made 
to the original and retained in subsequent 
editions. Susan Lloyd's piece, "Dr. Peter Mark 
Roget and his Thesaurus," within the 1982 
edition outlines a concise publishing history 
of Longman editions, a history brought up to 
date inMcArthur' s "The RedoubtableRoget." 

Anderson, Margaret Edna. "Roget's Thesaurus: An 
Explanation of Its Purpose and a Study of Some 
Applications of Its Principles." Ph.D. disserta- 
tion, Case Western Reserve University, 1978. 

Chapman, Robert L, "Roget's Thesaurus and Se- 
mantic Structure: A Proposal for Work." Lan- 
guage Sciences 3 1 (August, 1974): 27-3 1. 



Douglas, George H. "What's Happened to the The- 
saurus?" RQ 16 (Winter, 1976): 149-55. 

Dutch, Robert A. "Preface to the Revised Edition 
1962." In Roget's Thesaurus of English Words 
and Phrases, edited by Robert A. Dutch. Lon- 
don: Longmans, 1962. 

Egan, Rose F. "Survey of the History of English 
Synonymy." In Webster's Dictionary of Syn- 
onyms Springfield, MA: G, & C, Merriam Co., 
1942. 

Emblen, D. L. "Dr. Roget: His Book." The Book- 
seller no. 3399 (February 13, 1971): 412-16. 

. "Peter Mark Roget: A Centenary Bibliogra- 
phy." Bibliographical Society of America Pa- 
pers 62 (July, 1968): 43 6-47. 

. Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man. 

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970. 

Lloyd, Susan M. "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his 
Thesaurus." In Roget's Thesaurus of English 
Words andPhrases, edited by Susan M. Lloyd. 
London: Longman, 1982. 

McArthur, Tom. "The Redoubtable Roget." English 
Today, no. 12 (October, 1987): 36-39. 

— — -. Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1986. 

Ober, William B. "Peter Mark Roget: Utilitarian and 
Lexicographer." New York State Journal of 
Medicine 65 (July, 1965): 1804-07. 

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 78 (June 
17, 1969-June 16, 1870): xxviii-xl. 

Review of Thesaurus of English Words andPhrases, 
by Peter Mark Roget. The Athenaeum no. 1297 
(September 4, 1852): 939. 

Review of Thesaurus of English Words andPhrases, 
by Peter Mark Roget. The Critic 1 1 (June 15, 
1852): 320. 

Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 
by Peter Mark Roget. TTie Eclectic Review n.s. 
4 (July-December, 1852): 623. 



232 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 
by Peter Mark Roget. The Westminster Review 
59 (April, 1853): 311 



[Whipple, EdwinP.]"TheUseandMisuseofWords." 
North American Review 79 (July 1854): 137— 
157. 



NOTES 



1 Peter Mark Roget, "Introduction," in Thesaurus of 

English Words and Phrases, New Edition, En- 
larged and Improved, partly from the Author's 
Notes, and with a full Index, ed. John Lewis Roget 
(Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske, &Co., 1879), xiii. Italics 
in original. Roget's introduction to the first edition 
is reprinted in many subsequent editions and print- 
ings. 

2 Ibid, xv. 

3 Proceedings of the Royal Society oj London 18 (June 17, 

1869-June 16, 1870): xxix. 

4 D. L. Emb\zn,Peter MarkRoget: The Word and the Man 

(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. 1970), 17. 

5 Ibid., 43. 

6 Ibid., 53-54. 

7 Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man, 96. 
Italics in original. 

8 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxxviii- 

XXXV. 

9 Susan M. Lloyd, "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his Thesau- 

rus," in Roget 's Thesaurus of English Words and 
P/irasey,New edition prepared by Susan M. Lloyd 
(London & Harlow: Longman, 1982), xiv. 

10 Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man, 

138. 
" Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxxviii. 

12 Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and Man, 1 19. 

13 Emblen, "Peter Mark Roget: A Centenary Bibliogra- 

phy," Bibliographical Society of America Papers 
62 (July 1968): 441-43. 

H Peter Mark Roget, Animal and Vegetable Physiology 
Considered with Reference to Natural Theology 
(Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836), 1: 
xiii. Further mention of this title in the text will be 
to its popular name, Bridgewater Treatise. 

Is Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man, 
200. 

16 Ibid., 244-52. 

17 Lloyd, "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his Thesaurus," xv. 

18 Ibid. 

19 Margaret Edna Anderson, "Roget's Thesaurus: An 

Explanation of Its Purpose and a Study of Some 
Applications of Its Principles" Ph.D. dissertation, 
Case Western Reserve University, 1978, 70-7 1. 

20 Roget, "Introduction," xxxvii-xxix. 

21 Ibid., xv. Italics in original. 

22 Ibid., xvi. 

23 Ibid., xxix. 

24 Anderson, "Roget's Thesaurus," 89-90. 
"Ibid., 91. 

26 Roget, "Introduction," xiii— xiv. 

27 Ibid., xv. 

28 Ibid., xxii. 

29 Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man, 

264. 



30 Rose F. Egan, "Survey of the History of English 

Synonymy," in Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms 
(Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1942), ix. 

31 Ibid,, xiii. 

32 Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man, 

265. 

33 Egan, "Survey of the History of English Synonymy," 

in Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (Springfield, 
MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1942), xiv. 

34 Anderson, 114, 117. 

35 Roget, "Introduction," xxviii. 

36 Anderson, 127. 

37 Roget, Animal and Vegetable Physiology, 1:31. 

38 Anderson, 130-31. 
M Egan, xvii. 

40 Roget, "Introduction," xx. 

41 Ibid., xix. 

42 Lloyd, "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his Thesaurus," xvi. 

43 Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 

by Peter Mark Roget, The Athenaeum, no. 1297 (4 
September 1852): 939. 

44 Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 

by Peter Mark Roget, The Critic 11(15 June 1 852); 
320. 

45 Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 

by Peter Mark Roget, The Eclectic Review n.s., 4 
(July-December 1852): 623. 
4IS Ibid. Italics in the original. 

47 Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 

by Peter Mark Roget, 77ie Westminster Review 59 
(April 1853): 311. 

48 Samuel Austin Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of 

English Literature and British and American Au- 
thors (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 
1900), 2: 1857. 

49 [ E. P. Whipple], "The Use and Misuse of Words," 

North American Review 79 (July 1854): 138 

50 Mary Dee Harris Fosberg, "Dylan Thomas's Use of 

Roget's Thesaurus during Composition of Poem on 
his Birthday" Bibliographical Society of America 
Papers 72 (October 1978): 505. 

5 1 Roget, John Lewis, "Editor' s Preface," in Thesaurus of 

English Words and Phrases, New Edition, En- 
larged and Improved, partly from the Author's 
Notes, and with a full Index, ed. John Lewis Roget 
(Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske, & Co., 1879), vii-xi, 

52 Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 

by Peter Mark Roget, enlarged by John Lewis 
Roget, newly revised and enlarged by Samuel 
Romilly Roget, Dial 80 (May 1926): 431. 

53 Lloyd, "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his Thesaurus," xvii. 

54 Robert A. Dutch, "Preface to the Revised Edition 

1962," in The Original Roget's Thesaurus of En- 
glish Words and Phrases, New Edition completely 
Revised and Modernized by Robert A. Dutch (New 
York: St. Martin's Press, 1965): ix. 



ROGET'S THESA URUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES 233 



iS Ibid., xiii. 

" Lloyd, "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his Thesaurus," 
xviii. 

" Bunt, G.H.V., review of Roget 's Thesaurus of English 
Words and Phrases, New Edition completely Re- 
vised and Modernized by Robert A. Dutch, English 
Studies 44 (1963): 155. 

" Susan M. Lloyd, "Preface to the 1982 Edition," in 
Roget 's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases 
New edition prepared by Susan M. Lloyd (London 
& Harlow: Longman, 1982), x-xi. 

59 Anthony Quinton, "Articles of Association," Times 

Literary Supplement no. 4131 (4 June 1982): 605; 
John Weightman, "Canute-like Gestures," Times 
Educational Supplement no. 3438 (21 May 1982): 
41; "Zonked by a Ms.: A Woman Updates Roget," 
Time 119 (10 May 1982): 101; 

60 Lloyd, "Preface," xi. 

* Weightman, 41; "Zonked by a Ms," 101. 

** Review of Roget 's Thesaurus of English Words and 
Phrases, New edition prepared by Susan M. Lloyd 
The Indexer 13 (October 1982): 132. 

" 3 Tom McArthur, "The Redoubtable Roget," English 
Today, no. 12 (October 1987): 39. 



M J.A. Gordon, review of Roget 's Thesaurus of English 
Words and Phrases, New editionprepared by Betty 
Kirkpatrick The Indexer 16 (April 1988): 63. 

65 Review of Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 

by Peter Mark Roget, Putnam 's Monthly Magazine 
of American Literature, Science & Art 6 (September 
1855): 318. 

66 Andrew Delahunty, Longman Dictionaries Publisher, 

letter to the author, I June 1990. 

67 "Publisher's Preface," Roget 's International Thesau- 

rus, 3rd ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Com- 
pany, 1962): x-xi. 
S8 Andrew Delahunty, letter to the author, 1 June 1990. 

69 Ibid. 

70 Emblen, Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man, 

278- 

71 Andrew Delahunty, letter to the author, 1 June 1990. 

72 Ibid. 

73 Robert L. Chapman, "Roget's Thesaurus and Semantic 

Structure: A Proposal for Work," Language Sci- 
ences 31 (August 1974): 28. 

74 Lloyd, "Dr. Peter Mark Roget and his Thesaurus," 

xviii. 



Eugene Garfield's Contribution to 
Bibliography: Science Citation Index 



David A. Tyckoson 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Of the hundreds of new reference works pub- 
lished each year, very few provide unique 
access points to information already covered 
by other sources. Even fewer reference tools 
are able to influence the evaluation of the 
information that they contain. And it is ex- 
tremely rare that a reference work is respon- 
sible for creating an entirely new discipline of 
scientific research. The Science Citation In- 
dex is one of the rare reference works that has 
hadjustsuchan impact. By allowing research- 
ers to identify materials that are not retrievable 
through other indexes, by enabling the evalu- 
ation of scientific research through the mea- 
surement of the citation rates of individual 
papers and journals, and by providing the 
primary instrument for the study of citation 
analysis, the Science Citation Index is respon- 
sible for each of the above effects. The impact 
of the Science Citation Index has been so 
widespread that it truly deserves a place as one 
of the landmarks of references work. 

The Science Citation Index (along with its 
more recent cousins the Social Sciences Cita- 
tion Index and the Arts and Humanities Cita- 
tion Index) owes its existence to the genius, 
entrepreneurial nature, and vision of its cre- 
ator, Eugene Garfield. In the early 1950s, 
Garfield was a graduate student in chemistry 
and participated in a medical indexing project 
at Johns Hopkins University. By working on 
this project, he realized that the references at 



the end of each published scientific article 
could be interpreted as indexing statements 
about the contents of that article. However, he 
did not yet know how to translate these refer- 
ences into a useful information tool. It was 
only through a chance encounter with a pub- 
lisher in the field of law that he gained the 
insight that resulted in the concept of the SCL 

An Example from Law 

After organizing a conference on the topic 
of machine methods in scientific documenta- 
tion in 1953, he was contacted by one of the 
publishers of Shepard's Citations (Colorado 
Springs: Shepherd's McGraw-Hill, 1873- ), 
who suggested that a scientific index could be 
established along the same principles as this 
80-year-old legal reference tool. Upon exam- 
ining Shepard's Citations, the existence of 
which Garfield had been entirely unaware, he 
immediately realized that a similar publica- 
tion was needed for the sciences. According to 
Garfield, "It was a eureka experience that was 
a supreme moment in my career." 1 In very 
short order, he obtained his library degree 
from Columbia University, published a paper 
on "Citation Indexes for Science" in the jour- 
nal Science, 2 organized the Institute for Scien- 
tific Information, and began a revolution m 
scientific information retrieval by publishing 
the first volume of the Science Citation Index 
in 1961. Over the past 30 years, the Institute 
has grown into a multimillion dollar enter- 



SCIENCE CITATION INDEX 235 



prise, Garfield has become a millionaire in his 
own right, and the Science Citation Index has 
become one of the most valuable and re- 
spected reference tools in all of the sciences, 
The Science Citation Index succeeded 
because it took an entirely different approach 
to organizing, indexing, and retrieving infor- 
mation than that used in any previous index of 
scientific information. Several features set it 
apart from any other scientific indexing or 
abstracting services. First of all, it is an inter- 
disciplinary index of scientific literature. 
Whereas most other indexes in the sciences 
attempt to cover a single scientific discipline, 
such as chemistry, biology, or computer sci- 
ence, the SCI includes information from all 
fields of the sciences. Other than the General 
Science Index (New York; H.W. Wilson, 
1978- ), which is aimed at an undergraduate 
rather than a research audience, all other sci- 
entific journal indexes are limited to a single 
scientific discipline. The interdisciplinary as- 
pect of the SCI enables researchers to identify 
material that they could not find by searching 
only the indexes related to any one specific 
subject field and also facilitates the exchange 
of information from one field to another. One 
of the objectives for creating the SCI was to 
increase scientific communication across ex- 
isting disciplines, and the nature of its design 
has enabled it to perform admirably in this 
area. 

Selective Coverage 

Secondly, the Science Citation Index is a 
highly selective index. Rather than attempt to 
index all of the literature in any given disci- 
pline, the SCI covers only a few source jour- 
nals from each field. With more than 50,000 
scientific journals currently being published 
worldwide, it is impossible for any indexing 
service to cover all of the sciences compre- 
hensively without being overwhelmed by 
source material. In order to avoid this prob- 
lem, the SCI only indexes a relatively few key 
scientific journals. However, thejournals that 
are selected for indexing in the SCI are care- 



fully chosen to represent only themost signifi- 
cant and most important titles from each area 
of the sciences. In order to accurately judge a 
journal's significance to the field, the editors 
of the SCI choose source journals based upon 
their impact factor, a statistically derived value 
related in part to the number of articles that 
they publish, the number of articles that are 
cited by other researchers, and the number of 
times that the journal cites itself. 

From the 50,000-plus scientific journals 
available worldwide, the SCI selects only 
slightly more than 3,000 as source titles. Al- 
though representing only between 5 and 10 
percent of the world's scientific output, these 
3,000 journals contain representatives from 
all scientific disciplines and originate from 
more than 40 nations. The only common fea- 
ture of the journals selected is the fact that they 
represent the most significant sources for their 
respective subject areas. Although there has 
been some debate about the validity of ranking 
scientific journals, the statistical procedures 
used to calculate the impact factor of each 
journal ensures that only the most significant 
sources are included in this reference tool. 

The statistical selection procedure for jour- 
nal selection has another effect on the Science 
Citation Index. Although most indexing ser- 
vices maintain a stable or slowly growing list 
of source titles, the list of titles covered by the 
SCI changes every year even though the num- 
ber of titles indexed remains constant. Indi- 
vidual journal titles move onto or off of the 
source list as their impact factors change. As 
a journal becomes a more significant source in 
its field and rises in importance, it may be- 
come one of the source j ournals for the SCI. If 
a journal loses its status in the field, it may be 
dropped from coverage. The statistical basis 
for the selection of source journals for the SCI 
not only allows the index to identify the most 
important journals, it also serves as an evalu- 
ation tool for researchers in deciding which 
sources are the most important and most rel- 
evant to a specific discipline. The mere fact 
that a journal is indexed by the SCI is an 
indication that it is one of the most valuable 



236 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



titles in its field. The Science Citation Index is 
frequently used not only to identify relevant 
research, but to rank that research on the basis 
of the source in which it was published, 3 

Another difference between SCI and 
other scientific indexing services is that once 
a journal is selected for inclusion in the SCI, it 
is indexed from cover to cover. Once selected 
for indexing, the editors of the SCI do not 
attempt to place any judgments on the value of 
the information published in a source journal. 
Whereas other subject indexes tend to only 
index feature articles, the SCI covers every- 
thing, including research reports, notes, re- 
view articles, letters to the editor, and even 
bookreviews from some of its source journals. 
Only the news notes and advertising are not 
indexed by the SCI. The theory behind cover- 
to-cover indexing is relatively simple. Be- 
cause the SCI indexes only the most signifi- 
cant journals in the Field, any information 
contained in thosej ournalshasbeen preselected 
as belonging to the set of the most important 
and valuable published scientific information. 
If information is published in any of the jour- 
nals selected by the SCI, then that information 
must by definition be of value to the scientific 
community and should not be lost solely due 
to a quirk in the indexing process. Because of 
thispolicy, information may often be retrieved 
through the SCI that cannot be found by using 
other reference works that index the same 
titles on a selective basis. 

Subject Access 

Subject indexing in the SCIis also orga- 
nized differently than in any other journal 
index. The SCIusqs what it calls a "Permuterrn 
Subject Index," which can best be described 
as a pre-coordinate keyword title index. With 
the exception of a few stop words, each of the 
terms used in the titles of the source articles is 
placed into a single index file. Those terms are 
then matched with every other keyword used 
in each source title. The resulting output is a 
subject index that allows the researcher to 
conduct a two-term Boolean search. Within 



the limits of keyword indexing, a researcher is 
able to search the SCI under any one term and 
conceptually combine that term with any oth- 
ers. Although differences in the usage of sub- 
ject terms must be taken into account, no other 
scientific subject index allows this type of 
combination of subject terms. 

Citation Access 

The final and most noteworthy feature of 
the Science Citation Index is that it indexes not 
only the articles contained in each of the 
source journals, but also the bibliographies at 
the end of each of those articles. Any citation 
that is contained within one of the source 
journals is included, regardless of its date of 
publication, its geographic origin, or the for- 
mat of the material. Whether a paper cites a 
recent journal article, a book published during 
the previous decade, a technical report from 
World War II, a manuscript from the Middle 
Ages, or all of the above, each reference is 
entered independently into the SCI database. 
A computer program is used to reverse the 
order of the citation information, creating an 
index in which researchers may identify any 
new source material that has cited a specific 
publication from the past. By indexing the 
references at the end of each article, research- 
ers using the SCI are able to identify all new 
works that have a logical connection with a 
work from the past. This ability to search 
citations forwards in time has revolutionized 
the method in which many scientists find 
information. 

A Multi-Faceted Toot 

Through the concept of citation indexing 
for the sciences, the SCInot only created a new 
reference work for retrieving scientific infor- 
mation, but also provided the primary re- 
search tool for the field of citation analysis. 
Without the existence of the SCI, citation 
analysis would most likely have remained a 
theoretical rather than practical science. Al- 
though it would have been possible to track 



SCIENCE CITATION INDEX 237 



citations forwards in time without the SCI, the 
time and labor involved in conducting even a 
single search would have outweighed the use- 
fulness of the results. However, by using the 
SCI, researchers have been able to study cita- 
tion frequencies of individual researchers, 
specific journals, scientific disciplines, and 
even entire nations. 4 None of these studies 
would have been possible without this tool. In 
the field of citation analysis, ths Science Cita- 
tion Index is not only a compendium of re- 
search results, but it is also the laboratory in 
which that research is conducted. 

The SCI has also created an entirely new 
method for evaluating scientific research. 
Based upon the simple principle that impor- 
tant and useful research results are cited and 
that unimportant or irrelevant research results 
are not cited, the quality of research of an 
individual scientist may be measured by ex- 
amining the number of times that his or her 
work is cited. In theory, an individual whose 
papers have been cited ten times has had a 
greater impact in the field than an individual 
whose papers have been cited only once. In 
addition, since the SCI selects only the most 
important journals for its source information, 
this evaluation process is refined even further 
by eliminating citations by those journals that 
are not considered to be the core materials in 
their field. The SCI thus gives an indication 
not only of how frequently an individual's 
work is being used, but also how frequently it 
is being used by the best researchers in the 
field. 

The use of the Science Citation Index to 
evaluate scientific information has been one 
of its mo st controversial applications. Although 
this method of evaluation was at first advo- 
cated by Eugene Garfield as a natural exten- 
sion of citation analysis, the problems associ- 
ated with relying strictly upon the number of 
times an article is cited to determine its scien- 
tific value have led him to issue several warn- 
ings about the value of this procedure. 5 None- 
theless, citation counts are frequently used as 
justifications for appointments, promotions, 



or research funding. 6 To many librarians, it 
may seem that one of the most frequent uses of 
the SCI on university campuses is by faculty 
members searching for citations to their own 
research so thatthey can providethat informa- 
tion to promotion and tenure committees. 
Whether such a use of this reference tool is 
appropriate or inappropriate, it is a testament 
to the degree to which the Science Citation 
Index has become an accepted authority within 
the scientific community. 

To fully understand the dramatic impact 
that the SCI has had on scientific information 
retrieval, it is necessary to have an under- 
standing of the culture of scientific publish- 
ing. Scientific tradition dictates that all new 
research results acknowledge the use of any 
previously known information, theory, and/or 
methodology that was used in the derivation of 
the new material. By including a bibliography 
of references to previous works, each scien- 
tific author is able to give credit to the work of 
the past researchers who provided background 
material for the latest results. This tradition is 
strictly followed in the sciences; it has become 
extremely rare to see a report of new findings 
that does not include any references to previ- 
ous research papers. Citations formally ac- 
knowledge that science is a growing body of 
knowledge and that each piece of new re- 
search builds upon past research. 

Backward and Forward in Time 

In addition to serving as an acknowledge- 
ment of earlier work, the scientific citation 
relationship is one that has been used by 
researchers for decades as a tool for the iden- 
tification of other relevant publications on a 
specific topic. Researchers frequently rely 
upon the bibliographies at the end of an article 
to link them with other relevant materials 
dealing with the same subject matter. The 
citation relationship provides a unique associ- 
ation between the cited and citing articles that 
may not be identified by traditional subject or 
author indexes. When one author makes a 



£££■ 



r*^ 



238 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



reference to another author's work, there is a 
clear indication that the work of both individ- 
uals revolves around some common theme. 
They may be discussing the same subject 
material, using the same experimental meth- 
ods, applying the same theory, disputing the 
same concepts, or using the same applications 
of the work of a third party. In any case, the 
fact that one paper cites another clearly iden- 
tifies a common thread between the two. When 
a researcher is able to identify a paper on a 
topic of interest, the references at the end of 
that paper will almost always lead to other 
useful and related sources. 

The tracing of bibliographic citations at 
the end of a research paper has become a 
standard research method, but it has one maj or 
disadvantage — it only works backward in time. 
An article published in 1990 may cite other 
sources from a wide range of dates, but it 
cannot cite materials published in 1991 or 
1 992 or any other date later than that of its own 
publication. Researchers who trace citations 
are able to track down useful sources from the 
past, but cannot find more recent information. 
If a search begins with an article that is five 
years old, there is no possibility of retrieving 
any newer materials by tracing its references. 
Although a wide range of sources from the 
past may be identified, the researcher will 
never be able to find anything published dur- 
ing the last five years. 

The most valuable and most revolution- 
ary aspect of the Science Citation Index is its 
ability to reverse this process. Because SCI 
indexes all of the references at the end of each 
source article, it allows researchers to trace 
citations in reverse. By using the "Citation 
Index" portion of the SCI researchers are able 
to look up an old article and find all of the new 
articles that have included the original in their 
bibliographies. Beginning with a single rel- 
evant article, a researcher may search back- 
wards in time by studying the bibliography at 
the end of the source article and may also 
search forwards in time by searching the cita- 
tion index to determine if the original article 



has been cited recently by any of the papers 
included in the source journals. Starting with 
a single relevant research paper, a scientist 
can use the SCI to identify all other important 
materials dealing with the same concept, re- 
gardless of the format in which they are pub- 
lished, their country of origin, or date of pub- 
lication. No other scientific journal index is 
able to provide such broad subject, geographic, 
and temporal coverage. 

If the statistical basis for the selection of 
the source journals is accepted, the Science 
Citation Index becomes more than just a pow- 
erful research tool. Based upon the general 
principle that important scientific research is 
cited and that unimportant scientific research 
is ignored, the SCI for any given time period 
becomes a complete record of all scientific 
research that was considered to be important 
during that period. Any valuable new infor- 
mation will be indexed if it appears in one of 
the source journals used by the SCI. In addi- 
tion, any significant research from the past 
will be included if it was cited by the authors 
of the articles included in the source journals. 
If a paper is not included in either one of the 
source journals or one of its citations, that 
paper cannot be considered a part of the core 
of scientific information for that time period. 
What the SCI achieves that no other journal 
index achieves is the identification, evalua- 
tion, and indexing of all relevant information 
published anywhere in the world from through- 
out all of history. This may be the greatest 
achievement of the Science Citation Index. 

Problematic Issues 

Despite its overwhelming success, the 
Science Citation Index is not without its prob- 
lems. By relying solely upon the bibliogra- 
phies of thousands of different authors to 
identify relevant citation information, the SCI 
is completely lacking in consistency in its 
citation format. Although Eugene Garfield 
initially proposed a uniform system of citation 
for scientific journals, 7 that system has never 



SCIENCE CITATION INDEX 239 



been adopted and the SCI cites each source 
exactly as indicated by each individual author. 
This results in several variant entries for many 
papers due to variations in the forms of the 
names and/or source titles. Inaddition to spell- 
ing differences, the work of many authors is 
lost because the SCI cites only the first author 
listed for any scientific paper. This policy has 
become a tremendous problem over the last 
two decades as the average number of authors 
for a scientific paper has risen dramatically. 
Subject indexing is also a problem because the 
SC/relies upon the keywords in the titles of the 
articles to create its subject index. Differences 
in terminology and variations in the usage of 
that terminology may combine to frustrate 
researchers who are using SCI strictly as a 
subject index. Despite these inconveniences, 
such inconsistencies have been accepted as a 
compromise against the tremendous costs in 
time and labor that would be required to create 
an authority file for all of the author names, 
source titles, and subject terms used by the 
SCI. 

Other problems with the .SC/are related to 
the sheer volume of information contained in 
the index. In the 1988 annual edition, the SCI 
indexed more than 600,000 source articles 
and 10,000,000 citations. Due to the tremen- 
dous size of the database, the printed edition is 
published using extremely small and difficult- 
to-read type. This is particularly true in the 
"Citation Index" portion of the work, where 
many users rely on magnification to retrieve 
the information from the printed page. Once 
again, this publishing decision is made as a 
conscious effort on the part of the publishers 
to reduce the costs associated with printing 
and distributing such an index. Despite these 
efforts to save space, a single annual edition 
now occupies almost four feet of shelf space. 

More recently, electronic versions of the 
database have been introduced through online 



vendors and on CD-ROM. While these ver- 
sions may reduce the problems of readability, 
they magnify the problems associated with the 
lack of authority control by reducing the capa- 
bility of the reader to browse the index files 
and thereby spot variant forms of a person's 
name. Regardless of its format, the SCI re- 
quires a significant investment of time by the 
user to take full advantage of its unique capa- 
bilities. However, this investment is well worth 
the return in the retrieval of additional infor- 
mation sources that do not appear in other 
reference tools. 

As may be expected with a work of this 
magnitude, one of the most notable features of 
the SCI is its pri ce. The Science Citation Index 
has always been one of the most expensive 
reference tools on the market. With an annual 
cost of $8,850 in 1990, a subscription to the 
SCI is one of the largest investments that most 
institutions will make in any single informa- 
tion source, However, the high cost of the 
work is offset by the value of the information 
it contains. In these difficult economic times 
when libraries are considering the cancella- 
tion of expensive scientific journals and in- 
dexes, the SCI rarely comes up for consider- 
ation. This in itself is a testament to the useful- 
ness and value of this unique reference tool. 

As it enters its fourth decade of publica- 
tion, the Science Citation Index has become 
one of the standard reference tools in its field. 
However, its impact on science has clearly 
been much greater than if it had been just 
another index. While most reference works 
help users to think about the subjects that they 
cover, the Science Citation Index gives its 
users new ways to think about its subject 
matter. For this achievement, the Science Ci- 
tation Index has been one of the most signifi- 
cant advancements in the history of bibliogra- 
phy. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Science Citation Index. Philadelphia: Institute for 
Scientific Information, 1961- Bimonthly. 



The Science Citation Index (SCI) began publication 
in 1961 as a quarterly index with annual cumu- 



i >££■£. 



240 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



latiorts. Beginning with the 1979 edition, fre- 
quency increased to bimonthly. Quinquennial 
cumulations are available for the periods of 
1965-1969, 1970-1974, 1975-1979,and 1980- 
1 984 . Retrospective decennial cumulations cov- 
ering theyears 1955—1964- and 1945-1 954 were 
published in 1984 and 1988 respectively. The 
publisher intends to continue producing annual 
editions while at the same time extending retro- 
spective coverage back to the beginning of the 
twentieth century. Each volume of the SCI 
consists of 4 distinct parts. The "Source Index" 
contains references to journal articles arranged 
bypersonal orcorporate author. The "Permuterm 
Subject Index" provides a keyword subject in- 



dex to all articles in the "Source Index." All of 
the keywords used in the subject index are 
derived directly from the titles of the articles 
included in the "Source Index." The "Citation 
Index" consists of an index to all of the biblio- 
graphic references contained in these same 
source materials. These three sections comprise 
the main body of the Science Citation Index. 
The final portion of the work is the "Journal 
Citation Reports," which provides statistical 
information on the citation rates and impact 
factors of each source journal included by the 
index. The 1988 complete annual edition con- 
sists of 20 bound volumes plus a separate index 
guide. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



As one of the few reference works that has 
spawned an entirely new field of study, the 
Science Citation Index has been thoroughly 
discussed in the professional literature. From 
works on the theory of the citationrelationship 
to studies of the literature of individual subject 
fields, the Science Citation Index has played a 
role in hundreds of articles over the past 35 
years. Many of these articles have been col- 
lected in an eight-volume set by Eugene 
Garfield, Essays of an Information Scientist. 
This set includes all of Garfield's writings as 
well as important other materials related to 
citation analysis and is the first source to 
consult for material on this work. The editors 
of the Science Citation Index are also highly 
cognizant of the impact of the SCI on the 
literature and maintain a bibliography of rel- 
evant materials in the introductory section of 
each annual cumulation. This bibliography is 
useful for anyone interested in finding other 
published sources about citation anaylsis, the 
SCI, or its related products. 

Aaronson, Steve. "The Footnotes of Science." Mo- 
saic 6 (March/April, 1975): 22-27. 

Adair, W.C. "Citation Indexes for Scientific Litera- 
ture." American Documentation 6 (1955): 3 1- 
32. 

Brahmi, Frances A. "Reference Use of Science Cita- 
tion Index." Medical Reference Services Quar- 
terly 4 (Spring, 1985): 31-38. 

Cawkell, Anthony E. "Science Perceived Through 
the Science Citation Index," Endeavour 1 (1 977): 
57-62. 



—. "Search Strategies Using the Science Cita- 
tion Index." In Computer Based Information 
Retrieval Systems , edited by Bernard Houghton. 
London: Clive BingleyLtd., 1968. 

Garfield, Eugene. "Citation Analysis As a Tool for 
Journal Evaluation." Science 1 78 (November 2, 
1972); 471-79. 

. "Citation Indexes for Science." Science 122 

(July 15, 1955): 108-11. 

■. "Citation Indexing for Studying Science." 

Nature 221 (1970): 669-71. 

. Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Applica- 
tion in Science, Technology, and Humanities. 
New York: Wiley, 1979. 

-. Essays of an Information Scientist. 8 Vols. 

Philadelphia: ISI Press, 1977-1986. 

. "How to Use the Science Citation Index." 

Current Contents 9 (February 28, 1983): 5-14. 
Reprinted annually in the Index Guide to the 
Science Citation Index. 

. "Is Citation Analysis a Legitimate Evalua- 

tion Tool?" Scientometrtcs 1 (1979): 167-80. 
"Permuterm Subject Index: An Autobio- 



graphical Review." Journal of the American 
Society for Information Science 27 (Septem- 
ber, 1976): 288-91. 

. "Science Citation Index: A New Dimension 

in Indexing." Science 144 (May 8, 1964): 649- 
54. 

Herther, Nancy K. "Bringing Citation Indexes to 
CD-ROM: An Interview withEugene Garfield." 
Laserdisk Professional 2 (July, 1989): 25-32. 

Huang, Theodore S. "Efficacy of Citation Indexing 
in Reference Retrieval." Library Resources and 
Technical Services 12 (1968): 415-34. 

Lazerow, Samuel. "Institute for Scientific Informa- 
tion." In Encyclopedia of Library and Informa- 
tion Science, edited by Allen Kent. New York: 
Marcell Dekker, 1974. Vol. 12: 89-97. 



SCIENCE CITATION INDEX 241 



"Librarian Turned Entrepreneur Makes Millions Off 
Mere Footnotes." Science 202 (November 24, 
1978): 853-57. 

Malin, Morton V. "Science Citation Index: A New 
Concept in Indexing." Library Trends 1 6 (Janu- 
ary, 1968): 374-87. 

Margolis, J. "Citation Indexing and Evaluation of 
Scientific Papers." Science 155 (March 10, 
1967): 1213-19. 

Miller, Elizabeth, and Eugenia Truesdell. "Citation 
Indexing: History and Applications." Drexe! 
Library Quarterly 8 (April, 1972): 159-72. 

Narin, Francis, and Mark P. Carpenter. "National 
Publication and Citation Comparisons." Jour- 



nal of the American Society for Information 
Science 26 (1975): 80-93. 

Poyer, Robert K.. "Journal Article Overlap Among 
Index Medicus, Science Citation Index, Bio- 
logical Abstracts, and Chemical Abstracts" 
Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 72 
(1984): 353-57. 

Wade, Nicholas. "Citation Analysis: A New Tool for 
Science Administrators." Science 188 (May 2, 
1975): 429-32. 

Weinstock, Melvin. "Citation Indexes.'* In Encyclo- 
pedia of Library and Infvohrmatian Science, 
edited by Allen Kent. New York: Marcel Dekker, 
1974. Vol. 5: 16-40. 



NOTES 



1 "Librarian Turned Entrepreneur Makes Millions Off 
Mere Footnotes," Science 202 (24 November 1 978): 
853-57. 

2 Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexes for Science," Sci- 
ence 122 (15 July 1955): 108-11. 

'Eugene Garfield, "Significant Journals of Science," 
NaturelM (16 December 1976): 609-15. 

4 Henry Small and Eugene Garfield, "The Geography and 
Mapping of Science: Disciplinary and National 



Mappings," Journal of Information Science 1 1 
(1985): 147-59. 

5 Eugene Garfield, "Is Citation Analysis a Legitimate 

Evaluation Tool?" Scientometrics 1 (1979): 167— 
80. 

6 Nicholas Wade, "Citation Analysis: A New Tool for 

Science Administrators," Science 188 (2 May 1975): 
429-32. 

7 Garfield, "Citation Indexes for Science," 109. 



SI 
w 

m 



"The Baby Figure of the Giant Mass": 

Pollard & Redgrave's and Wing's 

Short-Title Catalogues 



Robert W. Melton 



And in such Indexes (although small pricks 
To their subsequent volumes) there is seen 
The baby figure of the giant mass 
Of things to come at large. 

— Shakespeare, Troilus and 
Cressida I, iii, 343-46 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Although the first bibliography examined in 
this survey was not published until 1926, 1 its 
roots go back at least to 1 884 and thus it might 
be thought of, along with the Dictionary of 
National Biography and the Oxford English 
Dictionary, as one of the three great reference 
works of Victorian Britain, together repre- 
senting our attempts to record the history of 
our individual achievements, our language, 
and our printed legacy. Efforts to record the 
bibliographic output of aparticular culture are 
as old as libraries insofar as individual librar- 
ies have attempted to acquire exhaustively all 
culturally important publications and provide 
public records of their holdings. However, 
because of the scarcity of many publications — 
whether due to short print runs, political or 
religious suppression, natural or manmade 
disasters — as well as the financial restrictions 
on most libraries and the inevitable belief that 
some types of publications are not worth ac- 
quiring, no single repository, even those which 
benefit from copyright deposit laws, can serve 
as the basis for such a record. 



The Justification for Short-Title 
Catalogues 

If it is necessary to first ask why an 
enumerative or systematic bibliography of the 
printed products of a culture is worth compil- 
ing in the first place, perhaps the best and 
simplest answer has been given by Roy B. 
Stokes, who reminds us that "before books can 
be studied, they must be known to exist." 2 This 
principle is important not only for proving the 
existence of a work which, as in the majority 
of cases, appeared in only one edition. It is also 
vitally important for textual scholars and com- 
pilers of critical editions, whose goal is the 
determination or reconstruction of the text of 
a frequently published work to a state as close 
to its author's original (or final) intentions as 
possible. (Such work, of course, involves the 
study of all extant manuscripts as well as 
printed editions.) 

A bibliography may be devoted to the 
works of aparticular writer, group of writers, 
or organization; to imprints of a particular 
press or printer or to those from a particular 
geographical entity; to works in a particular 
genre; to works intended or appropriate for a 
particular reader group; or to works on a 
particular subject. Although Stokes believes a 
bibliography must always strive for complete- 
ness within its chosen parameters, in the last 
three cases completeness becomes problem- 
atical as issues of definition are involved. 
Therefore, any of these may be, and often are, 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 243 



further limited by chronology or language in 
an effort to increase the chances of complete- 
ness within the chosen parameters, increase 
its effectiveness for the desired users, or sim- 
ply make its compilation realistically manage- 
able. Chronological limits may be arbitrary or 
may be determined by historical events within 
either the publishing trade orthe greaterpoliti- 
cal or cultural environment. The bibliogra- 
phies discussed in this survey are based prima- 
rily on language and date of publication but 
otherwise are intended to be comprehensive in 
coverage. 

Efforts to record the printed output of 
England and its political or linguistic colonies 
regardless of subject, author, printer, or city of 
publication began in earnest with the publica- 
tion in 1884 — the same year as the first fas- 
cicle of the Oxford English Dictionary — of a 
three-volume Catalogue of Books in the Li- 
brary of the British Museum Printed in En- 
gland, Scotland and Ireland and of English 
Books Printed Abroad, to the Year 1640 (Lon- 
don: The Museum), principally compiled by 
George Bullen, the Library'skeeper of printed 
books, and containing some 13,600 entries. 3 A 
more detailed description of the Library's 
incunabula — most of which are not British 
imprints — was planned and begun toward the 
endof the century by R.G.C. Proctor and A.W. 
Pollard and, after the former's untimely death 
in the Alps in 1903, was Pollard's main re- 
sponsibility in the Library's Department of 
Printed Books, which he had joined in 1883, 
for the next ten years. Entitled A Catalogue of 
Books Printed in theXVlh Century Now in the 
British Museum (London: The Museum), the 
first volume was published in 1908.'' Four 
hundred and thirty-one specifically English 
incunabula located in a variety of British and 
American collections were cataloged by E. 
Gordon Duff in Fifteenth Century Books: A 
Bibliography of Books and Documents Printed 
in England and of Books for the English Mar- 
fe?Pn>tte^&roa<i(London:TheBibliographi- 
cal Society, 1917), for which Pollard wrote the 
preface. Pollard, Duff, Proctor, W,W, Greg, 
and other members of the Bibliographical 



Society had also published, between 1895 and 
1913, Hand-lists of English Printers, 1501- 
1556.' 

Origins of the STC 

These various efforts led Pollard to write 
a paper in early 1918 for the Bibliographical 
Society, of which he had been honorary secre- 
tary since a year after its founding in 1892, in 
which he suggested that it was now possible to 
attempt to compile a "short-title handlist" of 
all extant English books from the close of the 
fifteenth century through the year 1 640, 6 The 
Society's vice-president, G.R. Redgrave, 
agreed to collaborate with Pollard in such an 
undertaking and to personally assist in its 
financing. At its meeting on April 22, 1918, 
the Society's Council passed a resolution ac- 
cepting Redgrave's offer and agreed to pub- 
lish such a catalog as soon as possible after its 
completion. 7 Pollard presented another paper 
outlining his proposal in more detail at the 
January 1919 annual meeting, and by this time 
he proposed to extend the date of coverage 
back to the year 1475, thereby adding Duffs 
coverage and using the same chronological 
parameters as the 1 884 BM catalog, the Cam- 
bridge catalog of 1475-1 640 books compiled 
by Charles Sayle, and Edward Arber's tran- 
script of the Stationers' Company registers. 
(The terminus ad quern in all of these catalogs 
was chosen not so much for the historical fact 
of the Civil War itself as for the known exist- 
ence of some 26,000 political and religious 
tracts printed during the 1640s and 1650s. 
Collected by the London publisher/bookseller 
George Thomason, the inclusion of these tracts, 
as it turned out, would have doubled the size 
of the project. 8 ) The announcement of this 
enterprise was met with various offers of 
assistance, perhaps most importantly from the 
Bodleian Library at Oxford but also from 
other university libraries and private collec- 
tors in Great Britain, from such private re- 
search libraries as the Huntington, 9 and from 
the eminent antiquarian book firm of Bernard 
Quaritch. From the start, what would ulti- 



244 mSTTNfiUlSHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



mately be published as A Short-Title Cata- 
logue of Booh Printed in England, Scotland, 
& Ireland and of English Books Printed 
Abroad, 1475-164Q 10 was, like the DNB and 
the OED, very much a group effort. 

A. W. Pollard and G. Ft. Redgrave 

The backgrounds and qualifications Pol- 
lard and Redgrave brought to the project dif- 
fered considerably. In addition to his work in 
the Department of Printed Books, Alfred Wil- 
liam Pollard (1859-1944) 11 published an edi- 
tion of Chaucer in 1898 that was the most 
scholarly to date. Furthermore, he had been 
publishing articles on various bibliographical 
subjects for at least ten years before that and 
on fifteenth-century history andliterature since 
1876. But it was his pioneering work on the 
problems of Shakespeare's texts, particularly 
his Shakespeare Folios and Quartos of 1909 
(London: Methuen), which secured his repu- 
tation as a literary and textual scholar. In the 
words of the eminent bibliographer W.W. 
Greg, this book was "by far the most system- 
atic and critical work that had yet appeared on 
the subject and one that marked the opening of 
a new era in Shakespeare studies." 12 His in- 
vestigations were continued in the 1915 
Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at Cam- 
bridge, published two years later as 
Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the 
Problem of the Transmission of his Text (Lon- 
don: A Moring), which fellow Shakespearean 
J. Dover Wilson called "at once sober and 
brilliant." 13 It was also Wilson who referred to 
the Bibliographical Society as Pollard ' s "brain- 
child." 14 Pollard also cared for his brain-child, 
serving as editor of its Transactions (later The 
Library) from 1900 until 1934. 

Gilbert Richard Redgrave (1844-1941), 
on the other hand, although likewise a found- 
ing member of the Bibliographical Society, 
was an amateur in things bibliographical. His 
principal activities and interests were in the 
fields of engineering, architecture, and art 
history; he was a minor watercolorist whose 
works exhibit a pre-Raphaelite influence. 15 



Son of the more famous genre and landscape 
artist and art historian Richard Redgrave, his 
first publication was a compilation of his 
father's writings and addresses, published in 
1876 as Manual of Design (London: Chapman 
& Hall). This was followed 15 years later by 
a monograph on the artists David Cox and 
Peter De Wint (London: Sampson Low; New 
York: Scribner's, 1891) and the following 
year by the still useful A History of Water- 
ColourPaintinginEngland '(London: Sampson 
Low; New York: Scribner's, 1892). The first 
of several editions of Calcareous Cements: 
Their Nature and Uses (London: C. Griffin) 
was published in 1895, and his coeditedbook- 
let Deterioration of Structures of Timber, 
Metal, and Concrete Exposed to the Action of 
Sea- Water (London: H.M. S .O .) was published 
for the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1926, 
the year STC was in press. As a young teen, 
Redgrave assisted in the design and construc- 
tion of Royal Albert Hall and wrote its opening 
celebration's program. In 1878, he was archi- 
tect to the Royal Commissioners of the Paris 
Exhibition and was awarded Officer of the 
Legion of Honour. In 1 88 1 , he began a career 
in educational supervision, first as secretary 
of the Royal Commission on Technical Insti- 
tutes; from 1884 until 1897 as an inspector of 
schools, including the National Art Training 
School, under the Department of Sciences and 
Art; as chief senior inspector of technical 
schools under the Board of Education from 
1897; and as assistant secretary to the Board 
from 1900. He presented several papers to the 
Bibliographical Society, of which he was presi- 
dent in 1908; at least four of these were 
published. The first, read in 1 893, treated a 
fifteenth-century printer and was published as 
ErhardRatdoltandHis Work at Venice (Lon- 
don: The Bibliographical Society, 1 894). Oth- 
ers, presented in 1895, 1896, and 1910, were 
subsequently published in the Society's Trans- 
actions. He was also a frequent contributor to 
the Times Engineering Supplement. He died in 
June 1941 at the age of 97. 

Although STC is often referred to as "Pol- 
lard & Redgrave" and Redgrave's name is 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 245 



given equal prominence on the title page, the 
work was Pollard's brain-child from the start. 
According to Wilson, "it was generally recog- 
nized at the time, and should be made clear to 
posterity, that he was in more than formal 
sense editor-in-chief from the outset, and dur- 
ing the final stages himself shouldered the 
bulk of the work involved." 16 As the anony- 
mous reviewer for the Times Literary Supple- 
ment more subtly put it, "it is not the least part 
of Mr. Pollard's achievement that, performing 
nobly, he has been the cause of noble perfor- 
mance in others." 17 Redgrave's noble perfor- 
mance was mostly his financial support for the 
project. In a letter to Pollard dated February 
14,1918, Redgrave offered 600 pounds for the 
project along with half his time for editorial 
work or general supervision and the use of his 
suburban London home as project headquar- 
ters. The exact nature or extent of Redgrave's 
editorial work is difficult to determine. 
Redgrave's involvement with STC is barely 
mentioned in his Times obituary, 18 and his 
name occurs only once in the preface to the 
second edition. No entry for Redgrave ap- 
peared in DNB. 

Creating the STC 

Once his project received the official bless- 
ing of the Society, Pollard set out in the highly 
methodical way of a trained bibliographer. 
Having for almost 20 years compiled slips for 
1475-1640 English books in the Museum's 
Department of Printed Books, he proposed a 
system using cards of different colors for the 
holdings in the Bodleian, Cambridge, Rylands, 
and other libraries. (The pre-computer neces- 
sity of creating handwritten cards is one very 
practical reason why bibliographies of this 
scope have used "short-titles.") Progress was 
further slowed by other factors, including 
Pollard's promotion in 1919 to the keepership 
of printed books at a time of "great adminis- 
trative difficulty" in the Library 19 and the 
deterioration of Redgrave's vision. The addi- 
tion to the effort in 1922 of G.F. Barwick, who 
had been Pollard's immediate predecessor in 



the keepership, wasamajor factor inits comple- 
tion by 1924, as no doubt also were Pollard's 
"forthright style" and "alacrity in tackling 
new duties." 20 It was another two years in 
press and final revision. 21 

STC — the acronym received immediate 
currency — is, like the 1884 BM catalog andas 
its own not-so-short title makes clear, an at- 
tempt to list all works printed from the begin- 
ning of printing in England in 1475 through 
the year 1640 in the English language regard- 
less of the place of printing, as well as all 
works printed in England, Scotland, Wales, 
and Ireland in any language, which had been 
seen by one of the compilers. The final caveat 
is important: works believed to have been 
printed, or merely found in previous catalogs, 
were excluded unless they had actually been 
examined in one of 148 libraries or collections 
in the U.K. or the U.S. A system of letter- 
number abbreviations, or sigla, is used to 
identify libraries which own each item, but 
usually no more than three British and two 
American locations are listed and usually no 
more than one in the same city, although for 
particularly rare items either of those rules 
could be broken. (Reflecting the principally 
literary interests of the Society 's members, the 
rule was also frequently bent for plays and, as 
the Times Literary SupplementTeviewztpvt it, 
"other exciting literature," 22 regardless of rar- 
ity.) In this sense, STC is neither a true union 
catalog nor a census of copies; it may best be 
thought of as a finding-list as well as an 
enumerative bibliography. It should also be 
stressed that although sufficient information 
is (theoretically) presented to differentiate 
variant editions and issues, STC is not a de- 
scriptive bibliography such as Duffs catalog 
of incunabula. In the words of Benjamin 
Nangle, a compiler of a work of such scope as 
STC "could not aspire to become an expert on 
the bibliographical niceties of each individual 
volume." 23 This would be particularly true of 
a work as dependent as was STC on volunteers 
of varying degrees of bibliographical training. 
The "mixed character of its sources" in regard 
to the degree of bibliographic detail given is 



246 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



the basis of Pollard's admirably candid warn- 
ing in the preface (p. vii) that the book remains 
"a dangerous work for any one to handle 
lazily, that is, without verification." After all, 
the catalog was intended as a "preliminary 
record of research, in preparation for a fall- 
dress catalogue." 

The word "books" has been avoided in the 
discussion of STC for the reason that from the 
beginning its compilers intended to record all 
printed items within their scope. As a result, 
STC contains references to extant broadsides, 
ballads, proclamations, and other works of a 
similar nature printed ononesheet. Books and 
sheets of music are included. Although serials 
as we think of them today, including newspa- 
pers, did not develop until after the Restora- 
tion in 1660, some publications of a serial 
nature, such as almanacs, calendars and prog- 
nostications, are included and listed together 
chronologically, as are official publications of 
the governments and ecclesiastical bodies of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. (Unofficial 
works by a monarch or ecclesiastical official 
are entered under the individual's name). 

The rules governing entry were taken 
from the 1 884 British Museum catalog, which 
itself was derived from Anthony Panizzi's 9 1 
rules, developed in the late 1 830s. Most works 
are entered by author, including anonymous 
and pseudonymous works if there is "any 
general agreement as to the authorship" (p. 
xi); otherwise, unattributed works are entered 
by the first proper name in the title if there is 
one or, if not, by the first substantive — a 
practice widely criticizedand dropped in most 
short-title catalogs compiled since. The sub- 
jectivity inherent in deciding what constitutes 
a "substantive" and the inconsistency in ap- 
plying the rales, when multiplied by a dozen or 
more contributors, resulted in some titles be- 
ing "hidden" under entries by which few would 
think to search. For example, "A solemne 
contestation of diuerse Popes out of their own 
canon law" (No. 20114) is entered under 
"Popes," even though it is not really a proper 
name and isn't the first substantive; "The 



returne of the knight of the post from Hell, 
with the Diuels aunswere" (No. 20905) is 
entered under "return" even though Hell is a 
proper name; and "The passion of our lord" 
(No, 14557) is entered under the phrase "Jesus 
Christ," even though he wasn't the author and 
those words are not in the title as presented — 
and there are no cross-references from either 
"passion" or "lord." In numerous cases the 
application of the rules results in anonymous 
titles being entered under the last word: "A 
wonderfull and most lamentable declaration 
of the great hurt done inErfford," for example, 
isenteredunder"Erfurt" (No. 10434), Variant 
editions or issues of the same work, of which 
there were many more than the editors had 
anticipated, are listed chronologically. In all, 
about 26,500 items are listed — almost double 
the number in the 1 884 BM catalog — includ- 
ing just one not published in Europe: No. 
2738, the so-called Bay Psalm-Book, printed 
by Stephen Day in Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, in 1640. 

Impact of the STC 

The publication of STC had immediate 
impact, not only among scholars of Renais- 
sance British history and literature but in li- 
braries and, perhaps most of all, in the book 
trade, where reference to an STC number in 
dealers' catalogs better enabled prospective 
buyers to know precisely what was being 
offered for sale. It rapidly gained a reputation 
as being "among bibliographical works ... in 
a class by itself for its combination of authority 
and range of use" 24 and has been called "with- 
out apology ... the best national imprint 
bibliography for any extended period of cov- 
erage." 25 Many research libraries annotated 
their copies of STC to indicate their own 
holdings and used the results to attempt to 
acquire desiderata, and several of those with 
major holdings, including the Newberry and 
the Huntington, published separate lists. A 
union checklist of STC titles in some 110 
American libraries, compiled by William W. 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 247 



Bishop, was published in 1944 (revised and 
updated in 1950) and other union checklists 
were published for the college libraries at 
Oxford and Cambridge. 26 Other bibliogra- 
phers have compiled lists of particular exclu- 
sions fromjSTC — for exampleM. A. Shaaber's 
Checklist of Works of British Authors Printed 
Abroad, in Languages Other Tlmn English, To 
1641 (New York: Bibliographical Society of 
America, 1975), which includes items such as 
European editions of the Latin poems of John 
Donne. Pollard himself hinted in the preface, 
and further elaborated in a 1927 paper to the 
Society, of his plans to rearrange the entries in 
STC chronologically for, ashe said, "to get all 
the books of a nation into as accurate chrono- 
logical order as possible is one of the biggest 
things that bibliography can do."" But this 
projected Annals of English Printing was 
crowded out by Pollard's many other endeav- 
ors and was made problematical by the fact 
that so many STC entries are either undated or 
misdated. The frequently expressed need for 
chronological arrangement of the titles in STC 
was met in 1 99 1 when the final volume of the 
second edition, including Philip R. Rider's 
chronological index, was published. 

Pollard and Redgrave hoped that within 
ten years no more than 1 percent more works 
or 20 percent more variant editions and issues 
would be discovered. Bishop's checklist turned 
up roughly 450 additional titles in American 
libraries (many from the Folger) and this fact, 
along with the scarcity of copies of STC by 
1 945 , led to an attempt to produce an unautho- 
rized American reissue of STC incorporating 
these additions. News of this effort led the 
Society to issue a swiftly organized reprint of 
its own (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
1946), although it did not incorporate any 
additions or corrections, and plans for the 
American issue were dropped. An anony- 
mous apologist for the Society, writing in the 
Times Literary Supplement, confirmed that 
revision of STC had been going on almost 
since its appearance, "but it cannot be hurried: 
and to incorporate any of it in unfinished state 
was clearly out of the question." 28 The new 



edition did not begin to appear for 30 more 
years. 

Pollard and Redgrave also stated in their 
preface that they hoped that "at not too distant 
a date a supplementary volume may be issued 
which will make the information collected 
more easily useful to students of the develop- 
ment of English culture and of the history of 
printing." In addition to the chronological 
rearrangement already discussed, what they 
had in mind was an index to the printers, 
publishers, and booksellers of all works and 
variants listed in the catalog, Such an index, 
compiled by Paul G. Morrison, did not appear 
until after the deaths of both the chief compil- 
ers. 29 It has been superseded by the work of 
Katharine Pantzer for the second edition of 
STC. 

Donald G. Wing 

Although Pollard never intended to go 
past the year 1640, the main negative com- 
ments of STC's reviewers can be epitomized 
by the TLS reviewer' s remark that "those of us 
whose effective interest in English books, 
whether as collector or as student, begins 
rather later than 1640, are tempted to hope that 
the enthusiasm of librarians and societies will 
persevere, to lavish upon later ages a like 
assiduity of record and discrimination." 30 Such 
a society and a librarian did indeed heed this 
call, this time on the North American side of 
the Atlantic. During the late 1930s, several 
American scholars had discussed the need to 
form an organization devoted to the publica- 
tion of "certain types of labor-saving books 
. . . which so markedly facilitate the work of 
research," 31 and in the summer of 1939 the 
Index Society was founded in New York 
City. 32 Despite the impending European war, 
the Society was particularly impressed by the 
submission to it of a manuscript by one of its 
youngest members entitled "A Short-Title 
Catalogue of Books, 1641-1700," which 
Donald G. Wing, a member of the Yale Uni- 
versity Library staff since 1928, had been 
compiling since 1933. The Society made pub- 



248 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Iication of atleast a part of his catalog by 1 941 
its first priority. However, partly due to the 
intrusion of war, partly for normal delays, the 
first volume of Wing's continuation of STC 
did not appear until 1945. 

In later life, Wing would recall that when 
his Yale class of 1926 were asked about their 
aspirations, he could only respond that he 
wanted to read second-handbook catalogs. 35 
The fact that STC appeared within months of 
his graduation was, of course, entirely coinci- 
dental, but it may have given him the idea for 
an obvious project for his catalog-reading, 
library-delving, and bookshop-browsing, 
which he undoubtedly continued as an affili- 
ate student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 
1926-27 and while working toward amaster' s 
degree from Harvard (1 928) and a Ph.D. from 
Yale (1932), both in English literature. Two 
events in the Yale Library, however — both 
recounted in the preface to the first volume of 
his catalog and again in a 1951 talk to the 
Bibliographical Society of America 34 — were 
primarily responsible for his undertaking. One 
was Yale ' s purchase of the partially cataloged 
collection of books about the city and colleges 
of Oxford formed by a former Bodleian librar- 
ian, Falconer Madan. 35 The 1641-1700 Ox- 
ford imprints, Wing realized, could certainly 
form the core of an STC extension. The second 
was the Yale Library's own attempt to find 
roughly 1,600 items then missing which were 
listed in its first catalog of 1 742. Finding these 
books was now difficult, since items hadrarely 
been listed by author and often were under 
such partial bibliographic descriptions as 
"Smith's Sermons in Folio" or such totally 
nonbibliographic descriptions as "a dirty Old 
Testament." The need to do further inventory 
of Yale's pre-1743 holdings and to create 
bibliographic records for the Oxford books 
not listed in Madan's catalog allowed Wing to 
receive permission to create slips for a 1 641- 
1700 extension of STC "on library time"— 
i.e., while doing his stints at the reference 
desk — but only if he could think of two other 
good reasons for the efficacy of such a proj ect. 36 



Unlike STC, Wing's extension— hereaf- 
ter cited eponymously as "Wing" — was from 
the start essentially a one-person undertaking. 
He certainly received some help from other 
libraries and private collectors, butthe straight- 
ened economic conditions of the 1930s left 
libraries with staffs too small to participate in 
such ventures, and some private collectors 
simply didn't want their ownership of scarce 
books widely publicized. Wing himself ad- 
mitted that "only a fool would undertake such 
a project" 37 and some of the reviewers of the 
finished catalog agreed, pointing out certain 
"grave defects" and suggesting that "he would 
have come nearer to perfection if he had 
employed collaborators or had included at 
least one British bibliographer." 38 In his de- 
fense, others mentioned that, other than the 
catalog of the Thomason tracts, check-lists of 
early Scottish andDublin imprints, andEvans's 
rather error-prone American Bibliography? 9 
there were almost no previous guides to his 
period, and that its books had been much less 
studied than had those of the pre-Civil War 
period. 40 Wing did, in fact, receive a 
Guggenheim grant to work during the 1936- 
37 year in British libraries — 40 in London 
alone — and if this "heaviest year ' s work which 
can be imagined" 41 was perhaps not enough to 
offset the advantages of collaboration, there is 
a greater, albeit still imperfect, consistency of 
entry achieved by having a single compiler. In 
fact, overall the reviews were positive, with 
one reviewer calling it "a masterpiece of enu- 
merative bibliography . . . destined to be one 
of the most significant books ever published 
for the study of English literature" 42 and the 
Folger librarian, in a review of the first vol- 
ume, concluding that despite its shortcomings 
it is "a truly monumental work." 43 

Wing's principles of inclusion, arrange- 
ment, and description are much the same as in 
STC, with the exception that due to their 
proliferation and the challenges they pose to 
bibliographic description, periodical publica- 
tions were omitted. As Wing himself accu- 
rately predicted, they would "need a separate 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 249 



volume" — a task that furthermore "appeals to 
me not at all." 4 ' 1 Although covering only 60 
years, as opposed to the 1 66 of STC, Wing lists 
almost 90,000 works or variants, over three 
times the number in the earlier catalog; yet he 
probably missed a greater percentage of ex- 
tant titles for his period than Pollard and 
Redgrave had for theirs. 45 (Among American 
libraries whose significant holdings were not 
checked were the Universities of California, 
Michigan, and Minnesota.) The geographical 
and language parameters are the same. In- 
stead of an entirely numerical sequence, Wing 
devised a letter-number system for identify- 
ing each item (which generally met with posi- 
tive comments), and a different set of all-letter 
sigla for locations (which British reviewers 
typically disliked). More radical departures 
were his decisions that, in abbreviating, "the 
opening words of every title have been re- 
garded as sacred" with omissions always indi- 
cated by ellipsis and that, in entering anony- 
mous works, the first word not an article is 
always used (Preface, p. viii). On the other 
hand, his decision to "assume no responsibil- 
ity for authority of attribution" led to his listing 
some works under authors for whom there was 
less than universal agreement. Wing also de- 
clined, understandably, to try to identify the 
printers of unsigned books or, more regretta- 
bly, to differentiate between issues of a work 
when their title-pages were identical. Nor did 
he choose to identify the translators of trans- 
lations into English, thus failing to identify the 
North and Dry den translations of Plutarch's 
Lives, for example. 46 Perhaps the greatest criti- 
cism of Wing was the relative dearth of cross- 
references. For example, works by Sir John 
Borough are listed in two places, some under 
"Borough" and others under "Burroughs." 
Wing was not unaware that these were indeed 
the same man, but he felt it to be unnecessary 
to interfile or even cross-reference alternative 
spellings of the same person's surname. 47 De- 
liberately quoting the preface of STC in his 
general introduction to Wing (p. v), Benjamin 
Nangle, perhaps anticipating such criticisms, 
emphasized that it is no less a "preliminary 



step toward a 'full-dress catalogue"' than was 
its predecessor and that "'those who use this 
book as anything more than a finding-list must 
be on their guard.*" 

Wing's Influence 

As with STC, Wing is not a census of 
copies— it lists up to five British and five 
American copies for the more common 
works — and ultimately the most important 
effect of Wing on librarians was the immedi- 
ate skyrocketing in prices of the books which 
it listed — or failed to list. This inflation was 
caused not only by the stampede of libraries 
and private collectors using Wing as a check- 
listto identify desired works or editions absent 
from their collections and, with more money 
now in hand, to seek them out aggressively, 48 
but even more from the fact that, working 
alone, Wing failed to locate as many copies of 
books as a collaborative team would have 
done and thus made them appear to be scarcer 
than they in fact were. Stanley Pargellis of the 
Newberry estimated that almost half of the 
22,000 items in the third volume alone are 
listed in three libraries only. 49 Despite Wing' s 
explicit warning to users and "to booksellers 
in particular" (Preface, p. ix), the latter have 
since its publication delighted in mentioning 
"only two copies found by Wing," etc., and, as 
Edwin E. Willoughby of the Folger has pointed 
out, there are "many guileless and trusting 
librarians who will actually believe them!" 50 
Pargellis has humorously suggested that a 
study of Wing's impact could be the basis for 
an article entitled "The Contribution of Ameri- 
can Librarians to English Booksellers," and 
the longtime editor of AB Bookman 's Weekly 
commented perhaps ironically in his obituary 
of Wing that "antiquarian book dealers ... are 
everlastingly in his debt." 51 Nevertheless, as a 
vade mecum to both booksellers and collec- 
tion development librarians, Wing remains 
unsurpassed. 

As with STC, publication of Wing led 
several libraries to publish checklists of their 
own holdings, among them Christ Church 



250 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



College at Oxford (1956), compiled by W.G. 
Hiscock, and the Library Company of Phila- 
delphia (1959), compiled by Edwin Wolf, 
2nd; 52 and once again Paul G. Morrison com- 
piled an index of the printers, publishers, and 
booksellers (Charlottesville: University of 
Virginia Press, 1 955). Neither STC nor Wing 
provides subject access or arrangement, but 
several projects have been undertaken which 
use one or both of them as the basis of more 
specialized checklists; among the more inter- 
esting and recent of these is Hilda L. Smith and 
Susan Cardinale's Women and the Literature 
of the Seventeenth Century: An Annotated 
Bibliography Based on Wing's "Short-title 
Catalogue" (New York: Greenwood Press, 
1990), which lists both the works in Wing by 
women and those either for or about women. 
It also appends a list of the women printers, 
publishers, and booksellers. 

Revision of the Catalogues 

Revisions of both STC and Wing were 
begun as soon as, if not before, their first 
editions appeared, and the reader is referred to 
the respective prefaces of "New STC*' (here- 
after referred to as STC2) and "New Wing" for 
a more detailed history of those efforts than 
can be related here. Pollard' s 1 927 address to 
the Bibliographical Society, already cited, 
noted some omissions already discovered and 
called for librarians and booksellers alike to 
notify him of both corrections and additions. 
In 1934, however, Pollard resigned the secre- 
taryship of the Society and a year later suf- 
fered an accident which left him unable to 
perform much mental work. Meanwhile, a 
young American student, William A. Jackson, 
21 at the time STC appeared, had acquired a 
copy upon its publication and immediately set 
out to annotate and interleave it with correc- 
tions and additions. Long before Pollard's 
death in 1944 it was apparent that in Jackson 
the primary instigator of a revised STC had 
been identified. Jackson was well suited for 
the job, having been a cataloger since his 
undergraduate days, first at Williams College's 



recently founded Chapin Library (1924-30) 
and from 1930 until 1938 at the Carl H. 
Pforzheimer Library. At the latter he was co- 
compiler of the Library's three-volume cata- 
log of books and manuscripts of English litera- 
ture, 1475-1700 (New York: Morrill Press, 
1940). In 1938 he joined the staff of the 
Harvard College Library, becoming the first 
Librarian of Houghton Library in 1956. 

Unlike Wing, Jackson saw the need for a 
British collaborator; an obvious choice was 
F.S. Ferguson, the Quaritch employee (from 
1928-1943, general manager) who had ar- 
ranged for that firm' s assistance in the compi- 
lation and publication of the 1926 edition and 
who, according to Pollard's preface (p. vii), 
was "largely responsible for any bibliographi- 
cal polish which the catalogue possesses." 
Soon after the war ended, their efforts came 
under official sponsorship of the Bibliographi- 
cal Society, and in 1948, the year Jackson's 
two-year term as president of the Bibliographi- 
cal Society of America ended, their project 
was further cemented when Harvard provided 
an open-ended grant for Jackson' s research. It 
received the official blessing of Pollard's suc- 
cessor (both as keeper of printed books at the 
British Library and, eventually, honorary sec- 
retary of the Bibliographical Society), F.C. 
Francis, who gave Jackson Pollard's own an- 
notated copy of STC. Jackson's grant allowed 
for help from a succession of research assis- 
tants. Upon his sudden death in October 1 964, 
and Ferguson's in 1967, the work fell to 
Katharine F. Pantzer, who had taken Jackson' s 
bibliography course at Harvard in 1962 and 
who had been hired later that year to begin 
work on the second half of the alphabet. 53 As 
time drew on, it became clear to Pantzer that 
much of the work on the early alphabet begun 
by Jackson, Ferguson, and Jackson's earliest 
assistants was already in need of further revi- 
sion, and a decision was made to publish STC2 
in two volumes, with the volume covering I 
through Z to appear first. It was published in 
1976, with a brief preface; A through H, with 
a more extensive introduction, appeared in 
1986. Jackson and, later, Pantzer were im- 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 251 



measurably helped by Lars Hanson and his 
successor Paul Morgan of the Bodleian Li- 
brary of Oxford, which served as the British 
center for the revision. 

Pollard' s hope that the original STC would 
omit no more than 10 percent of all titles and 
20 percent of variant editions and issues turned 
out to have been overly optimistic. Roughly 
10,000 new entries have been added to the 
more than 26,000 in the 1926 edition. This is 
partly, but not primarily, due to STC2 , s inclu- 
sion of all items bearing printed matter, such 
as bookplates, blank forms, and engraved 
items; otherwise the scope remains the same, 
While the number of newly discovered books 
was not very large (although no fewer than 46 
new editions of Lily's Grammar are listed), 
the number of ballads, broadsides, and other 
ephemera not turned up by Pollard and his 
assistants is significant. (Pollard himself, in 
his 1927 address, predicted that it would be 
"later editions and the pamphlets of news 
which will receive most additions from fur- 
ther research." 54 ) Much of the increase is due 
to the expansion of the number of contributing 
libraries from 150 to almost 500, but an addi- 
tional factor is the STC2 editors' decision to 
examine and record longer portions of titles, 
thus catching variants which escaped the ad- 
mittedly "drastic abridgement" of titles after 
the opening words employed by Pollard 8c 
Redgrave. (Extending the title also helps ex- 
plain anomalies of entry. "The passion of our 
lord" being entered under Jesus Christ is per- 
fectly understandable in STC2, where a fuller 
title — "The passion of owr lord iesu christe 
wythe the contemplatios" — has been tran- 
scribed.) The editors also decided to retain 
listings for some no longer extant works, in- 
eluding several unique titles tragically de- 
stroyed by the Nazi air raids on London. 
Because so many bibliographies, book deal- 
ers, and libraries had already adopted STC 
numbers when referring to books within its 
scope, the same numbering system was used, 
with decimal numbers added for new titles or 
variants and cross-references provided from 
the old number to the new if an item has been 



re-attributed or differently entered. A particu- 
lar strength of the new edition is the greatly 
expanded number of entries under corporate 
headings, such as "Bible," "Liturgy," "Indul- 
gences" (an entirely new heading), "England," 
and"London."Despitethethree-foldincrease 
in the number of contributing libraries, sym- 
bols are usually provided for no more than five 
known locations on each side of the Atlantic. 
Of equal benefit and importance to the 
number of new entries is the greater precision 
of bibliographical description in virtually ev- 
ery citation, not only from closer observation 
of information in the items themselves but also 
from taking advantage of the considerable 
amount of bibliographical research whichhad 
appeared between 1926 and 1976 in such 
areas as type design and size, paper, ornamen- 
tation, printing techniques, and the locations 
and longevity of individual printers. For ex- 
ample, the same "Passion of our lord" was 
thought, in the 1926 edition, to have been 
printed by the London printer Richard Pynson 
in 1 508 . Further research and the examination 
of more copies leads STC2 to identify it as a 
translation from French, probably printed in 
Paris by A. Verard, Four additional copies, 
some fragmentary, are located, the date has 
been called into question, the collation made 
more precise, and a note has been added to 
consult Edward Hodnett's English Woodcuts 
1 4 '80-1 535 (rpt. Oxford: Oxford University 
Press, 1973) as a source for its probable Con- 
tinental printing. It is this level of research 
which makes STC2, in one reviewer's words, 
a "thoroughly trustworthy bibliography ... a 
much greater tool for the investigation of the 
early booktrade in England . . . [and] a catalyst 
for new research in a wide range of literary 
and historical studies." 55 Perhaps thebeststate- 
ment ofSTC2 ' s merits was made by the anony- 
mous reviewer in a lead article in the Winter 
1986 issue of The Book Collector, who con- 
cluded that 

no body of information on the printed produce 
of any country, or the works in its language 
produced outside its geographicalboundaries, 
has ever been examined in such detail, re- 



252 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



corded with such punctual care, organized in 
such an exhaustively comprehensive system, 
or (finally and most important) presented with 
such patent love and enthusiasm, as that now 
bestowed on British books and books in En- 
glish, in that seminal first 165 years of their 
existence in print." 56 

And in Pantzer, he continued, we have "the 
most learned and indefatigable andincontest- 
ably the best scholar of the field it has ever 
known." 57 

Both Pantzer's indefatigability and the 
immense debt of all scholars of early English 
printing were further demonstrated by the 
appearance in 1991 of long-awaited printer, 
publisher, chronological, and other useful in- 
dexes as well as further addenda and corrigenda 
in the third and final volume of STC2. Printers 
and publishers are arranged alphabetically in 
the first index, and geographically in the sec- 
ond (non-London) and third (London); the 
latter is supplemented by a map and other 
useful material on the organization of the 
London booktrade. Pantzer's material is fur- 
ther supplemented by Philip R. Rider's chro- 
nological index of all STC2 titles, With the 
completion of STC2, it is safe to conclude that 
Great Britain and Ireland have a more accu- 
rate and comprehensive account of their early 
printed literature than does any other country. 

Wing, only 41 when the first volume of his 
catalog appeared in 1945, had already begun 
to collect additions and corrections toward a 
second edition. Most of the work had to be 
done while carrying out his duties in the Yale 
Library (where he was ultimately promoted to 
Associate Librarian for Collections), although 
in 1967 he received a sabbatical — the first 
given by Yale to a librarian — to help complete 
the research. An intermediary step toward the 
second edition was the publication in 1967 of 
A Gallery of Ghosts (New York: The Index 
Committee of the Modern Language Associa- 
tion of America), in which Wing listed the 
titles of about 5,000 works which he had some 
reason to believe might exist but which had 
failed to materialize during his research to that 
time. Hoping that at least 10 percent of these 



could be definitively identified either as errors 
or as legitimate new entries for inclusion in the 
second edition, Wing was surprised to be able 
to confirm 700 as extant, legitimate variants 
and another 675 as ghosts before the first 
volume of the second edition appeared in 
1 972. As late as January 1 968, he believed that 
the second edition would consist mostly of 
quantities of new locations, corrected or fuller 
imprints for some entries, and "nearly a thou- 
sand new entries." 58 Yet by 1972, as James M. 
Osborn's "General Introduction" to "New 
Wing" pointed out, a thousand entries had 
been added in the letter A alone. (The system 
of re-numbering with each letter of the alpha- 
bet and the fact that many numbered entries 
are either cross-references or have been can- 
celed make it difficult to determine the exact 
number of imprints finally included. Osburn 
refers to 120,000 publications, roughly 40 
percent more than were in the first edition, but 
more may have turned up before the final 
volume appeared in 1988.) 

Although Wing graciously thanked sev- 
eral of his chief collaborators in the 1968 BS A 
address, and although at the end of the "Pref- 
ace to the Revised Edition" he acknowledged 
more than 300 persons who sent him additions 
and corrections, the "New Wing" — particu- 
larly the first volume, which appeared less 
than three weeks before his death — remains 
very much the work of one man. Many, pub- 
licly or privately, have questioned whether, 
given the criticisms of the first edition and 
Wing's deteriorating health for several years 
before his death, it was altogether wise not to 
have formed an advisory board of expert users 
of the first edition to assist in both the biblio- 
graphical description and the editorial deci- 
sions of the second. Instead, Wing's some- 
what proprietary attitude 59 toward his catalog 
resulted in a second edition that differs from 
the first primarily in the quantity of citations 
and copies located and not in much editorial 
re-thinking; thus, although more cross-refer- 
ences are provided, many of the criticisms of 
the first edition remain valid of the second. In 
particular, the second edition has been criti- 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 253 



cized for not including enough of each work's 
title either to help differentiate it from variants 
of essentially the same work or to provide 
readers with a reasonable idea of the work's 
subject. 60 To be fair, however, to have done so 
would have essentially abrogated the benefits 
of ashort-tftte catalog. Furthermore, although 
he attempted to retain the numbering system 
of the first edition, inserting new entries by use 
of letters after the number of the preceding 
entry, about 8 percent of titles were assigned 
numbers which had belonged to quite differ- 
ent works in the first edition, creating a great 
outcry since many previous catalogs, bibliog- 
raphies, scholarly monographs, and the mi- 
crofilm edition of books in Wing make refer- 
ence to first edition numbers. At least one 
bibliographical scholar has called this deci- 
sion "disastrous," 61 and another commented 
that it "shattered a bibliographical reference 
system." 62 N. Carol Evans, who had access to 
Wing's manuscript files for her own research, 
reports that Wing "never had any use for" the 
numbers, made very little reference to the first 
edition in his work on the second, and would 
have preferred to have completely renumbered 
it 6J Professor Osborn, the chair of MLA's 
Index Committee, which published the sec- 
ond edition, promised that this practice would 
be re-examined, and in the second and third 
volumes, which appeared in 1982 and 1988, 
the only re-assigned numbers from the first 
edition are those which were for canceled 
entries, and a complete list of these number 
changes was printed in volume two . Work was 
begun on a third edition of volume one even 
before volume three was published. Although 
the editors of volumes two and three, Timothy 
J. Crist and John J. Morrison, respectively, did 
admirable work in revising, much of the ma- 
terial from Wing's notes regarding variant 
editions and states was very rudimentary. The 
ensuing degree of bibliographical precision, 
although improved over the first edition, has 
also received considerable criticism. Volume 
two was particularly difficult to improve, since 
it had to be re-edited from galleys left by Wing 
at his death. (As D.F. McKenzie wrote, many 



of the problems inherent in "New Wing" stem 
from the fact that it was "trapped in an obsolete 
technology. " 64 )In order to broaden the base of 
expertise from which to make editorial deci- 
sions, an Advisory Committee for the Wing 
Revision Project, under the aegis of MLA's 
Committee on Research Activities, was formed 
in 1979. 

Future Short-Title Catalogues 

And what of future editions? The comple- 
tion ofSTC2 in 1991 and "New Wing" in 1988 
may well represent the last catalogs of their 
kind to take the form of the traditional book. 
Certainly, the planning and appearance of 
their successor, the Eighteenth-Century Short- 
Title Catalogue (ESTC), could not have been 
realized without the development of computer 
programs for the creation, manipulation, and 
retrieval of machine-readable bibliographic 
records and of the bibliographic utilities which 
transmit them among virtually all Anglo- 
American research libraries, A detailed ac- 
count of the ESTC cannot be provided here,* 5 
and in fact — despite its title — it is not a short- 
title catalog. (Since electronically stored cata- 
loging makes the issue of physical bulk moot, 
complete title page transcription is an ideal 
usually achieved in ESTC) Nevertheless, the 
advent of ESTC has perhaps inevitably be- 
come connected to the fate of future STC and 
Wing revisions. Henry L. Snyder, the North 
American coordinator of ESTC, headquar- 
tered at the University of California, River- 
side, has proposed that the ESTC database of 
almost 200,000 records be used as the basis for 
an "English Short-Title Catalogue." 66 The 
entries in volume three of "New Wing" are 
already in machine-readable form, asare those 
in the ongoing revision of volume one, and 
work is underway to convert records in vol- 
ume two. Some 38,000 records generated by 
the North American Imprints Proj ect based at 
the American Antiquarian Society 67 are also 
being convertedfromUSMARCtoUKMARC 
format in order to make them compatible with 
the^57C database. The major remaining ob- 



254 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



$ 



stacle to a combined database of all English 
books of the handprinted era 68 is the conver- 
sion of STC2 records (which would be only 
about 10 percent of the total). Snyder suggests 
that the microfilm collection based on STC 
could be used to examine title pages and bring 
abbreviated STC2 entries up to the standards 
oftheisSTC database. Agreater but not insur- 
mountable hurdle would be creation of au- 
thoritative headings, of which he estimates 
there are 10,000 in STC2 and "New Wing" 
combined which have not yet been provided 
by other databases. Incorporation of subject 
headings to many of the almost 400,000 com- 
bined entries is a further possibility in the not- 
too-distant future. 

Perhaps the greatest advantage of a 
computerized catalog from the compilers ' per- 



spective is the fact that future additions and 
corrections can be made, location symbols 
added, and re-sequencing accomplished with 
relative ease and at low cost. From the user's 
point of view, the ability, already available in 
ESTC, to retrieve in minutes lists of, for ex- 
ample, all titles printed in Philadelphia in 
1776, all seventeenth-century titles relating to 
both women and music, or all eighteenth- 
century editions of Shakespeare printed in 
Dublin is a bibliographical capability never 
dreamed of by Pollard, Wing, Jackson; or 
even Pantzer when she first hired on in 1962. 
Their indexes were truly "the baby figure of 
the giantmass of things to come at large" — but 
were, and will remain, giants in the field of 
enumerative bibliography in their own right. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Pollard, A.W. and G.R. Redgrave, eds. Short-title 
Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scot- 
land, & Ireland and of English Books Printed 
Abroad. London: Printed by Arrangement with 
the Bibliographical Society forBernard Quaritch, 
Ltd., 1926. Reprinted. Oxford: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1 946. 

. 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, begun by 

William A. Jackson and F.S. Ferguson, com- 
pleted by Katharine Pantzer, with a chronologi- 
cal index by Philip R. Rider, 3 vols. London: 
The Bibliographical Society, 1976-91. 



Wing, Donald G. Short-Title Catalogue of Books 
Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, 
and British AmericaandofEnglishBooks Printed 
in Other Countries, 1641-1700. 3 vols. New 
York: Printed for the Index Society by Colum- 
bia University Press, 1945-51. 

. 2nd ed., revised and enlarged, begun by 

Donald G. Wing, continued by Timothy J. Crist, 
John J. Morrison, and Carolyn W. Nelson. 3 
vols. New York: Modern Language Association 
of America, 1972-88. 

. 3rd ed. of vol. 1. In progress. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Any study of STC and Wing must begin 
with the prefaces, introductions, and other 
front matter to each volume of each edition, 
where much of the history of their conception 
and evolution is told in more or less detail than 
in this article. The majority of the items listed 
below fall into one of three categories. The 
first consists of reviews of the first or second 
editions of STC and Wing (in some cases of 
only one volume), which will provide the 
interested reader with more detailed discus- 
sion of both their strengths and faults than can 
be given here. A variety of reviewers, includ- 



ing scholars, librarians, and booksellers, is 
represented. Additional reviews may be iden- 
tified in the standard book review indexes and 
in Index to Reviews of Bibliographical Publi- 
cations: An International Annual. The re- 
searcher should remember that some reviews 
were published after the appearance of each 
new volume of these catalogs. The second 
category consists of biographical information 
on the compilers, of which Wilson's portrait 
of Pollard is by far the lengthiest. It, along with 
the more concise entry hy Greg in DNB, the 
obituary in the Times, andthetributeby Francis, 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 255 



give some indication of the breadth of Pollard' s 
activities. Cveljo's entry, on Wing is probably 
the best summary of his career; the New York 
Times obituary is short, andLiebert's article is 
taken from his tribute at a memorial service for 
Wing at Yale, Redgrave's obituary in the 
Times is the only account of his life the author 
has identified; there was no memoir of him in 
the Bibliographical Society's organ, The Li- 
brary, after his death, nor was there a DNB 
entry. Some biographical data on Pantzer can 
be found in Chernofsky . One item, rvrunby and 
Evans, spans two categories and is really two 
items under one title: Munby's contribution is 
a memoir of Wing; Evans' a review of the first 
volume of "New Wing." The third category 
includes short articles of news about the cata- 
logs which stop short of being reviews. Nei- 
ther the catalogs which preceded STC and 
Wing nor the separately published indexes, 
addenda and corrigenda, or supplements to 
them are cited below, but are cited in either the 
text or the notes. Most of them are briefly 
described in Eugene P. Sheeny' s Guide to 
Reference Books, 10th ed, (Chicago: Ameri- 
can Library Association, 1986) in the section 
on British and American national and trade 
bibliography. 

[Barker, Nicolas?]. "STC." The Book Collector 35 
(1986): 417-30. 

Chernofsky, Jacob L. "New STCClimaxes a Century 
of Scholarship "AB Bookman 's WeeklylS (No- 
vember 10, 1986): 1872-77. 

Clement, Richard W. Review of Vol. I of STC2. The 
Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988): 520-21. 

Cveljo, Katherine. "Wing, Donald Goddard (1904- 
1972)." Dictionary of American Library Biog- 
raphy, 564-66. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlim- 
ited, 1978. 

*T)onaldWing,68,YaleLibrarian. , 'Afewyo>*Rm«s J 
October 11, 1972, p. 46, col. 3. 

"Dr. A.W. Pollard: An Eminent Bibliographer." The 
Times, March 9, 1944, p. 7, col. 5. 

"English Books to 1640." Times Literary Supple- 
ment, no. 1314 (April 7, 1927): 247. 

Francis, F.C. "A.W. Pollard, 1859-1944." The Li- 
brary, 4th ser,, 25 (1945): 82-86. 



Freeman, Arthur. Review of Vol. I of STC2, The 
Library, 6th ser., 9 (1987): 289-92. 

Greg, W. W. "Pollard, Alfred William." Dictionary 
of National Biography, 1941-1950. Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1959: 681-82. 

Hofmann, Theodore. Review of Vol. Ill of "New 
Wing." The Library, 6th ser., 11 (1989): 383- 
88. 

Holzknecht, Karl J. Review of Wing. Papers of the 
Bibliographical Society of America 46 (1952): 
400-06. 

Liebert, Herman W, "InMemoriamDonaldG. Wing." 
The Yale University Library Gazette 47 (1972/ 
73): 134-36. 

Malkin, Sol M. Untitled obituary of Donald Wing. 
AB Bookman's Weekly 50 (October 16, 1972): 
1204. 

Mason, Alexandra, Reviewof vol. II of "New Wing." 
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 
80 (1986): 255-62. 

McKenzie, D.F. "Type-bound Topography." Times 
Literary Supplement no. 4159 (December 17, 
1982): 1403. 

McKitterick, David. "Changes for the Better?" The 
Book Collector XI (1988): 461-78. 

"Mr. G.R. Redgrave: Engineering, Art, and Educa- 
tion." The Times, June 17, 1941, 9. 

Munby, A. N. L., and N. Carol Evans. "Wing's 
STC." The Book Collector 23 (1974) 388-93. 

Pargellis, Stanley. Review of Wing. College & Re- 
search Libraries 14 (1953): 98-99. 

Pollard, A.W. "Future Work on the Short-Title Cata- 
logue of English Books, 1475-1640." The Li- 
brary, 4th sen, 8 (1927/28): 377-94. 

"The Printing of Reference Books." Times Literary 
Supplement no. 23097 (May 4, 1946): 216. 

"The 'Short-Title' Catalogue." Times Literary 
Supplement no. 2327 (September7, 1946):432. 

"The Short-Title Catalogue, 1641-1700." Times Lit- 
erary Supplement no. 2650 (November 14, 
1952): 752. 

Willoughby, Edwin Eliott. Review of Vol. I of Wing. 
Library Quarterly 16 (1946): 247-50. 

Wilson, J. Dover, "Alfred William Pollard, 1859- 
1944." Proceedings of the British Academy 3 1 
(1945): 257-305. Rpt. in Alfred William Pol- 
lard: A Selection of His Essays, comp. Fred W. 
Roper. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976: 
1-57. 

Wing, Donald G, "The Making of the Short-Title 
Catalogue, 1641-1700." Papers of the Biblio- 
graphical Society of "America 45 (195 1): 59-69. 

Wing, Donald G. "Wing on Wing." Yale University 
Library Gazette 44 (1969/70): 1-7. 



NOTES 



1 Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue was. not 
published until January 1927, but the imprint date 
of 1926 will be used. 



2 Roy B. Stokes, "Bibliography," in Encyclopedia of 
LjbmryandInformationScienceQievjYQiik:}AaTc&l 
Dekker, 1969), vol, 2: 407. 




256 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



3 Edward Arber's A Transcript of the Registers of the 

Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640 (5 
vols., London, etc.: Privately Printed, 1875-94; rpt. 
6 vols., New York: P. Smith, 1950) had begun to 
appear nine years earlier but is, as Sbeehy puts it, 
"difficult to use and sometimes innacurate." It also 
lists many titles which were never published, were 
published differently, or of whichno known copies 
are extant; and some of the manuscript registers, 
particularly the Decrees and Ordinances, were de- 
nied to Arber by the officers of the Company. 

4 It was primarily this catalog which W. W. Greg credited 

with transforming bibliography "from a study the 
main interest of which was artistic to one governed 
by methods of scientific enquiry." In "Bibliogra- 
phy — A Retrospect," The Bibliographic Society, 
1892-1942: Studies in Retrospect (London: The 
Bibliographical Society, 1945): 27. Pollard himself 
credits his work on this catalog for the "strenuous 
mental discipline" which was so necessary for his 
later project. Pollard and Proctor were also chiefly 
responsible forthe descriptions of the printed books 
in the three-volume Catalogue of the Manuscripts 
and Early Printed Books . . . of the Library of J. 
Pierpont Morgan (London: Chiswick Press, 1907). 
'These appeared in four parts but were also published in 
one volume under the title Hand-lists of Booh 
Printed by London Printers, 1501-1556 (London: 
Bibliographical Society, 1913). 

6 The paper, which was entitled "Plans for B ibliographi- 

cal Work on the Sixteenth Century," is summarized 
in "Journal of the Twenty-Sixth Session: October, 
1917, to March, 1918," Transactions of the Biblio- 
graphical Society 15 (1920): 5-7. Due to the rather 
serious stammer from which Pollard had suffered 
since the age of three, the paper, like most he wrote, 
was read for him by another member of the Society, 
in this case, G.F. Barwick. 

7 The resolution was passedat the April 1918 meeting but 

was published, along with a summary of Pollard's 
second paper of January 1919, some specimen 
entries, and a call for volunteers, in the November 
issue of the Society's News-Sheet, p. 3-4, and 
reprinted in its "Journal of the Twenty-Seventh 
Session, October, 1918, to March, 19 19," Transac- 
tions of the Bibliographical Society IS (1920): 
142^18. 

8 The collection was bought from Thomason's heirs in 

1761 by King George III, who presented it to the 
newly formedBritish Museum, A two-volume cata- 
log of the collection was published by the Museum 
in 1908 and reprinted in four volumes in 1977 by 
University Microfilms International to accompany 
its publication of the collection on 256 reels of 
microfilm. 

9 Henry E. Huntington'sprivate collectionwasbequeathed 
to the people of California and its building con- 
structed soon after the STC project began. 

"London: Printed by Arrangement with the Biblio- 
graphical Society for Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 1926. 
Eleven of the other contributors are listed on the 
title page and their contributions explained in the 
preface. 



11 The best biographical sketch of Pollard remains the 
lengthy obituary by J. Dover Wilson which ap- 
peared in Proceedings of the British Academy 3 1 
(1945): 257-306. Because of Wilson's own emi- 
nence as a Shakespeare editor, it is to be expected 
that the memoir shed more light on Pollard' s impor- 
tance as a textual critic of Shakespeare and Chaucer 
than it does on the compilation of STC. Wilson's 
assertion that Pollard's Shakespeare Folios and 
Quartos (1909) was the landmark beginning of 
modern English textual criticism (p. 288) was sec- 
onded by W. W. Greg, who has written that it also 
"marked the opening of a new era in Shakespearean 
studies" and that Pollard was the founder of the 
science of critical bibliography ("The 'Hamlet' 
Texts and Recent Work in Shakespeare Bibliogra- 
phy," Modern Language Review 14 [1919]: 383). 
Pollard's own autobiographical sketch of his first 
50 years and a brief summary of his life "From Fifty 
to Seventy-Five" by SirHenry Thomas were printed 
inA Select Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred W. 
Pollard (Oxford: Privately Printed, 1938), which 
was presented to him by friends upon his seventy- 
fifth birthday. See also Alfred William Pollard: A 
Selection of His Essays, compiled by Fred W. 
Roper, (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976), 
which also reprints Wilson's tribute (pp. 1-57) and 
includes "Alfred William Pollard: His Influence on 
Contemporary Bibliography" by Roger Leachman 
(pp. 58-77). 

12 Greg, "The 'Hamlet' Texts," 383, 

"Wilson, "Pollard," 291. 

14 Ibid., 284. 

15 H.L. Mallalieu, Dictionary of British Watercolour 

Artists Up to 1920 (Woodbridge, England: Antique 
Collectors Club, 1976), vol. 1; 216. 
16 Wilson, "Pollard," 299, 

17 "English Books to 1640," Times Literary Supplement 

no. 1314 (7 April 1927); 247. 

18 "Mr. G.R. Redgrave: Engineering, Art, and Educa- 

tion," The Times, 17 June 1941, 9e. 

19 "Pollard, Alfred William," in Dictionary of National 

Biography, 1941-1950 (Oxford: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1959): 682. 

M These two qualities were noted by F.C. Francis in his 
obituary of Pollard in The Library^ 4th ser., 25 
(1945): 82. 

21 As with most reference works of such magnitude, 
editors invariably underestimate the time needed 
for completion, The 1924 annual report of the 
Society (in The Library, 4th ser., 5 [1 925]: 323-25) 
notes that "Mr. Pollard is finding the final prepara- 
tion of the copy and correction of the proofs .... a 
much heavier task than he anticipated." Since at the 
time he was editor of The Library, those words are 
undoubtedly his own. 

21 "English Books to 1640," 247. 

23 Benjamin Nangle, "General Introduction," A Short- 
Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scot- 
land, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of 
English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641- 
1 700 (New York: Printed for the Index Society by 
Columbia University Press, 1945-51), vol, 1: v. 



POLLARD & REDGRAVE'S AND WING'S SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUES 257 



""The 'Short-Title' Catalogue," Times Literary Supple- 
ment no. 2327 (7 September, 1946): 432. 

25 Arthur Freeman, review of volume 1 ofSTC2, in The 
Library, 6th sen, 9 (September 1987): 289. 

25 William Warner Bishop, A Checklist of American 
Copies of "Short-Title Catalogue" Books, 2nd ed, 
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950). 
Bishop's checklist was a byproduct of a project to 
microfilm the title page, contents page, and colo- 
phon of STC books for reference purposes and to 
help make up for its lack of descriptive detail. 
Details of the project are in his preface. The 1944 
edition stimulated corrections and additions by 
other American libraries, leading to the 1950 revi- 
sion. The Oxford and Cambridge checklists were 
compiled by Strickland and Gibson and Herbert M. 
Adams, respectively. 

27 A.W. Pollard, "Future Work on the Short-Title Cata- 

logue of English Books, 1475-1640," TheLibrary, 
4th ser., 8 (1927/28): 385. In addition to the future 
plans for STC, this post-partum account gives more 
detail about its organizational strategy and the 
cooperative efforts involved in its development 
than does the preface, including the statement (p. 
378) that he owed the idea of a "united catalogue" 
to Mr. H.R. Tedder, long-time librarian of the 
Athenaeum Club. 

28 "The Printing of Reference Books," Times Literary 

Supplement no. 2309 (4 May 1946): 216. 

29 Paul G. Morrison, Index of Printers, Publishers, and 

Booksellers in A. W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, A 
Short-Title Catalogue . . . (Charlottesville, VA.: 
Bibliographical Society of the University of Vir- 
ginia, 1950). 

30 "English Books to 1640," 247. 

31 Benjamin Nangle, "Preface," The Index of Middle 

English Verse, ed. Carleton Brown and Russell 
Hope Robbins (New York: Printed for The Index 
Society by Columbia University Press, 1943), v. 

32 In 1966 the Society became the Index Committee of the 
Modern Language Association of America. Ac- 
cording to Katherine Cveljo's entry on Donald 
Wing in Dictionary of A merican Library Biography 
(Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1978), his ex- 
tension of 6TC netted the Society some $30,000, 
which was used to support publication of other 
bibliographies, including the second edition. 

53 "Donald Wing, 68, Yale Librarian," The New York 
Times, 1 1 October 1972, p. 46, col. 3. 

M Published as "The Making of the Short-Title Cata- 
logue, 1641-1 700" Papers of the Bibliographical 
Society of America 45 (1951): 59-69. 

35 Oxford Books: A Bibliography of Printed Works Relat- 

ing to the University and City of Oxford or Printed 
or Published There ... ,3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1885-1912). The bibliography listed works 
only through 1681, but his collection — and thus 
Yale's — actually contained many titles published 
after that date. 

36 The reasons he came up with were creating a 1 ist of pre- 

185 1 Connecticut imprints and flagging all tempo- 
rary cards in Yale's card catalog which were ten 
years old or older — "a sure-fire way to alienate the 



affections of the maturer cataloguers," he discov- 
ered (Wing, "Making of theSrC," 62). 

37 Ibid., 59. 

38 The anonymous reviewer in the Times Literary Supple- 
ment no. 2650 (14 November 1952): 752. The 715 
reviewer of the first volume (in the issue for 7 
September 1 946, p. 432) had likewise tempered his 
admiration of Wing's "immense, single-handed" 
work with his "misgivings as to the limits of human 
capacity for so herculean a task." 

29 Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and 
Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Com- 
monwealth, and Restoration, Collected by George 
Thomason, 1640-1661 . . „ 2vols. (London: British 
Museum, 1908; rpt. 4 vols., Ann Arbor: University 
Microfilms, 1977); Harry O. Aldis, List of Books 
Printed in Scotland Before 1700 (Edinburgh: 
Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 1904); E. R. 
McC. Dix, Catalogue of Early Dublin-Printed 
Books, 1601-1700 (Dublin: T. G. O'Donoghue, 
1898-1905). 

^Hofroann, review of vol. 3 of New Wing, 384. 

41 A. N. L, Munby, "Wing's STC," The Book Collector!! 

(1974): 390. 

42 Karl J. Holzknecht, review of Wing in Papers of the 

Bibliographical Society of America 46 (1952): 400. 

Ai Edwin Eliott Willoughby, review of Wing in Library 
Quarterly 16 (1946): 250. Interestingly, no review 
of the first edition of Wing ever appeared in the 
Bibliographical Society's official organ, The Li- 
brary. 

"Wing, "Making of the STC," 63-64. Carolyn Nelson 
and Matthew Seccom.be 's British Newspapers and 
Periodicals 1 641-1 700: A Short-Title Catalogue of 
Serials Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland and 
British America (New York: Modern Language 
Association, 1987) admirably describes each sepa- 
rate extant issue of more than 700 periodicals. See 
Michael Harris's review in The Library, 6thser„ 1 1 
(1989): 378-83. 

45 For example, John Alden, in "Pills and Publishing: 
Some Notes on the English Book Trade, 1660- 
1715," The Library, 5th ser., 7 (1952): 21-37, 
which appeared after the final volume of Wing, 
states (p. 22) that Wing includes only 16 of 64 
printed items Alden found on the relation between 
the book trade and the proprietary medical trade. 
But six years later, in Wing Addenda and 
Corrigenda: SomeNotesonMaterialsin the British 
Museum (Charlottesville, VA,: Bibliographical 
Societyof the University ofVirginia, 1958), Alden 
concluded (p. 1), on the basis of a sampling of Wing 
againsttheBritish Museum's holdings, thai Wing's 
"hope for a margin of title omissions within twenty 
per cent may not have been idle." 

Ai Holzknecht, review of Wing, 40 1 . 

41 N. Carol Evans, "Wing's STC," The Book Collector 23 
(1974): 392. 

^Hofmann notes (p. 384) that in particular the 1970 
catalog of the Folger Library still has Wing books 
listed on accessions slips on virtually every page of 
its 28 volumes. 



258 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



m 



49 Stanley Pargellis, review of the first edition of Wing, 

College & Research Libraries 14 (1953); 98-99. 

50 WMoughby, review of Wing, 250. 

51 Sol Malkin, obituary of Donald Wing, AB Bookman 's 

Weekly, 50 (16 October 1972): 1204. 

52 Wing himself provides citations for these and 20 other 

checklists of pre- 1 701 books, mostof which use his 
numbering, on p. ix of the preface to the revised 
edition. 

53 Some biographical information on Pantzer is available 

in Jacob L, Chernofsky, "New STC Climaxes a 
Century of Scholarship," AB Bookman 's Weekly ; 
78 (10 November 1986): 1872-77. Of particular 
interest is the fact that, 1 9 years after entering the 
doctoral program in Harvard's English Depart- 
ment, Pantzer successfully submitted the first vol- 
ume of STC2 as her dissertation. 

54 Pollard, "Future Work on the STC," 380. 
"Richard W. Clement, review of STC2, The Sixteenth 

Century Journal 19 (1988): 520-21. 

J6 « STC » The 3ook Collector 35 (1986): 421-22. Al- 
though unsigned, the reviewer is probably the 
journal ' s editor, Nicholas Barker. The review makes 
the excellent point that STC cannot be used as an 
accurate view of either the English booktradeorthe 
reading tastes of the public, particularly the cultural 
elite, during the period covered since there were 
several times more books both sold and read in 
Latin, French, Italian, and Dutch than there were in 
English. 

57 Ibid, 429. 

ss "Wing on Wing," The Yale University Library Gazette 
44(1969-70): 2. 

5 * In his personal life, too, Wing has been called an 
"amiable loner" by a Yale colleague, Herbert W. 
Liebert, in "In Memoriam Donald G. Wing," Yale 
University Library Gazetted (1972-73): 134. 

60 David McKitterick, in "Changes for the Better?" The 
Book Collector 37 (1988): 463, provides several 
examples: "A discovery of the education of the 
schollars of Cambridge" is not as useful withoutits 



subtitle, "By their abominations and wicked prac- 
tises acted upon, and against, the despised people, 
in scorn called Quakers." 

61 Ibid., 461. 

62 D. F. McKenzie, "Type-Bound Topography," Times 

Literary Supplement no. 4159 (17December 1982): 

1403. 
63 Munby and Evans, "Wing's STC,"* 392. 
64 McKenzie, "Type-Bound Topography," 1403. 

65 The best source of information on ESTC is its own 

occasional newsletter, Factotum (London: Refer- 
ence Division, British Library, 1978- ). Two good 
descriptions of the database itself are Daniel 
Uchitelle's "RLIN in the Eighteenth Century: An 
Introduction to the ESTC SpecialDatabase,"Z>afa- 
base 7 (August 1984): 30-33, and David Hunter's 
"Searching ESTC on RUN "Factotum Occasiojial 
Paper 5 (1987). ESTC is searchable in the United 
States through the RLIN database and in Great 
Britain through BLAISE-LINE. 

66 Slightly different printed versions of the proposal 

Snyder made orally to the International Committee 
on the ESTC in November 1987 were published in 
The Library, 6th ser., 10 (1988): 191-93 and in 
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 
82 (1988): 333-36. 

67 The project is essentially converting the pre- 180 1 

American imprints in Evans and all of Marie 
Tremain's A Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 
1 751-1800 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 
1952) into MARC format. 

68 The year 1800 is, conveniently, the approximate date 

for the introduction of printing by machine. The 
English language may not be the first to have a 
comprehensive bibliography of its books to 1 800: 
a Short-Title Catalog of the Netherlands (STCN) 
should be substantially completed by the end of the 
century. See J. A. Grays, et al., "Dutch National 
Bibliography, 1540-1800: The STCN," Querendo 
13(1983): 149-60. 



Continuity in a Changing World: 

Statesman y s Year-Book 



David M. Pilachowski 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

The Statesman's Year-Book enjoys a well 
earned reputation as a reference book that 
deserves a place inmost libraries. The familiar 
red 5" x VA" volumes have appeared like 
clockwork each year since 1864. 1 Long a 
staple of reference collections, the Year-Book 
provides unbiased political, social, and eco- 
nomic background on the countries of the 
world. Besides giving accurate, up-to-date 
information on individual countries and, more 
recently, on international organizations, 
Statesman 's Year- Book, through its longev- 
ity, also provides broad historical coverage of 
the evolution of the political world. At the 
same time, the changes within and among 
countries can also be studied by examination 
of the Year-Book. Indeed, new volumes do not 
supersede earlier ones since the newer occa- 
sionally make reference to earlier editions. 2 
It is difficult to argue with recently retired 
editor John Paxton's statement that the Year- 
Book "is found in most reference libraries of 
the world. " J The Year-Bookenj oys the longest 
reign of any annual handbook of countries 
currently being published. At the same time, 
praise of the work has been both uniform and 
vocal. A 1 905 review sums it up well: "There 
are some annuals that have made themselves 
absolutely indispensable — not a large num- 
ber, possibly half a dozen — and one of them is 
The Statesman 3 s Year-Book. ... It has always 
been good, it grows better each year: when 
will its improvement cease* because further 
betterment is impossible?" 4 



Statesman's Year-Bookhas changed and 
been improved over time, in part in order to 
reflect political change and in part due to the 
introduction of new features. Yet, one re- 
markable aspect of the publication is the con- 
tinuity that it has enjoyed. Beyond simple 
longevity, Statesman 's Year-Book has been 
published by one firm and its subsidiary, has 
had but six editors, included one firm's maps 
for over 90 years, and has been printed and 
bound by but two firms since its inception. It 
is this stability and the quality of these long 
standing contributions that has helped set 
Statesman 's Year-Book apart from other works 
and has helped ensure its continued success. 

Origins of the Year-Book 

Macmillan and Company, founded by 
Alexander and Daniel Macmillan in 1 843 , has 
been the original and, with the inclusion of its 
subsidiary St. Martin's Press, the only pub- 
lisher of Statesman 's Year-Book. It seems 
clear that Macmillan and Company has sup- 
ported the Year-Bookiwm the outset and has 
recognized the importance of editorial excel- 
lence and continuity. Perhaps more amazing 
than the fact that the Year-Book has had the 
same publisher, is the longevity of its editors. 
As noted above, the work has had but six 
editors during its 125-plus years. 

The original suggestion that led to the 
creation of Statesman 's Year-Book has been 
attributed to Sir Robert Peel. The preface to 
the first Year-Book reported that "The 
Statesman 's Year-Book is intended to supply 



260 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



a want in English literature—a want noticed 
and commented upon more than fifteen years 
ago by the late Sir Robert Peel . , . he often felt 
the want of a hand-book presenting in a com- 
pact shape, a picture of the actual condition, 
political and social, of the various states of the 
civilized world." 5 

Perhaps further discussion of the Peel 
connection is tucked away somewhere in the 
Macmillan archives. While there is no reason 
to doubt that the original suggestion for 
Statesman 's Year-Book came from Peel, this 
fact is not mentioned in either Morgan's cen- 
tennial history of Macmillan nor in the pub- 
lished letters or biographies of Daniel or 
Alexander Macmillan nor of Peel. 

With the idea of such a handbook before 
him, Alexander Macmillan, who directed the 
firm after his brother's death in 1857, next 
faced the task of identifying an editor for such 
an ambitious enterprise. Here, the publisher 
receivedadvicefromhistorianThomasCarlyle 
and politician W.E. Gladstone, who intro- 
duced and recommended Frederick Martin to 
Alexander. 6 Martin was born in Geneva in 
1830, educated in Heidelberg, and settled in 
England. 7 He had been working since October 
1856 as Carlyle's secretary and amanuensis, 8 
In December 1862, Martin and Alexander 
Macmillan entered into an agreement for "A 
Statistical, Genealogical and Historical Ac- 
count of the States and Sovereigns of the 
Civilised World." 9 

Editor Martin's Model 

Former Statesman 's Year-Book editor 
John Paxtonhas credited Martin with creating 
much of the format and reputation that the 
annual has enjoyed over the years. Paxton 
lauded Martin for "build[ing] the foundations 
of its reputation for accuracy, impartiality and 
usefulness. Whatever changes The Statesman 's 
Year-Book has undergone at the hands of his 
successors, the basic features established by 
Martin have been preserved." 10 The editor's 
goal was to produce a work that "contains a 



full account of all the states of Europe, and the 
principal states of Asia, America, and 
Australasia, considered under their political, 
social and commercial aspects.'* 1 1 

The format of the first edition consisted of 
entries on each country divided into the fol- 
lowing sections: Reigning Sovereign andFam- 
ily, if applicable; Constitution and Govern- 
ment; Church and Education; Revenue and 
Expenditure; Army and Navy; Population; 
and Trade and Commerce. These categories, 
conceived in 1864, differ somewhat from 
today's; but the intent and approach remains 
the same: to present in narrative and statistical 
form basic information about the countries of 
the world. Selected colonies were also in- 
cluded in the original edition of Statesman 's 
Year-Booh The colonies of European coun- 
tries were included in the accounts of their 
respective imperial powers. India, Canada, 
and the Australasian colonies of Great Britain 
were treated separately while its lesser British 
colonies were ignored. 

In that first Year-Book, the countries of 
the world were presented in two unequal sec- 
tions. Parti, "The States of Europe," listed 16 
countries and their dependencies and colonies 
in 525 pages. One is reminded how different 
the world was then, Sweden and Norway 
existed as a personal union under one mon- 
arch, with entirely separate governments . Fin- 
land and Poland were under the control of 
Russia, while Turkey was a major power, 
controlling Egypt, Romania, and Serbia. Ger- 
many alone received detailed treatment at the 
level of individual States of Confederation in 
an overall entry of nearly a hundred pages. 
This level of detail may have resulted from 
editor Martin's background and from the de- 
centralized nature of Germany at that time. 

The second part of the 1864 edition of 
Statesman 's Year-Book, titled "Principal States 
Not in Europe," consisted of 156 pages. This 
section was divided into three subsections: 
America (Argentine Republic, Brazil, Canada, 
Chili, Confederate States, Mexico, and United 
States); Asia (China, India, and Japan); and 



STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK 26 1 



Australasia (New South Wales, New Zealand, 
Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and 
Victoria). While the number of countries in- 
cluded in that first edition was limited, that 
was by design and would change in subse- 
quent editions. Indeed, one of the few criti- 
cisms heard about the early editions of 
Statesman's Year-Book was the omission of 
many countries. 12 

Besides giving information about coun- 
tries, editor Martin had other objectives in 
mind for Statesman 's Year-Book. In the pref- 
ace of the 1864 edition he stated: 

It has been considered an object of paramount 
importance to give only facts, and exclude 
opinions from the Statesman 's Year-Booh No 
form of government is criticised, or com- 
pared, from a theoretical point of view, with 
any other form of political organisation; and 
no judgment is attempted on any of the thou- 
sand features of activity by which the social 
life of nations manifests itself." 13 

John Paxton identified Martin's legacy as his 
"dissociation from any party — political and 
denominational considerations (and) his firm 
resistance to pressure groups of any descrip- 
tion." 14 

A critical factor in gathering and present- 
ing information on the countries included in 
Statesman 's Year-Book was the source of the 
data to be included in the work, Martin placed 
a premium on the accuracy of his information, 
stating that: 

The great aim, kept in view throughout,' has 
been to insure an absolute correctness of the 
multiplicity of facts and figures given in the 
Statesman 's Year-Book. For this purpose, none 
but official documents have been consulted in 
the first instance, and only where these failed, 
or were manifestly imperfect, recourse has 
been had to authoritative books, and influen- 
tial newspapers, magazines, and other reliable 
information. In all the latter cases, the source 
i s given, so as to furnish a means for verifyi ng 
the statement, as well as to present a guide for 
further investigations. 15 

"Official documents" were put aside by the 
early 1 870s in favor of direct contact with the 
authors and editors of those documents. Be- 



ginning with Martin and continuing to the 
present, editors have relied upon the people in 
the "governments departments, embassies, 
learned societies, (and) statistical offices" for 
their information. 16 Yet Martin always re- 
served the right of final decision in using 
official sources, as he did in rejecting the 
reported, expenses of the Tsarist court "as 
ridiculously low in view of the boundless 
pomp and splendour displayed on all occa- 
sions." 17 

Beyond the change in sources, the next 
significant alteration of Statesman's Year- 
Book was the increase in the number of coun- 
tries covered. Within ten years of its original 
edition, many new countries had been added. 
Algeria, Liberia, Natal, and Morocco were 
added from Africa and coverage of Asia ex- 
panded to include Ceylon, Hong Kong, Java, 
Persia, and Siam. By 1884, several additional 
counties had been added, and Egypt, Serbia, 
and Romania were given individual entries 
separate from Turkey. 18 

Difficulties During Martin's Tenure 

Martin ' s tenure as editor, although lauded, 
was not without its difficulties, for Martin's 
dealings with the Macmillan firm were not 
entirely smooth. He was critical of decisions 
madeby his publisher and "He never ceased to 
tell the Macmillans how to run their business 
more profitably, what discounts to give to 
wholesalers and retailers, or how to make The 
Statesman's Year-Book pay." 19 

Relations between the editor and his pub- 
lisher were exacerbated in October 1882 dur- 
ing the preparation of the 1883 edition of the 
Year-Book. After rejecting Alexander Mac- 
millan' s suggestion that he receive editorial 
assistance, "Martin lost a large portion of his 
revised proofs in a railway carriage." 20 Against 
Martin's wishes, John Scott-Keltie 21 was en- 
listed to assist the editor with the completion 
of the 1883 edition. That edition would be the 
founding editor's last, as he died on January 
27, 1883. Scott-Keltie then succeeded to the 
editorship. 22 



^LBEII^^^O CLASSJCS OF REFERENCE PUHLlSHINli 



/ 



John Scott-Keltie's Editorship 

John Scott-Keltie was named the second 
editor of Statesman's Year-Book in 1884 a 
position that he held until his death in 1927. 
Scott-Keltie, like the Macmillans a Scot, was 
born m Dundee in 1840, Scott-Keltie was 
educated at Perth, with university studies at St. 
Andrews and Edinburgh. He later completed 
his studies for the Presbyterian ministry al- 
though his developing interest as a journalist 
while a student persuaded him to follow that 
career instead. 23 

Scott-Keltie's first position in journalism 
in 1861 was with W. & R. Chambers, where he 
workedon Chambers 's Encyclopedia. In 1 871 
he joined the editorial staff at Macmillan, with 
an appointment as sub-editor for Nature in 
1873. 

Statesman 's Year-Book underwent sev- 
eral significant changes during Scott-Keltie's 
editorship. Maps were added as a standard 
feature of the work beginning in 1892. Four 
maps appeared in that volume: the density of 
world population, the British Empire, the par- 
tition of Africa, and the frontiers of the Pamirs 
(north of Afghanistan). Scott-Keltie's inter- 
ests made the addition of maps to the Year- 
Book very appropriate. His DNB entry refers 
to him as a geographer. Indeed, Scott-Keltie 
edited the Royal Geographical Society's Pro- 
ceedings > later renamed Geographical Jour- 
nal? 4 He has been called the "architect and 
builder" of that prestigious journal. 25 When 
Scott-Keltie was awarded the Victoria Medal 
of the Royal Geographical Society in 1917, 
Society President Douglas Freshfield remarked 
of Scott-Keltie that "He has madehimself, and 
in doing so he has made the Society, a geo- 
graphical center round which all good travel- 
lers revolve. . . . His correspondence has 
extended over the civilized world, and ... Dr. 
Keltie has remained in the eyes of all men the 
incarnation of British geography." 26 Among 
Scott-Keltie's admirers was former United 
States President Theodore Roosevelt. Roose- 
velt felt indebted to the editor of Geographical 
J 0H r«a/forhavingpublishedinthatperiodical 



several maps from Brazilian explorations 
which otherwise would have likely remained 
unknown.' 7 

Maps 

The maps commissioned for Statesman 's 
Year -Book were noteworthy on two counts. 
First, they always dealt with a timely topic or 
place. Forexamplc, the Panama Canal schemes 
were included in the 1902 and 1911 editions, 
the division of Bengal in 1905, the strategic 
importance of Singapore in 1938, and the 
Burma RoaJ in 1939. The number of maps 
included in the annual volumes ranged from 
four to ten until 1919, after which it stabilized 
almost without exception at two. 

Secondly, the maps were always beauti- 
fully and accurately executed by John George 
Bartholomew and his successors. John George 
Bartholomew ( 1 860-1920) was the fourth gen- 
eration of Bartholomews engaged in map- 
making, Following his education at the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, he began working with 
his father in their family firm. He took over the 
business at the age of 28 and named it "The 
Edinburgh Geographical Institute. 1 ' 28 The 
Bartholomew firm continued to produce the 
maps incorporated in Statesman \s Year-Book 
until the 1 984-85 edition at which time maps 
were discontinued. 

Changes in Organization and 
Contents 

Scott- Keltic's interest in geography helps 
explain another major expansion of the Year- 
Bouk, Rather than focus on Europe, as Martin 
had done, Scott-Keltic's tenure as editor saw 
Statesman \ Year-Book include every country 
"that can be regarded as a state, however 
rudimentary "^ Beginning in 1890, the ar- 
rangement of states changed. The first part of 
the work wan devoted to the British Empire 
and the second to all other countries. In the 
words of the centennial essay in the Year- 
Book, "the mid-Victorian distinction between 
'civilized' and uncivilized nations was shed." 30 



\i 



memm 



STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK 263 



Rather than being arranged by continent, as 
had been done previously, the non-British 
states were for the first time arranged alpha- 
betically. 

Another feature of Statesman 's Year-Book 
given increased prominence by Scott-Keltie 
was the information on navies. John Leyland 
had reported on naval strength through 1 899. 
With the 1900 edition, a name that would 
become prominent in its own right in refer- 
ence publishing, Fred T. Jane, appeared for 
the first time in Statesman 's Year-Book. 

John Frederick Thomas Jane 31 sketched 
the naval bombardment of Alexandria at the 
age of seventeen, reportedly placing his broth- 
ers and sisters to depict the warships. 32 Jane 
"wangledatrip onH.M.S.Northampton s which 
was to take part in British fleet maneuvers" in 
1 899." According to Janis Bolander, this voy- 
age and others on Royal Navy ships "laid the 
foundation for a knowledge of the navies of 
the world that has seldom been equaled." 34 
The first edition of Jane's All the World's 
Fighting Ships was published in November 
1897 (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, & 
Company). Scott-Keltie's characterization of 
Jane as "the well-known naval authority" in 
his Statesman 's Year-Book preface in 1900 
was certainly justified. Jane presented de- 
tailed statistics on the number and types of 
ships possessed and under construction by the 
world's naval powers. The detail of informa- 
tion presented by Jane is suggested by one of 
the charts he prepared for the 1913 edition: 
"Graphic Diagrams to Illustrate the Varying 
Ratio between Weight of Heaviest Gun, its 
Penetrative Power, and the Protection Af- 
forded to Ships during the Last Fifty Years." 

Coverage of the United States 

The coverage of the United States in 
Statesman 's Year-Bookv/as altered consider- 
ably under Scott-Keltie. The Macmillan Com- 
pany opened an office in New York City in 
1896. Two years later, Frederick Macmillan 
suggested to Scott-Keltie that additional space 



and attention be devoted to the United States. 35 
The first step in expanded coverage was the 
issuance of an American edition of the Year- 
Booh Instead of the roughly 40-page article 
on the United States that had customarily 
appeared, the 1899 American edition included 
approximately 300 pages on the U.S. in a 
section that preceded the regular Year-Book 
text. 

A second major expansion of the Ameri- 
can section occurred in 1906, when each of the 
then 46 states was given individual treatment. 
Scott-Keltie explained: 

In compliance with influential suggestions 
from America, separate notices have been 
introduced of the States comprised in the 
American Union, on the same lines, as far as 
practicable, as the section dealing with the 
United States as a whole. In view of the fact 
that these States are, in the main, quite as 
important as the separate States of the German 
Confederation, this step will be regarded as 
justifiable. 36 

The influential suggestions came in the form 
of "a friendly hint" by the occupant of the 
White House, Theodore Roosevelt. 37 Begin- 
ning in 1906, the United States was given its 
own numbered section in the Year-Book, Part 
I in the American edition and Part II in the 
British version. 

While Scott-Keltie nominally remained 
editor of Statesman 's Year-Bookmti\ his death 
in 1927, Mortimer Epstein becamejoint editor 
in 1919. Epstein formally became editor in 
1927. This promotion was long overdue, for, 
"from that time [i.e., 1919] onward [Scott- 
Keltie] merely lent the lustre of his name to the 
title-page, whereas all the actual work fell to 
Epstein." 38 

Mortimer Epstein 

Mortimer Epstein was born in Lithuania 
in 1880 and came to England and settled in 
Manchester in about 1885. Epstein received 
his B.A. and M.A. degrees in history and 
economics at Owen's College in the Univer- 
sity of Manchester. He received his Ph.D. 



264 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



from Heidelberg in 1908. 39 Epstein was by all 
accounts a hard worker, a necessary trait for 
anyone in charge of Statesman's Year-Book 
beginning in 1 919 and of the Annual Register 
beginning in 1921. Besides being vigorous, 
Epstein was an organized person. One of his 
lasting legacies toStatesman 's Year-Bookvf&s 
his development of a regular team of editorial 
assistants who remained loyal to the publica- 
tion for decades. 40 

The major changes in Statesman's Year- 
Book during Epstein's years as editor mir- 
rored the changes in the world. Increased 
attention was given to transportation, commu- 
nications, and civilian aviation. These changes 
also were in keeping with Epstein's descrip- 
tion of himself "as a great believer in the 
participation of university men inbusiness." 41 

In 1938 as the age of empire drew to a 
close with the approach of the Second World 
War, Epstein changed the section title for 
Great Britain and related countries and pos- 
sessions from "British Empire" to "British 
Commonwealth of Nations." The arrange- 
ment within the section remained very struc- 
tured, however, with the countries in the em- 
pire listed first, followed by the independent 
countries or dominions. 

In the 1946 edition of the Year-Book, 
which would be his last, Epstein included 
information about the newly formed United 
Nations, the International Court of Justice, 
and the International Labour Organization. 
This information was included in an introduc- 
tory table at the beginning of the volume. No 
doubt Epstein did not know how else to handle 
the international organizations since there was 
no precedent for such material. 

For several reasons, 1946 was a water- 
shed year for Statesman's Year-Book, 
Mortimer Epstein, its third editor, died on June 
23, 1946. Furthermore, the official sources 
and contacts upon which the Year-Bookrelkd 
for accurate data had been disrupted by the 
Second World War. Finally, the world was a 
far different place politically after the war 
concluded, and this necessitatedmajor changes 
in the Year-Book 



Sigrid Henry Steinberg 

The fourth editor of Statesman Year-Book, 
Sigrid Henry Steinberg, was a match for the 
task before him. Steinberg was born on Au- 
gust 3, 1899, in Goslar, Germany. He studied 
at the University of Munich and the University 
of Leipzig before receiving his Ph.D. in his- 
tory from the University of London in 1 922. 42 
Steinberg, an exile from Nazi Germany, came 
to England in the mid- 1930s. 43 He was a 
voluminous author whose works included Five 
Hundred Years of Printing, and he also served 
as assistant editor of Chambers 's Encyclope- 
dia from 1946-1950. 44 

In some ways Steinberg' s most important 
task was to secure new sources of accurate 
information for Statesman 's Year-Book since 
such sources had been cut off or altered by the 
war. Steinberg's assistant editor of five years 
and eventual successor, John Paxton, credits 
Steinberg with establishing the necessary 
sources of information: 

[Steinberg] was faced with the task of making 
entirely new arrangements with the host of 
new countries, old countries under new re- 
gimes, and newly created international agen- 
cies His astonishing gift of acquiring the 

friendship as well as the professional services 
of people he never methelped considerably in 
re-establishing the vastnetwork of correspon- 
dents following the war/ s 

The growing importance of international 
organizations led Steinberg to expand their 
coverage and in 1 949 to devote Part I to them, 
an arrangement that continues today. Atten- 
tion was given to the U.N. organs and to the 
specialized agencies. Member nations are 
listed, together with the percent of the 
organization's budget that each has contrib- 
uted. Six otherinternational organizations were 
included in 1949, a figure that would grow 
over time. The British Commonwealth and 
Empire became Part II, the United States Part 
III, and Other Countries Part IV. 

Once again, the arrangement of countries 
was revised by Steinberg in the 1962-63 edi- 
tion. Previously arranged by continent, the 
nations in the Commonwealth were arranged 



STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK 265 



according to the order in which its members 
achieved complete sovereignty. Whilethe edi- 
tor assured readers that this "new arrangement 
adopts clear historic and constitutional prin- 
ciples," 46 one wonders how clear and under- 
standable this arrangement was to users. For- 
tunately, Statesman 's Year-Book has always 
included a table of contents and an index that 
includes countries. The 1960s was a decade in 
which numerous African countries gained 
independence. These changes are well docu- 
mented year-by-year in Statesman's Year- 
Book, 

Steinberg was also responsible for a change 
in the timing of the publication of 'Statesman 's 
Year-Book and the dates appearing on vol- 
umes. Beginning in 1960, the volumes include 
in their title the present and the following year. 
Thus, 1960 becomes 1960-61, 1961 is labeled 
1961-62, and so on. The rationale for this 
change in dating was explainedtothearmual's 
readership in 1964 and that change relates to 
the timing of publication. Statesman 's Year- 
Book was published originally each year in 
January to coincide with the normal opening 
of Parliament. That arrangement continued 
but gave way after decades to a May publica- 
tion date. Reportedly this shift was made in 
order to include current budget information 
from countries whose fiscal year ends at the 
end of March and in June. 47 Steinberg ex- 
plained further that July or August publication 
was still intended to cover 1 2 months , thereby 
justifying the hyphenated dates in the title. 48 

John Paxton 

With Steinberg's death on January 28, 
1969, assistant editor John Paxton was el- 
evated to the position of editor. Paxton was 
born in 1923. He has published widely, often 
with A.E, Walsh and C. Cook. Most of his 
works lie in the fields of political science and 
history, such as European Political Facts (3 
vols., New York: Facts On File, 1975-1986), 
Commonwealth Political Facts (New York: 
Facts On File, 1979), and Companion to the 



French Revolution (New York: Facts On File, 
1988). 

Beyond updating Statesman 's Year-Book 
to reflect the political changes in the world, 
Paxtonmade three notable contributions to the 
publication. The first and most important al- 
teration was the removal of the imperial bias 
of the work. Beginning with the 1978-79 
edition, the Year-Book's organization was sim- 
plified into two sections . The first continued to 
cover international organizations. The second 
listed all of the countries of the world in 
alphabetical order. This arrangement has 
greatly facilitated access to the information 
contained in the work. No longer does one 
have to know whether a certain country for- 
merly had a dependent relationship with Great 
Britain or when such a state realized it inde- 
pendence. The year after the change was 
made, Paxton noted the positive response re- 
ceived from readers to the simplification of 
the arrangement of countries. 49 

Paxton further facilitated use of the work 
by introducing two new indexes and a chro- 
nology. A commodities index was added in 
1976-77, This information had previously 
been included in the main index but the ap- 
pearance of the separate index makes product 
information easier to locate. A personal name 
index was introduced in 1987-88, a com- 
pletely new access point. In addition, a chro- 
nology was added to the introductory section 
of Statesman's Year-Book in 1984-85. This 
feature provides a handy way to track political 
changes that occur during a given year. 

The third recent shift in the Year-Book 
was the changing emphasis onmaps. Paxton's 
early years as editor were marked by an in- 
creased use of topical maps. These had ap- 
peared during John George Bartholomew's 
time but had given way almost entirely to 
political maps. Beginning with the 1969-70 
edition, interesting and informative topical 
maps began appearing again in Statesman 's 
Year-Book, To mention but a few, the 1969- 
70 annual included a wonderful map titled 
"Changes of Sovereignty since 1944." This 



266 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



two-page map contained a wealth of informa- 
tion in easy-to-use format. Another notewor- 
thy map was included in the 1976-77 volume 
titled"WorldNatural Disasters (1960-1 975)," 
This map detailed the sites, causes, and death 
totals of catastrophes. After being placed in- 
side the front and back covers of the annuals 
during the 1 980s, maps were no longer in- 
cluded in the Year-Book beginning with the 
1984-85 volume. 

Paxton also undertook two special projects 
related to Statesman's Year-Booh In 1988, 
Macmillan commemorated the 125th anni- 
versary of Statesman 's Year-Bookby publish- 
ing Statesman 's Year-Book Historical Com- 
panion. This book lists the countries of the 
world included in Statesman 's Year-Book in 
1988 with a one-to-two-page summary of the 
political history of the nation. In addition, 
Paxton wrote an essay for the Historical Com- 
panion about the first 125 years of the work; 
his essay is very useful in highlighting key 
developments in the Year-Book. Paxton also 
edited the Statesman 's Year-Book World Gaz- 
etteer, most recently updated in 1991. 50 This 
work, in the editor's words, "is available for 
those who want more details about towns and 
regions" that are included in the Year-Book. 51 

The Future 

The future of Statesman 's Year-Book 
seems assured. The Macmillan interest in the 
annual is evidenced by the dedication of the 
1987-88 edition to the memory of Harold 



Macmillan. His was the fifth generation of 
Macmillans to take an active interest in the 
Year-Bookaxid "gave helpful advice to four of 
the five editors." 52 

Statesman 's Year-BookviiM undergo two 
types of changes soon. First, the rapid and 
dramatic political changes in Eastern Europe 
and the Soviet Union in the winter of 1 990 
have resulted in almost unbelievable changes 
for the staff of the Year-Bookto incorporate in 
their publication. Those changes and any oth- 
ers, such as the recent election in Nicaragua, 
are included in the 1990-91 edition," That 
such political changes can appear in a bound 
volume so promptly is testimony to the con- 
tinuing value of Statesman 's Year-Book to 
libraries. 

The other change that recently occurred 
with the Year-Bookwas the retirement of John 
Paxton after nearly 30 years of involvement 
with the publication. Paxton stepped down as 
editor in the summer of 1990; Brian Hunter 
then assumed the position of editor. Hunter 
has worked closely with Paxton on the Year- 
Book for years and has worked on the articles 
on Eastern European nations. 

Statesman 's Year-Book is truly a work 
based on continuity that reports on a changing 
world. While the Year-Book personnel and 
contents will change, the goal of providing a 
full account of all the the states of the world 
has been reaffirmed over the years and will 
remain the guiding principle of this landmark 
reference work. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Statesman 's Year-Book. London: Macmillan, 
1864- . Annual. Through 1959, date on volume 
was the same as the year of publication. Begin- 
ning with 1 960 and continuing to the present, 



dating has been the year of publication and 
following year (edition published in 1 960 titled 
1960-61, 1961 titled 1961-62, and so on). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The most useful sources for understand- 
ing the hi story and development of Statesman 's 
Year-Book are the volumes of Year-Book it- 
self. In addition, two short articles cover the 



history of the publication: "First Century of 
the Statesman 's Year-Book" written but not 
signed by Sigrid Steinberg, and John Paxton' s 
"The First One Hundred and Twenty Five 



.ii 



STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK 267 



Years of the Statesman's Year-Book" The 
former is particularly useful in describing the 
first three editors and the latter the trends and 
changes in the Year-Book over time. Charles 
Morgan's The House ofMacmillan describes 
the first 100 years of the publishing house and 
Alexander andDaniel Macmillan, fhoughlittle 
is said about the origins or development of 
Statesman 's Year-Book. One of the interest- 
ing aspects of the Year-Bookhthc connection 
to other outstanding reference works. The 
Bolander and Dempsey articles provide use- 
ful information on FredT, Jane. The contribu- 
tions of John George Bartholomew and suc- 
cessors to Statesman 's Year-Bookand to pub- 
lishing in general are described in detail in 
Allen's article. 

Allen, Douglas A. "John George Bartholomew; a 
Centenary." Scottish Geographical Magazine 
76 (September, 1960): 85-88. 

Bell, Barbara. Review of Statesman 's Year-Book. 
American Reference Books Annual 14 (1983): 
30. 

Bolander, Louis H. "Jane's Fighting Ships " United 
States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (Novem- 
ber, 1948): 1384-85. 

Brown, R. N. Rudmose. "John Scott Keltie." Dictio- 
nary of National Biography, 1922-19 BO, Lon- 
don: Oxford University Press, 1937. 

Dempsey, David. "Jane's World." New York Times 
BookReview. Section VII (December 9, 1951): 
8. 

Espinasse, Francis. Literary Recollections and 
Sketches. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1 893. 

"First Century of the Statesman's Year-Book." 
Statesman 's Year-Book, 1963-64. New York: 
St. Martin's, 1963, v-xi. 

Goodwin, Gordon. "Frederick Martin." Dictionary 
of National Biography. Vol. 12 reissued ed. 
London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1909. 

Graves, Charles L, ed. Life and Letters of Alexander 
Macmillan. London: Macmillan and Company, 
1910. 

Hughes, Thomas, ed. Memoir of Daniel Macmillan. 
London: Macmillan and Company, 1882. 

Macmillan, George A., ed. The Letters of Alexander 
Macmillan. Glasgow: Privately Published, 1908. 

Martin, Frederick. "Preface," Statesman 's Year-Book, 
1864. London: Macmillan, 1864. 

Mill, HughRobert. "Obituary: Sir John Scott Keltie." 
GeographicalJoumal 69 (March, 1927): 281- 
84. 

Morgan, Charles. The House ofMacmillan (1843- 
1943). London: Macmillan, 1944. 

"Obituary: Sir John Scott Keltie." Geographical 
Journal 69 (February, 1927): 189. 



Paxton, John, ed. "TheFirstOneHuridredandTwenty- 

Five Years of the Statesman 's Year-Book." 

Statesman 's Fear-2?00&Historical Companion. 

London: Macmillan, 1988,vii-x. 
"Preface." Statesman's Year-Book, 1964-65. New 

York: St Martin's, 1964. 
"Preface." Statesman 's Year-Book, 1979-80. New 

York: St. Martin's, 1979. 
"Preface." Statesman 's Year-Book, 1987-88. New 

York: St. Martin's, 1987. 
"Preface." Statesman 's Year-Book, 1989-90. New 

York: St Martin's, 1989. 
Review of Statesman's Year Book. In English His- 
torical Review 20 (July 1905): 617. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book. In Nation 12 

(March 16, 1871): 183. 
Review of Statesman's Year Book. In Nation 14 

(April 25, 1872): 278. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book. In New York 

Times \0(3\a»3 t 1905): 356 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book. In Scottish Re- 

view9 (April, 1887): 432, 
Review of Statesman's Year Book. In Scottish Re- 

view 19 (April, 1892): 480. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book, la Spectator 117 

(August 12, 1916): 192. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book. In Times Literary 

Supplement no. 1064 (June 8, 1922): 381. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book. In Times Literary 

Supplement no. 1584 (June 9, 1932): 428. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book. In Times Literary 

Supplement no. 1898 (June 18, 1938): 421. 
Review of Statesman 's Year Book in Times Literary 

Supplement x\g. 3581 (October 16, 1970): 1202. 
Review of Statesman's Year Book in. Times Literary 

Supplement no. 3626 (August 27, 1971): 1025. 
Statesman's Year-Book World Gazetteer. 4th ed. 

New York: St. Martin's, 1991. 
Scott-Keltie, John. "VxQfoaz? Statesman 's Year-Book, 

1906. New York: Macmillan, 1906, v. 
Seccombe, Thomas. "Daniel Macmillan." Dictio- 
nary of National Biography. Vol 12. reissued 

ed. London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1909. 
"Sigrid Henry Steinberg." Contemporary Authors 

Permanent Series, vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1975, 

599. 
Steinberg, Sigrid Henry, ed. "Preface." Statesman 's 

Year-Book, 1962-63. New York: St. Martin's, 

1962. 
Thomas, Wade. Review of Statesman's Year-Book. 

American Reference Books Annual 20 (1989): 

89. 
Wilson, David A. Carlyle to Threescore-and-Ten 

(1853-1865). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 

Trubner&Co., 1929. 
Wilson, David A., and David W. MacArthur. Carlyle 

in Old Age (1865-1881). New York: E. P. 

Dutton, 1934. 
Wynar,Lubomyr, Review of Statesman 's Year-Book. 

American Reference Books Annual 11 (1980): 

44. 



268 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



NOTES 



1 Inthe mid-1980s the size increased slightly to 5 'A" x 8". 
1 BarbaraBell, review of Slatesman 's Year-Book, Ameri- 
can Reference Books Annual 14(1983): 30. 

3 John Paxton, "Preface," Statesman's Year-Book His- 

torical Companion (New York: St. Martin's, 1988): 
xi. 

4 Review of Statesman's Year-Book, New York Times, 3 

June 1905, sec, 2, p. 356. For other reviews, see: 
Scottish Review 9 (April 1887): 432; Scottish Re- 
view 19 (April 1892): 480; English Historical Re- 
view 20 (July 1905): 617; Times Literary Supple- 
ment no. 1064 (8 June 1922): 381; Spectator 117 
(12August 191S): 192; Times Literary Supplement 
no. 1584(9 June 1932); 428; limes Literary Supple- 
ment no. 1898 (18 June 1938): 421; Times Literary 
Supplement no. 3581 (16 October 1970): 1202; 
Times Literary Supplement no. 3626 (27 August 
1971): 1025. 
1 Frederick Martin, "Preface," Statesman's Y ear-Book, 
1864 (London: Macraillan, 1864): v. 

6 John Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty- five 

Years of the Statesman's Y ear-Book," Statesman 's 
Year-Book Historical Companion (London: 
Macmillan, 1988), vii. 

7 Gordon Goodwin, "Frederick Martin," Dictionary of 

National Biography, vol. 12, reissued ed. (London: 
Smith, Elder, 1909), 1160. 

8 David Alec Wilson, Carlyle to Threescore-and-Ten 

(1853-1865) (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 
Trubner, 1929), 249. See also Francis Espinasse, 
Literary Recollections and Sketches (London: 
Hodder and Stoughton, 1893), 260-63. 

* John Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty-Five 
Years," vii. 

10 Ibid., viii. 

'•Martin, "Preface," v. 

12 Reviews of Statesman 's Year-Book in Nation 12 (16 

March 1871): 183; and in Nation 14 (25 April 
1872): 278. 

13 Martin, "Preface," vii. 

14 Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty-Five 

Years/' viii. 
ls Martin, "Preface," vii. 

16 Ibid. 

17 Ibid. 

18 Sigrid Henry Steinberg, "First Century of the 

Statesman's Year-Book," Statesman's Year-Book, 
1963-64 (New York: St. Martin's, 1963), x. 

19 Ibid., vi. 

20 Ibid. 

23 Even though John Scott-Keltie 's name is almost always 
listed under "Keltie" in standard reference sources 
such as the DNB and in his obituaries in the Geo- 
graphical Journal, we are told that he always used 
the hyphen. In that spirit, his name is consistently 
hyphenated in this essay. 

21 Steinberg, "First Century of the Statesman's Year- 

Book," vii. 



23 R. N. Rudmose Brown, "JohnScott Keltie," Dictionary 
of National Biography, 1922-1930 (London; Ox- 
ford University Press, 1937), 463-64. 

"Hugh Robert Mill, "Obituary: Sir John Scott Keltie," 
Geographical Journal 69 (March 1927): 282-83. 

""Obituary: Sir John Scott Keltie," Geographical Jour- 
nal 69 (February 1927); 189. 

26 Ibid. 

27 EltingE. Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 
vol. 8 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 
904. 

"Douglas A. Allan, "John George Bartholomew," Scot- 
tish Geographical Magazine 16 (September I960): 
85. 

" Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty-Five 
Years," ix. 

30 Steinberg, "First Century of the Statesman's Year- 

Book," ix. 

31 Louis H. Bolander, "Janes' Fighting Ships," United 

States Naval Institute Proceedings 74 (November 
1948): 1384. 
12 David Dempsey, "Jane's World," New York Times 
Book Review, 9 December 1951, sec, 7, p. 8. 

33 Ibid. 

34 Ibid., and Bolander, "Janes' Fighting Ships," 1384. 

35 Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty-Five 

Years," ix. 

36 John Scott-Keltie, "Preface," Statesman 's Year-Book 

1906 (New York: Macmillan, 1906), v. 

37 Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty-Five 

Years," ix. 

38 Steinberg, "First Century of the Statesman's Year- 

Book," viii. 
3(, 3bid. 
40 Ibid. 
■"Ibid. 

42 Contemporary Authors, Permanent Series, vol. 1 (De- 

troit: Gale Research, 1975), 599. 

43 Ibid. See also Paxton, "The First One Hundred and 

Twenty-Five Years," ix. 
M Contemporary Authors, 599. 
45 Paxton, "The First One Hundred and Twenty-Five 

Years," ix-x. 
4<s S. Henry Steinberg, "Preface," Statesman 's Year-Book, 

1962-63 (New York: St. Martin's, 1962). 

47 S. Henry Steinberg, "Preface," Statesman 's Year-Book, 

1964-65 (New York: St. Martin's, 1964). 

48 Ibid. 

49 JohnPaxton, "Preface," Statesman 's Year-Book, 1979- 

80 (New York: St. Martin's, 1 979). 
50 JohnPaxton,.S7a/£w»tfH 's Year-Book World Gazetteer, 

4th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1991). 
J! John Paxton, "Preface," Statesman 's Year-Book, 1989- 

90 (New York: St. Martin's, 1989). 

52 John Paxton, "Preface," Statesman s Year-Book, 1987- 

88 (New York: St. Martin's, 1987). 

53 GarrettKiely, Marketing ManagerforReferenceBooks 

at St. Martin's Press, conversations with the author, 
6 March 1990, 



Permanently Definitive: Strong's 
Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible 



Edward D. Starkey 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

James Strong's The Exhaustive Concordance 
of the Bible, first published in L894, is a 
reference key to another book, the Bible, in the 
English-language translation first published 
in 1 6 1 1 and known in Great Britain, and much 
of the world as the Authorized Version and in 
North America as the King James Version. In 
order to understand the significance of Strong's 
work, it is necessary to have some feel for the 
importance of the King James Version. 

The King James Version of the 
Bible 

At the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, English Puritans found every current 
Bible translation supported at leas t s ome theo - 
logical positions they could not agree with. 
King James I found the notes in some transla- 
tions seditious. 1 Accordingly, in 1604 the king 
set forth a plan whereby 54 scholars from 
Cambridge and Oxford Universities as well as 
Westminster Cathedral would engage in a 
new translation. The translation was com- 
pleted and printed in 161 1. Called in common 
parlance "the Authorized Version," it was in 
fact never authorized by royal decree for sole 
use in churches. For the next few decades it 
was fiercely criticized from some quarters and 
saw competition in sales from earlier English 
translations. Eventually, however, this "au- 
thorized" version "acquired a sanctity prop- 
erly ascribable only to the urrmediated voice 



of God; to multitudes of English-speaking 
Christians it has seemed little less than blas- 
phemy to tamper with the words of the King 
James Version." 2 Attempts to document its 
influence on the development of English lit- 
erature and the language have been frequent, 
but in truth its influence is beyond calculation. 
One need only read the speeches of Abraham 
Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr., to note its 
influence on American discourse. Indeed the 
translation acquired a cultural power far be- 
yond anything its originators would recog- 
nize. 3 

So widely read a document as the Bible 
calls for support literature in every 1 anguage in 
which it is read. In the Middle Ages, the device 
known as the concordance came into being. 
"Concordance'Ms made up of two Latin words, 
cum, "with," and cor, "heart," and carries the 
sense of agreement or harmony. It originally 
was used in the plural, concordantiae, mean- 
ing passages which are in agreement with one 
another. 4 These passages were understood to 
form a unified system of truth. For modern 
usage, the Oxford English Dictionary defines 
a concordance as "an alphabetical arrange- 
ment of the principal words contained in a 
book, with citations of the passages in which 
they occur." The making of concordances 
cries out for the use of computer technology, 
but the lack of it did not daunt nineteenth- 
century scholars frornproducingunsurpassable 
concordances of the English Bible and of the 
original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. 



270 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Early Concordances 

The earliest known concordance* to the 
Latin Vulgate Bible, was compiled by a team 
of French Dominican scholars under the di- 
rection of Hugh of Saint-Cher and was pub- 
lished in 1240. The first concordance to the 
Hebrew scriptures was compiled by Rabbi 
Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus in the mid- 
fifteenth century and printed in Venice in 
1 5 23 . s It became the source upon which later, 
fuller Hebrew concordances were based. In 
1602 Conrad Kircher published a concor- 
dance to the Greek Septuagint, the Greek text 
of the Hebrew Scriptures published in Alex- 
andria in the third century bc. In 1546 Basel 
saw the publication of the first Greek concor- 
dance to the New Testament. From the six- 
teenth through the twentieth centuries these 
concordances of the Scriptures in their origi- 
nal languages were improved upon as more 
definitive texts of the Bible were themselves 
published. 

The earliest concordances were by no 
means as useful as we have come to expect 
from a reference tool. They were neither com- 
prehensive nor exhaustive. Lacking a defini- 
tive scholarly text of the Bible, the compilers 
could refer to a word that was available in one 
text but not in another. Moreover references 
could only be made to books of the Bible or to 
some idiosyncratic referencing system, not to 
the individual verses. In the thirteenth century 
Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
divided the Bible into the chapters we use 
today, although other chapter divisions had 
been proffered and continued in use for some 
time. Only in 1551 did the present day verse 
numbering system come into being when 
Robert Stephanus published his Greek Bible 
in Geneva. This numbering system came to be 
accepted in most later Protestant, Catholic, 
and Jewish translations and imprints and thus 
could be relied on as a standard reference 
system. 

In 1535 Thomas Gibson, or Gybson, pro- 
duced the first concordance to the English 
New Testament The Concordance of the New 



Testamant, most necessary to be had in ye 
handes of all soche as [delyte] in the 
comunycacion of any place contayned in ye 
New Testament (London: Thomas Gybson, 
1535). John Marbeck published a concor- 
dance to the complete English Bible in 1 550 as 
A Concordance, thatis to sale, a workewherein 
by the order of the letters oftheA.B. C. ye male 
redely finde any word conteigned in the whole 
Bible, so often as it is there expressed or 
mencioned . . . (London: Richardus Grafton, 
1550). Both Gybson and Marbeck based their 
concordances on early English translations of 
theBible. One Clement Cotton began work on 
a concordance to the Authorized Version, and 
this was taken up and completed by Samuel 
Newman, who published A Large and Com- 
plete Concordance to the Bible in English, 
according to the latest translation. First col- 
lected by Clement Cotton, and now much 
enlarged and amended for the good both of 
schollers and others; far exceeding the most 
perfect that ever was extant in our language, 
both in ground-work and building, by Samuel 
Newman, apoor labourer in theLord 'svinyard 
. . . (London: T. Downes and J. Young, 1643) 
just over 30 years after the initial publication 
of the Authorized Version, 

Cruden's Concordance 

Nearly a century later this was supplanted 
in accuracy and comprehensiveness by 
Alexander Cruden's A Complete concor- 
dance to the Old and New Testament: or, a 
dictionary and alphabetical index to the Bible 
(London: Warne, 1737). Cruden, whose life, 
sadly, was punctuated by periods of madness, 
chose what he considered the most important 
words in the Bible and recorded many, but not 
all, instances of their use sequentially through 
the Old and New Testaments in the Autho- 
rized Version. A single line of context is given 
for each use as well as the name of the book 
quoted and chapter and verse . Although Cruden 
remains to this day a popular concordance — 
it was reprinted through the 1950s — it has 



STRONG'S EXHAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF THE BIBLE 271 



majorshortcomings: itisnotanaiytical; itdoes 
not include all the words in the Bible; it does 
not include all the references to even the 
important words; and it lacks most proper 
names of persons and places. 

An analytical concordance leads the re- 
searcher back to the Hebrew and Greek origi- 
nal words, and a complete, or exhaustive, 
concordance contains all words and names 
used in the Bible and records all references to 
them. While Cruden singled out what he felt 
were the most important words, neither he nor 
his subsequent publishers have listed those he 
excluded. 

In essence, in producing the first concor- 
dance to the Authorized Version which 
achieved wide use, Cruden posed the prob- 
lem. A biblical concordance has many uses: 
the theologian must find every application of 
a term to understand its doctrinal impact, the 
preacher looks for examples in preparing a 
sermon and has to have all the examples 
available, and the serious reader searches for 
full understanding of the whole text. Cruden' s 
concordance could not advance scholarship 
and could only fill the needs of the preacher 
and reader in a casual manner. The answer to 
more serious needs would be met by two 
concordances published in the late nineteenth 
century. 

Robert Young 

In 1 879, Robert Young of Edinburgh pub- 
lished his Analytical concordance to the Bible, 
containing every word in alphabetical order, 
arranged under its Hebrew or Greek original, 
With the literal meaning of each, exhibiting 
about 31 1,000 references. With the latest in- 
formation on Biblical geography and antiqui- 
ties (Edinburgh: G. A. Young, and Co., 1879) 
in which he alphabetically listed all but the 
most common words of the Authorized Ver- 
sion and under each gave in succession the 
various Hebrew or Greek words which the 
English word is used to translate. Then under 
each Hebrew or Greek word he listed the 
book, chapter, and verse of the reference as 



well as a single line of context. Thus under 
"morning" Young listed eight Hebrew and 
four Greek words each with references to their 
proper uses. 

This arrangement has the virtues of lead- 
ing the researcher back at once to the exact 
Hebrew or Greek word used in the original 
text, giving a definition of this original word, 
and offering references to all the instances of 
it. Young included all proper names of persons 
and places and attempted to define and date 
them. At the end of the concordance he added 
a Hebrew lexicon to the Old Testament, a 
Greek lexicon to the New, and a relisting of 
proper names from the Old Testament with the 
exact form of the original Hebrew. The lexi- 
cons are arranged by the transliterated Roman 
alphabet. Young's was a strong entry in the 
field of concordances and remains in print to 
this day; in 1982 Thomas Nelson Publishers 
brought it out under the title Analytical Con- 
cordance to the Bible . . . Newly revised and 
corrected (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson). 

Young solved a basic problem of an "ana- 
lytical" concordance, accounting for the fact 
that a single English word can be the transla- 
tion of many Hebrew or Greek words, by 
lining up each Hebrew and Greek word under 
the English word which translates it. But this 
arrangement itself creates another difficulty 
which biblical scholar Donald Guthrie identi- 
fies in his introduction to the 1982 Thomas 
Nelson edition. The Bible reader who turns to 
a concordance is often trying to fmd a full 
reference by means of a certain keyword he or 
she has remembered. If many Hebrew and 
Greek words have been translated by that 
English keyword, the researcher must look 
through just so many lists under the keyword. 
In searching what may indeed be a multitude 
of lists, the verse becomes elusive. In short, 
Young's concordance, while being thorough 
and scholarly, is cumbersome. Moreover, 
Young did not include every English word 
used in the Authorized Version; words of 
great frequency, such as articles and common 
conjunctions, were excluded but not listed in 
prefatory matter, a serious drawback. 



■3JJU-. 



272 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Strong's Approach 

James Strong took a different approach 
with his Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. 
He first listed every word used in the Autho- 
rized Version except 47 of the most common: 
a, an, and, are, as, etc. 6 He included proper 
names. Following each entry he gave a single 
listing of all uses of the English word, ar- 
ranged in the order of the books of the Autho- 
rized Version, and by chapter and verse within 
each book. As did Cruden and Young, Strong 
offered a single line of context, usually not a 
complete thought. Strong solved Guthrie's 
problem, mentioned above, by providing this 
unified list of all references to the English 
word. Thus the word "morning" in Strong is 
followed by a list of all its Old Testament uses, 
beginning in Genesis and ending inZephaniah, 
and this is followed by New Testament uses, 
beginning in the Gospel of Matthew and end- 
ing in Revelation. 

However, it remains that the English word 
may in fact be the translation of more than one 
Greek or Hebrew word. Strong led the reader 
back to the original word via reference to two 
lexicons he included at the end of the concor- 
dance: Hebrew and Greek. He listed each 
Hebrew word according to the Hebrew alpha- 
bet and gave each a reference number. (By this 
we know that there are 8 ,674 Hebrew words in 
the Old Testament.) A transliteration of the 
word into the Roman alphabet, a phonetic 
spelling, and a brief definition follow. Strong 
did the same for the Greek vocabulary of the 
New Testament (with 5,624 Greek words). In 
the main concordance, at the end of each line 
of context Strong added the reference number 
of the original Hebrew or Greek word to 
which the reader can turn for definition. If the 
reference number is in Roman type, the word 
is to be found in the Hebrew lexicon; if in 
italics^ntheGreeklexicon.Tovisitthe "morn- 
ing" example once again, where Young had 
eight lists for Hebrew words and four for 
Greek, Strong has a unified list with nine 
reference numbers for Hebrew words (he has 
split two Hebrew forms into separate words) 



and four reference numbers for Greek words. 
With entrepreneurial instinct he separately 
paginated his Hebrew and Greek lexicons for 
publication independent of the concordance 
as reference pocketbooks for seminarians and 
students, and they are thus reprinted to this 
day. Strong's reference numbers to the Greek 
and Hebrew words have become standard and 
have been added to succeeding biblical refer- 
ence books. 

Strong further strengthened his work by 
adding an appendix in which he listed the 47 
common words excluded from the main con- 
cordance and including every reference to 
each by biblical book, chapter, and verse. The 
difference in treatment between these com- 
mon words and the words in the main concor- 
dance is that Strong did not add a line of 
context, since doing so would have expanded 
the workout of reasonableproportion, in some 
cases almost repeating the entire Bible under 
a word. The fact remains, however, that this is 
the first truly exhaustive concordance, and the 
scholar who wishes can trace each single use 
of "and" and "the" in the Authorized Version. 

A second appendix of some 262 pages is 
a comparative concordance, showing where 
the changes of the new late nineteenth-cen- 
tury translation known as the Revised Version 
differ from the Authorized Version. This was 
of benefit only during the useful life of the 
Revised Version and was dropped from mid- 
twentieth century reprints of the concordance 
when other English translations had gained in 
popularity. 

The Career of James Strong 

James Strong's career as abiblical scholar 
coincided with a quickening of biblical schol- 
arship spurred by advancements in textual 
studies and archaeology in the century pre- 
ceding publication of his concordance. 7 

Strong was born in New York City in 
1822 and died in Round Lake, New York, in 
August 1894, four months after his concor- 
dance was published. Although raised an Epis- 



STRONG'S EXHAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF THE BIBLE 273 



copalian, he underwent a conversion to 
Methodism, and graduated from Wesleyan 
University in Connecticut in 1 844. He studied 
and taught biblical languages throughout his 
life, his most important appointment being at 
Drew Theological Seminary in New Jersey 
between 1868 and 1893. Conversant in the 
French and German as well as the English 
literature of biblical science, he served on the 
committee which updated the Old Testament 
translation for the Revised Version (supplanted 
in the mid-twentieth century by the Revised 
Standard Version and more recently by the 
New Revised Standard Version). A member 
of the American branch of the Palestine Ex- 
ploration Society, he went on an expedition to 
Palestine and Egypt in 1874, and he chaired 
the Archaeological Council of the Oriental 
Society. 

In his quarter century of teaching atDrew, 
Strong gave evidence of great learning, cre- 
ative scholarship, and immense drive. Schol- 
ars of his kind defined the path for biblical 
specialists in the twentieth century: accom- 
plishment in all biblical as well as several 
modern languages, study in Palestine at the 
sources, concern with biblical texts and their 
translation to modern languages, and persis- 
tent application to tasks. Strong's exactitude 
as a scholar was coupled with a conservative 
bent. He maintained that the prophet Isaiah 
was the sole author of the book that bears his 
name, that Moses wrote the first five books of 
the Hebrew Scriptures, and that the creation 
took place as the book of Genesis records it — 
all positions attacked by liberal nineteenth- 
century scholars. Strong remained a critical 
scholar, however, and stated that his positions 
were based on his research and not on the blind 
acceptance of authority. 8 

Although he wrote widely on biblical 
matters and published some 30 books in his 
lifetime, Strong's monumental contribution, 
in nineteenth-century eyes, was the ten-vol- 
ume Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, 
and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York: 
Harper and Brother, 1 867-188 1), begun with 



John McClintock in 1867 and completed in 
1881. McClintock died after the third volume 
was published, and Strong took over the 
editorship. He added two supplementary vol- 
umes in 1885-1886. This lengthy work was 
the first compilation in English of the great 
amount of information in biblical studies that 
had been collected in the preceding decades. 
Lengthy bibliographies follow each alphabet- 
ized entry, but the work lacks an index. Al- 
though the information in this encyclopedia is 
now dated and has been much augmented and 
corrected by the labors of another prolific 
century, the work was reprinted as recently as 
1981. 9 

Although in the nineteenth century 
Strong's encyclopedia was considered his most 
important work, his concordance marks his 
fame in the twentieth. "This is James Strong' s 
monument. It tells of his inventive faculty, his 
organizing mind, his boundless energy, and 
his capacity for unremitting toil." 10 Unfortu- 
nately, a lecture Strong gave in Round Lake 
just before his death, "How I Made My Con- 
cordance," appears not to have been pre- 
served. However, there are occasional refer- 
ences which indicate that he organized his 
students, as many as 100 of them, to help him, 
and that the task took 35 years. 11 Once com- 
pleted, accurately and exhaustively, the result 
is definitive, never has to be done again, and 
will be of use as long as the King James 
Version is studied. 

Strong's Legacy 

The reviewing of reference works was 
not a widespread art form in the 1890s; how- 
ever, one reviewer in The Critic, a New York 
literary magazine, did make salient comments 
on the new concordance. 12 Cruden, he noted, 
"occupied the whole field" until the appear- 
ance of Young's concordance in 1880. 
Cruden's weakness was in being incomplete; 
Young fully replaced him but included Greek 
and Hebrew words in their original alphabets 
in the text itself, thus putting off those who did 




274 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



fel 



not know these languages. Strong, the critic 
noted, "contrived the same end [complete- 
ness] in his book by another method, that will 
not perplex those who have no special knowl- 
edge of the sacred tongues, and do not wish to 
be hindered by the presence of characters in a 
language they cannot understand." Here he is 
referring to Strong's reference number sys- 
tem and his Hebrew and Greek lexicons. The 
appendix of the 47 common words "is an 
evidence of enormous labor, andwill not often 
be used." The writer offered the useful com- 
parative note that while Cruden quoted the 
word "King, etc." 665 times, "Strong has 
2,813 references to the same group." He fin- 
ishes by praising the concordance's "excep- 
tional accuracy" but noting that "its great size 
. . . will probably prevent its coming into 
universal use." 

This anonymous critic need only be faulted 
for his final words because Strong's concor- 
dance has indeed been widely published in the 
twentieth century. Copyrighted in 1 890, it was 
first released in New York and Cincinnati in 
April 1894. Hodder & Stoughton brought it 
out in London the same year. The Methodist 
Book Concern held the rights to the concor- 
dance and reprinted it several times during the 
first four decades of the twentieth century. In 
1938 following a merger of two Methodist 
Churches, Abingdon-Cokesbury became the 
imprint, to be followed simply by Abingdon 
Press. Sales of the concordance increased 
during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with a 
surge in Bible reading; a 1977 Abingdon edi- 
tion is the thirty-sixth reprint with 50,000 
copies brought off the press at that time and 
35,000 sold annually throughout the 1980s, 13 
At the beginning of the 1980s Abingdon reset 
the type and in 1986 produced a "red letter" 
edition, wherein quotations of the words spo- 
ken by Jesus in the New Testament are printed 
in red letters. The rights to print this edition 
were then sold to World Bible Publishers 
which has subsequently brought it out un- 
changed under its imprint. 

A second event occurred which greatly 
influenced the distribution of Strong's con- 
cordance was the lapsing of the copyright in 



1946. The concordance came into the public 
domain. 14 This was the occasion for a host of 
reprints, often from photographs of the early 
text, some of passable, some of lesser quality. 
Thus the concordance has appeared under the 
imprints of 1 6 publishers in the United States, 
with another version printed in England. So 
popular did this concordance become by mid- 
century and so important was it to its publish- 
ers to distinguish it from its competitors that its 
cover title changed on most editions from the 
original The Exhaustive Concordance ... to 
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. . . .Many 
of these imprints were sold with descriptions 
such as "compact edition," "student version," 
"popular edition," or "abridged." A compari- 
son of the page numbers indicates that it is 
usually the comparative concordance to the 
Revised Version and sometimes the appendix 
to the 47 common words which are left out 
rather than a reworking of the main text to lead 
the user to fewer references. 

It is the continuing popularity of the Au- 
thorized Version of the Bible among Protes- 
tant conservatives that keeps the market alive 
for reference works based on this version. 
Reader's Digest reworked the actual text of 
Strong to produce its Reader 's Digest Family 
Guide to the Bible: A Concordance and Refer- 
ence Companion to the King James Version^ 
edited by John C.L. Gibson and Ian A. Moir 
(Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1984). 
Here the editors limited entries to 7,000 key- 
words followed by 100,000 context lines and 
included essays on various aspects of the 
Bible as well as reproductions of master paint- 
ings. 

The most important edition outside the 
Methodist Book Concern-Abingdon- World 
Bible track has been The New Strong's Ex- 
haustive Concordance of the Bible put out by 
Thomas Nelson Publishers in 1984. This pub- 
lisher reset the type by computer and rear- 
ranged the design of Strong's lines: scripture 
references (book, chapter, and verse) are 
placed in a uniform manner (left justified) 
after the context line and before the reference 
number to the Hebrew or Greek lexicon. Strong 
originally had the scripture reference first 



STRONG'S EXHAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF THE BIBLE 275 



followed by the context line and, lastly, the 
lexicon reference number, with the context 
line often intruding into the column of lexicon 
reference numbers. Thomas Nelson also has 
inserted variant spellings of biblical names 
from twentieth-century translations so that the 
reader of the Revised Standard Version or the 
New International Version can find a biblical 
name in the concordance according to the 
spelling from the newer version and then be 
cross- referred to the entry as it is spelled in the 
Authorized Version. Strong can in this man- 
ner be used as a concordance for newer trans- 
lations . Definitions have been added for proper 
names such as "Joseph" for which there is 
more than one person. A "Key Verse Com- 
parison Chart" is a major addition to the Tho- 
mas Nelson edition, which profits the general 
reader more than the scholar; here 1,800 major 
verses, chosen from every book in the Bible, 
are printed in six translations for comparison; 
the King James Version, the New King James 
Version, the New American Standard Bible, 
the New International Version, the Revised 
Standard Version, and Today's English Ver- 
sion. The editors at Thomas Nelson did not 
reset the type for the Hebrew and Greek 
lexicons, but since the originals are clear this 
has not proven problematic. They do claim 
that "no section from the original Strong's has 
been eliminated" (Publisher' s Preface) , which 
is not entirely true since the 262-page "Com- 
parative Concordance of the Authorized and 
Revised Versions" has been dropped as it 
indeed had been for most reprints after the 
1 940s when the Revised Version had fallen 
into disuse and been replaced by the Revised 
Standard Version. 

One of the enduring contributions James 
Strong made in the design of his concordance 
is his numbering system for Hebrew and Greek 
words. The numbering system has proven so 
popular it has been adopted by editors of other 
biblical reference books who can assume that 
a copy of Strong will be handy to mo st readers . 
Notable among these are such recent editions 
of biblical dictionaries as An Expository Dic- 
tionary of Biblical Words. (William Edwin 
Vine, Merrill F. linger, and William White, 



Jr., [Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1985]). IJ 
Thomas Nelson Publishers included Strong's 
reference numbers in their edition of the com- 
peting, as it were, Young's Analytical Concor- 
dance to the Bible. 

Concordances produced for twentieth- 
century translations oftheBiblewouldhaveto 
live up to Strong's standards unless they were 
designed for a less scholarly purpose: they 
would have to be analytical, exhaustive, and 
easily read. Strong's influence can be clearly 
seen in the newest concordance available in 
book format, The NIV Exhaustive Concor- 
dance (Edward W. Goodrick and John R. 
Kohlenberger III, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: 
Zondervan, 1990). Inadditionto the similarity 
in title, the design of this concordance is much 
like that developed by Strong. Each English 
word of the New International Version is 
listed in alphabetical order with all occur- 
rences of it listed by biblical book. With each 
occurrence is chapter, verse, context line, and 
reference number. For this last, the editors 
have departed from Strong and created a new 
reference numbering system since they felt 
that after a century of use Strong' s system was 
no longer adequate to the task. Advances in 
the linguistics of the biblical languages, the 
need to treat Hebrew and Aramaic as separate 
languages (Strong interfiled vocabularies from 
Hebrew and "Chaldee" or Aramaic), and the 
correction of Strong's factual and typographic 
errors necessitated their decision. However, 
so prevalent has Strong's numbering system 
become, Goodrick and Kohlenberger needed 
to append two indexes to their concordance: 
an index of Strong's numbers to theirs and an 
index of their numbers to Strong's. Nor did 
they depart from Strong in using Roman type 
for Hebrew/Aramaic (with the Aramaic al- 
phabet following the Hebrew) and italic type 
for Greek. 

Inapre-computer age, Strong's standards 
for accurate and thorough scholarship, as well 
as his energy and dedication to task, were 
among the highest in the field of biblical 
studies. His contemporaries, somewhat awe- 
struck, criticized him for his appendix which 
records each application of the 47 common 



276 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



words— "sheer intellectual waste" 16 — but 
these were men who could not know the value 
of word-comparison studies for the simple 
reason that in that age, without computers, 
such could not yet be done. All concordances 
are now done with computers, and evert these 



take years to produce. Strong did the most that 
could be done before computers were avail- 
able. His work significantly advanced En- 
glish-language biblical scholarship of the twen- 
tieth century, and it remains permanently de- 
finitive for the Authorized Version. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

As noted in the text, the concordance has 
been frequently reprinted. The original edi- 
tion, noted first below, was reprinted through- 
outthe twentieth century by official Methodist 
publishing houses, known variously as the 
Methodist Book Concern, Abingdon- 
Cokesbury Press, and Abingdon Press. Re- 
editing in the 1980s led to the "red letter" 
edition of 1986, the rights to which Abingdon 
sold to World Bible Publishers. Many publish- 
ers reprinted the earliest version when the 
work came into the public domain. Chief 
among these was Thomas Nelson Publishers, 
which reset the type and added features. 

The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible: Showing 
Every Word of the Text of the Common English 
Version of the Canonical Books, and Every 
Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order; 
Together with a Comparative Concordance of 
the Authorized and Revised Versions, Including 



the American Variations; Also Brief Dictionar- 
ies of the Hebrew and Greek Words of the 
Original, with References to the English Words: 
by James Strong. New York: Hunt & Eaton; 
Cincinnati: Cranston & Curts, 1894. London, 
Hodder& Stoughton, 1894. 

Strong 's Exhaustive Concordance oftheBible: Show- 
ing every word of the text of the King James 
Version of the canonical books of the Bible and 
every occurrence of each word in regular order, 
together with the words of Jesus identified in 
boldface red letter and a key-word comparison 
ofselectedwords andphrases in the King James 
Version with five leading contemporary trans- 
lations: also brief dictionaries of the Hebrew 
and Greek words of the original with references 
to theEnglish words. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 
1986. 

The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the 
Bible with main Concordance, Appendix to the 
Main Concordance, Key Verse Comparison 
Chart, Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible, Dictio- 
nary of the Greek Testament. Nashville: Tho- 
mas Nelson Publishers, 1984. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The Dictionary of American Biography 
offers a brief but perceptive overview of 
Strong's life, based on some of the other 
biographical reminiscences listed. The article 
in The Critic is a contemporary review of the 
concordance. The Cambridge History of the 
Bible, three volumes in all, treats the transmis- 
sion of the biblical text down to our times and 
its translation into modern languages; although 
it is written in essay format, it is so filled with 
factual information on the Bible and is in- 
dexed so well that many libraries have in- 
cluded copies of it in their reference collec- 
tions. 

Buttz, Henry A. "Prefatory Memoir.' 1, In. The Student s 
Commentary: The Book of Psalms, by James 



Strong. New York: Eaton & Mains; Cincinnati: 
Curts & Jennings, 1896. 

Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. "Strong, 
James," 

"Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible." The Critic 
26 (March 9, 1895): 178-79. 

Greenslade, S. L,, ed. The Cambridge History of the 
Bible: The West from the Reformation to the 
Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press, 1963. 

Joy, James Richard, ed. The Teachers of Drew: 
1867-1942. Madison, NJ: Drew University, 
1942. 

MacMullen, Wallace. "A Legacy of Inspiration." In 
Drew Theological Seminary: 1867-1917, ed- 
ited by Ezra Squier Tipple. New York: Method- 
ist Book Concern, 1917. 

Pernon, Walter Newton. The United Methodist Pub- 
lishing House: A History. Vol. II: From 1870 to 
1988. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989. 



STRONG'S EXHAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF THE BIBLE 111 



NOTES 



1 S. L. Greenslade "English Versions of the Bible, 
1525-1611" in The Cambridge History of the 
Bible; The West/font the Reformation to the 
Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press, 1963), 164. 

2 Ibid., 168. 

3 The apotheosis of a Bible text is not limited to the 
King James Version. Erasmus of Rotterdam 
printed the first Greek text of the New Testa- 
ment in 1515, using for his edition what Greek 
manuscripts he could lay his hands on. For one 
small section where he could not locate a Greek 
manuscript, he translated the Latin Vulgate 
back into Greek, producing a version quite 
unlike the original . This edition, with Erasmus' s 
later emendations, came to be known as the 
"Textus Receptus," the Received Text, and was 
used for many translations into the vernacular 
throughout Europe including the King James 
Version. So important was it considered for so 
long a period that when in the nineteenth cen- 
tury scholars produced more accurate texts de- 
rived from very ancient manuscripts, they were 
accused of meddling with the sacred. 

4 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1 1th ed., see "Concor- 
dance." This essay offers the best brief histori- 
cal treatment of the development of concor- 
dances. 

3 Ibid. 

*The entire list of forty-seven: a, an, and, are, as, be, 
but, by, for, from, he, her, him, his, I, in, is , it, 
me, my, not, O, of, our, out, shall, shalt, she, 
that, the, thee, their, them, they, thou, thy, to, 
unto, up, upon, us, was, we, were, with, ye, you. 

7 A good biographical essay is to be found in the 
Dictionary of American Biography (New York: 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), but additional 



facts can be gleaned from The Twentieth Cen- 
tury Biographical Dictionary of Notable Ameri- 
cans (Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904) 
and from Appleton 's Cyclopaedia of American 
Biography, rev. ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 
1900). Interestingly, this last does not even 
mention the concordance among Strong's pub- 
lications. Evaluations of Strong's work by his 
colleagues are found in the reminiscences noted 
in books listed in the bibliography. 
^Dictionary of American Biography, see, "Strong, 
James." 

9 Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesias- 

tical Literature, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book 
House, 1981). 

10 The Teachers of Drew, ed. James Richard Joy 

(Madison, NJ: Drew University, 1942), 80. 

11 "Publisher's Preface" to the New Strong's Exhaus- 

tive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville: Tho- 
mas Nelson, 1984), v. 
n The Critic, 26 (9 March L895): 178-79. 

13 Walter Vernon, h.,The United Methodist Publish- 

ing House; A History, vol. 2 (Nashville, TN: 
Abingdon, 1989), 267. 

14 Though the concordance was first published in 

1894, Strong had copyrighted it, the two lexi- 
cons, and the comparative concordance sepa- 
rately in 1890. The 56 years of copyright protec- 
tion expired in 1946. 

15 This combines the earlier dictionaries of Vine on 

the New Testament and Unger and White on the 
Old. 

1 6 Quoted by but not agreed to by "Wall ace MacMullen 

in Ezra Squier Tipple, ed., Drew Theological 
Seminary; 1867-1917 (New York: Methodist 
Book Concern, 1917), 98. 



The World in One's Hands: Times 
Atlas of the World 



Mary L. Larsgaard 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Atlases hold a firm place in today's libraries 
and homes, and not just by virtue of their heft 
and size — both of which generally exceed that 
of most other volumes — but rather by the solid 
worth of their contents. There are several 
different major kinds of atlases — general ref- 
erence, thematic, national. This essay is con- 
cerned with an exemplar, the general refer- 
ence atlas. 

"Atlas" is a word usually applied to a 
collection of maps, all adhering to some gov- 
erning idea, usually either bound or boxed 
together. In libraries, the most frequently used 
type of atlas is the general reference atlas. The 
general reference atlas of choice must be 
accurate, have as much topographic detail as 
possible, treat place names uniformly, have a 
logical sequence of scale and balanced cover- 
age, have a distinct style, be composed mainly 
of geographical maps (with a minimum of 
thematic maps), be comprehensive within the 
limits of the scales used, and be carefully and 
systematically arranged and equally carefully 
edited. 1 

Today's general reference atlas is usually 
thought to have for its remotest forebear 
Ptolemy's Geographia of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, which with its listing of place names and 
spellings aroused interest in map making. Ac- 
cording to legend, it was accompanied by a 
group of maps, butno physical copies survive. 
Even if these maps existed, they were an 
accompaniment to another book, not an inde- 



pendent publication as a true atlas is. In the 
sixteenth century, Antonio Lafreri's collec- 
tions of maps — constructed to match abuyer' s 
needs, tastes, and funds — were also progeni- 
tors; but the maps making up these volumes 
were not done in a uniform style as maps in 
today's atlases must be. It was Lafreri who 
used a special title page (in about 1570), 
showing Atlas with the world on his shoulders, 
although it would not be until Mercator' s 1 5 94 
atlas that such a publication would be called an 
atlas. 2 

Itisonly with Abraham Ortelius 1 Theatrum 
orbis terrarum of 1570 that a volume recog- 
nizable as a general reference atlas by today's 
definition of the genre appeared. The 
Theatrum— rolling off the press of Christo- 
pher Plantin in Antwerp — was a stupendous 
success, with its 70 maps on 53 sheets; there 
were two additional printings in 1570. It in- 
cluded maps of the world arranged in what 
was called Ptolemaic order, an order suppos- 
edly based on Ptolemy' s system of descriptive 
geography. Since tables of contents were not 
yet standard, this was a handy aide-m&moire 
for educated users. 

Such a succesfou encouraged more of the 
same, and the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies became the first important period of 
commercial map publishing, Before the end of 
the century, Mercator, whose idea the atlas 
originally was, had issued his Atlas sive 
Cosmographicae meditationes de fahrica 
mundi et fabricati figure ("Atlas, or cosmo- 
graphical meditations upon the creation of the 



TIMES A TLAS OF THE WORLD 279 



universe, and the universe as created"). With 
this impetus, the atlas became the dominant 
cartographic form of the seventeenth century. 
Anyone who would like to compare these 
early examples of the atlas with today's ver- 
sion may look at the excellent facsimiles pub- 
lished by Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Publish- 
ing Company, Ltd. 

The German atlases (e.g., those by 
Homann) of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
century had considerable detail, while the 
English atlases (e.g., those by Speed, Ogilvie, 
Senex, Jefferys, Kitchens) were more crowded 
in appearance, but similar to the Dutch atlases: 
accurate (in as far as knowledge of the time 
permitted); well presented; and, often, deco- 
rated. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centu- 
ries, the Dutch hegemony gave way to the 
German. 3 

The Bartholomew Family 

Enter the Bartholomew family. George 
Bartholomew (1784-1871) began as an ap- 
prentice map engraver at the age of 1 3 for the 
engraving and publishing firm of W. & D. 
Lizars; his son John Bartholomew (1805- 
1 861). began an apprenticeship with that firm 
in 1820, at the age of 15. John did excellent 
work and was recognized for it. He estab- 
lished the firm of John Bartholomew in 1826, 
which in 1 860 became John Bartholomew and 
Son, with offices at 4A North Bridge and 
printing works in nearby Carrubber's Close. 
John died in 1861. Another John (1831-1 893) 
was first a trainee and later a partner. In 1870 
the business moved to 1 7 Brown Square and in 
1879 to 31 Chambers Street. Toward the end 
of the 1870s a third Bartholomew introduced 
the use of contour layer coloring to depict 
relief in commercial maps, a very important 
innovation. 

In the next generation, John George 
Bartholomew (1 860-1 920), after education at 
the University of Edinburgh, joined the family 
business shortly after 1879, In 1888 John 
George, at the age of 28, took over the business' s 
management and a year later moved the Firm 



to Park Road and named it the Edinburgh 
Geographical Institute. From 1888 until 1892 
John George had a partnership with Thomas 
Nelson; from 1893 to 1919 a cousin, Andrew 
G. Scott, was hisparrner. In 191 1 the firm was 
movedtoanew building in Duncan Street, and 
in 1919 became John Bartholomew & Son, 
Ltd. 4 Before his father's death in 1920, Cap- 
tain Ian Bartholomew, John George's eldest 
son, became a partner in the firm.* 

By the early 1900s, the firm was doing a 
large number of map-and-atlas jobs for British 
and American publishers; and Bartholomew 
atlases— with titles such as The Handy Atlas 
(1 87 1), The Student 's Atlas (1 875), The Cen- 
tury Atlas and Gazetteer of the World (1890), 
TheHandyReferenceAtlasoftheWorld{mi, 
the ninth edition ofThe Handy Atlas ), and The 
Citizen's Atlas of the World (1912)— were 
omnipresent in. the bookshelves of educated 
persons. 6 It was this solid experience and 
reputation that persuaded The Times to break 
the precedent of having a German publisher 
continue to work on the editions of its atlas. 

The Times Atlas — The Early 
Editions 

The Times first published a world atlas in 
1895 — mainly using German cartographers 
and printers, at the time reputed to be the best 
in the world — and again in 1 900. With its 1 17 
(1895) or 132 (1900) pages of maps (about 
half of which were of Europe), it remained a 
standard work until after World War I, when 
it became clear that substantial political 
changes necessitated a new atlas. Lord 
Northcliffe, proprietor of the Times, negoti- 
ated with John George Bartholomew to pro- 
duce what would be called The Times Survey 
Atlas of the World. This was published in 
loose-leaf format with an index-gazetteer in a 
separate volume between 1920 and 1922. The 
volume drew upon 15 years of geographical 
research and was a standard work for a gen- 
eration. It was soon hailed as the foremost 
British-produced world atlas. Its layer color 
system of relief representation was especially 



280 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



welcomed, and the only negative criticisms 
concerned the omission of railway lines in 
Asia, transliteration of Russian names, and the 
lack of dates on maps. Important features were 
the inclusion of thematic maps and the ex- 
tremely limited use of textual material with the 
emphasisoverwhelminglyplacedonthemaps. 
Its 259-page index had over 130,000 place 
names and included map grid and latitude and 
longitude references. 7 This atlas was appar- 
ently also published in one volume under the 
same title by Macmillan in New York. 

The Mid-Century Edition 

The end of the Second World War again 
required a new atlas, so the third one was 
planned. This effort resulted in the massive 
and supremely important five-volume Mid- 
Century Edition, very thoroughly revised from 
the 1 920-1 922 edition. The five volumes (each 
with its own index-gazetteer bound in) were: 
vol.1, World, Australasia andEastAsia(1958); 
vol. 2, Southwest Asia andRussia (1959); vol. 
3, Northern Europe (1955); vol. 4, Southern 
Europe and Africa (1956); vol. 5 , The Ameri- 
cas (1957). The volumes were numbered in 
accordance with approximate order of longi- 
tude from the International Date Line west- 
ward. 

The atlas makes good use of more than 20 
types of projections; for the seven introduc- 
tory world plates, eight different projections 
are used, ranging from the Mercator projec- 
tion (first employed at Duisburg in 1569) on 
Plate 6, "World Surface Routes," to the 
Bartholomew "Lotus" projection (in its first 
appearance) on Plate 2 ("World Oceanogra- 
phy"). Each map shows latitude and longitude 
as well as key letters and numbers. Scale is 
given on the back and at the foot of each plate, 
with a bar scale (showing distance in statute 
miles and in kilometers) also at the foot; scale 
ranges from 1:250,000,000 used for four of 
the five maps of Plate 2 ("World Oceanogra- 
phy") to 1:21 ,000 for an inset map of Rome on 
Plate 80 ("Italy, Central"). In the main, scale 



for large countries ranges from 1 : 1 ,000,000 to 
1:5,000,000. Elevation is shown by layer 
(color) tints and by spot heights, the latter 
especially for such areas as mountains; color 
tints and spot depths are used for oceans. 

Other symbols are shown at the foot of 
each plate, and include roads, railways, ca- 
nals, oil pipe lines, airports, deserts* swamps, 
glaciers, and ice caps. Boundaries are drawn 
as they stood at the time of going to press, with 
disputed international boundary lines indi- 
cated; different types of boundaries (e.g., in- 
ternational, states) are clearly differentiated. 
Where practicable, the population of a town or 
city is indicated on the maps by virtue of 
various type sizes; no population figures are 
given except for the ones in the section on 
states, territories, and principal islands in the 
first volume. 

Meant to serve as an atlas of international 
coverage for use in office, home, and library, 
the Mid-Century Edition accomplishes this 
purpose through several approaches, butprin- 
cipally through cartographic images. Textual 
material is extremely limited, pleasing atlas 
purists. Volume 3, actually the firstpublished, 
carries an introduction to the entire atlas in its 
preface (statement of purpose, sequence of 
volumes, etc.); the preface of volume 1 offers 
a brief history of atlas making; and the other 
volumes' prefaces contain suitably brief in- 
formation to enable the user to deal with the 
maps in those volumes. Volume 1 also con- 
tains an illustrated article, "Progress of World 
Mapping," by Major-General R. LI. Brown, 
formerly director general of the British Ord- 
nance Survey, and an alphabetical list of states, 
territories, and principal islands of the world. 
This serves as a finding list for all volumes, 
with information including political status, 
location, area, population, and volume and 
plate number. 

The 1 20 double-page plates — 24 plates to 
a volume — are numbered consecutively 
throughout the set, including two frontispiece 
maps (volume 1 with a 1957 geographical 
disposition of world power blocs, and volume 




m 



TIMES ATLAS OF THE WORLD 281 



5 with a map showing the Americas). The 
contents page of each volume indicates the 
title and scale for each map plate and for each 
inset map; this is followed by a list of "Ac- 
knowledgments," including names of persons 
and institutions. 

Each plate of this monumental edition 
measures 24" by \9 l A"\ on the back of each 
plate are plate number, title of map, projec- 
tion, standard parallel, scale, and outline map. 
The outside of plates depicting the USSR 
(Plates 3 8 through 47) also carry a glossary of 
Russian geographical terms and abbreviations 
for the principal administrative areas; and the 
plate for Southern Arabia (Plate 33) carries a 
glossary of Arabic geographical terms. The 
outline map on the back of each plate shows 
the area mapped, or serves as a key to adjoin- 
ing plates by showing volume and plate num- 
bers, or shows insets, as required. 

In the first seven plates thematic world 
maps deal with physiography, oceanography, 
climatology, vegetation, mankind, and world 
surface and air routes. What makes this atlas, 
and the other editions of the Times Atlas, so 
outstanding in the field is that aesthetically 
pleasing maps present accurate information in 
a balanced, impartial fashion. 

The inset maps, on a larger scale, provid- 
ing detail for major regions, cities, andislands, 
are another important feature — with eleven 
for the U.S. (ten of cities, and one for the San 
Francisco Bay area); six for Canadian cities, 
five for India (four for cities and one for the 
Damodar Valley); and four for the Soviet 
Union (two for cities, one each for the Fergana 
Basin and the industrial Urals). Eleven of the 
then 1 5 largest cities of the world are shown in 
inset maps. In a slight touch of surely forgiv- 
able favoritism, London has its own separate 
plate (Plate 55). 

It is with this edition that the atlas solidi- 
fied its reputation as the next best source to a 
country-specific gazetteer for place names; it 
gave as many place-names as possible, prefer- 
ably for each country in the spelling used by 
the places' inhabitants. Place names followed 



the Permanent Committee on Geographical 
Names (London) and the United States Board 
on Geographic Names, with the exceptions of 
China (forms used by Chinese Post Office); 
Mongolia (simplified) ; and Syria and Ethiopia 
(French and Italian transliterations changed to 
letters with English values). The English form 
of importantplaces followed the local name in 
brackets, with both names appearing in the 
index. William Clowes & Sons, Ltd., Beccles, 
England, produced the indexes. Directions 
anda list of abbreviations appeared on the first 
page of each index, followed by a list of place 
names arranged alphabetically letter-by-let- 
ter. Each entry gave the name of the place's 
major political or geographical area (e.g., 
country, state, ocean), latitude, longitude, map 
plate number, and key letter and number. 
Throughout, the atlas achieved its aim of a 
high degree of comprehensiveness and accu- 
racy. In 1965, the supremely useful index 
(345,000 place names) was published sepa- 
rately as the Times Index-Gazetteer of the 
World. 

To look at and to use, the volumes are 
large (19 l A v x 12 3 //)but relatively lightweight 
(since they are only 3 A" thick), unlike other 
atlases which require two healthy persons to 
lift. The volumes published in England have a 
blue binding with gold lettering on front and 
spine, while those published by Houghton 
Mifflin in the U.S. have a red binding with 
gold lettering. In both cases, as one can ob- 
serve in almost any library, the atlas has held 
up well under heavy use. 

Reviewers of the Mid-Century Edition 
were unanimous in considering it to be the 
most significant world atlas in English at least 
since the Second World War. 8 It was upon this 
singularly firm foundation that Bartholomew 
and the Times launched their first "Compre- 
hensive" edition in one volume, with the stated 
reason that updating a five- volume set would 
be extremely complex, and thus even more 
expensive than atlas-making customarily is. 
No other five- volume edition has appeared. 



282 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



The Comprehensive Edition 

The Comprehensive Edition — largely 
based, of course, on the plates of the Mid- 
Century Edition — first appeared in 1 967 . The 
plates were updated and a collection of maps 
on world resources and an illustrated guide to 
space ilight and lunar exploration were added. 
The index of more than 200,000 place names 
was bound in, rather than issued as a separate 
volume. The index maps were a singularly 
useful feature, one that has continued through 
subsequent editions. An index map is a two- 
page spread of the world, with plate areas and 
numbers overlain so that simply by looking at 
it one may quickly learn which plate or plates 
cover one's area of interest, Brief text illus- 
trated with thematic (i.e., subject) maps ap- 
peared at the beginnings of the volume. These 
number 1 6 pages or plates, e.g., "Resources of 
the World," "The Earth and Its Atmosphere," 
"The Universe." The transliteration and spell- 
ing recommended by the Permanent Commit- 
tee on Geographic names and by the U.S. 
Board on Geographic Names have been used. 
Wade-Giles transliterations were used for lo- 
cations in China and Mongolia. 

The second edition (1 968) of the Compre- 
hensive Edition showed some updating (e.g., 
population figures), but changes were rela- 
tively slight, perhaps based on the feeling that 
since it wasn' t broken, there was no need to fix 
it. By this time it was common for the Times 
Atlas to be referred to as a "best atlas value," 
and "by far the best English-language atlas, 
perhaps even the best atlas in the world.'" The 
third edition (1971) was published in the U.S. 
only, and shows no obvious signs of change. 

The fourth edition (1972) featured only 
slight changes — in the introduction (p. v), it is 
termed the fourth revision of the 1967 edition. 
Typical of revision was the plate on the "The 
Solar System" (p. xxxiv) of the 1967 edition, 
considerably reworked and mo"ved earlier in 
the volume (p. xxix in the 1972 volume). As 
with other Comprehensive editions, the width 
of the page margins was narrower than those 



in the Mid-Century Edition, and the maps 
were printed on both sides of sheets (rather 
than having sheets tipped in, as was done for 
the Mid-Century Edition) without reducing 
the size of the maps or diminishing the con- 
tents. 10 

The 256-page fifth edition (1975) con- 
tained the expected: the excellent index-gaz- 
etteer, good balance of coverage, attractive 
maps, and careful attention to design. Except 
for updating of maps, the only changes were in 
the introduction and the index. The index of 
about 210,000 place names was for the first 
time compiled by computer to facilitate future 
revisions. The introductory pages on world 
physiography and oceanography had been 
completely revised; African frontier changes 
plus plans for more cities appeared. 11 The 
reviewer for Choice called it, "the essential 
foundation of any general reference atlas 
case." 12 

The sixth edition appeared in 1980, At 
first glance it looks very much the same as its 
predecessor (e.g., an increase in the length of 
the gazetteer by only four pages). But the 
maps were printed in eight colors rather than 
in six, making for brighter and denser layer 
colors, and the boundaries were reinforced by 
a purple rather than a gray tone for improved 
legibility. The index was preceded by a one- 
page discussion of the transcription of Chi- 
nese place names, since a major innovation in 
the maps was the replacement of Wade-Giles 
romanization with Pinyin for mainland China 
names. An estimated 30,000 changes were 
made on maps and in the index, including the 
addition of much new cartographic informa- 
tion (some of it gathered from satellite photo- 
graphs, such as a huge reservoir in Siberia 
shown for the first time). The new edition cost 
an estimated $1.4 million to produce. At the 
time of publication a reviewer proclaimed that 
it "remains the authoritative reference" of its 
kind. 13 

The seventh edition (1985) retained the 
previous edition's format and structure, with 
substantial updating of information through- 



TIMES ATLJS OF THE WORLD 283 



out. Some changes were introduced in the 
preliminary textpages. The geographical-com- 
parisons data (e.g., text onpopulation of major 
countries, heights of mountains, area of oceans 
and seas) expanded to a second page and were 
accompanied by inset-sized maps; population 
tables were dropped; the thematic pages at the 
front were revised; and the population figures 
in the alphabetical listing of states and territo- 
ries were updated. A group of world thematic 
maps (minerals, food, energy, climate) was 
moved from the introductory section to the 
atlas proper, and sheets on physiography, 
oceanography, and air routes present in the 
1980 edition were dropped. A new set of 
double-page physical maps of the continents 
was added, and inset maps of Jiddah and 
Riyadh replaced those of Aden and Kuwait on 
the Arabian Peninsula plate (Plate #33). 

The eighth edition (1990) interestingly 
enough notes its editorial board as the New 
York Times staff. This author looks forward to 
examining it, and is reasonably confident that 
the new edition will enable the Times Atlas to 
retain its position as "the best world atks in 
print." 14 

Reasons for Its Preeminence 

From the moment the Bartholomew firm 
took it on, the atlas rose to the top of its field 
and has retained that position. It has set the 
standard by which all other world atlases are 
judged; in particular, its use of relief maps as 
a standard feature has denoted superiority in 
the world-reference-atlas world for some time. 
In the English-language publishing world, 
Rand McNally's International Atlas {Chicago: 
Rand McNally), first published in 1969 and 
known since 1980 as The New International 
Atlas, comes closest; but the Bartholomew 
reputation for accuracy and for beautiful maps 
gives the Times Atlas a definite edge. In par- 
ticular, the unrivaled ability of the maps to 
show relief sets it apart from other atlases and 
always has, since showing relief on maps is 
expensive and is generally done only in the 



more expensive atlases; yet it is essential if the 
atlas user is to have a good comprehension of 
the area being studied, 

The Times Atlas has always emphasized 
physical-political maps and its index, with 
very brief introductory text and a bit longer 
section of thematic maps. Balance of cover- 
age is a matter frequently mentioned in re- 
views of the atlas; this seems to be a matter of 
the publisher's balancing number of pages of 
coverage per continent with the continent's 
share of world land coverage, the density of its 
population, and the interests of the atlas's 
audience. Thus Europe — -just 3 percent of 
world land coverage, 10 percent of world 
population, but an area of substantial interest 
to British, and Americanusers — receives about 
30 percent of the plates in the atlas. This 
percentage is down from 43 percent in the 
1920-1922 edition, a comforting sign that its 
audience is becoming more global in its inter- 
ests. 

A key to the atlas's success has been the 
close association with it, since the 1 920-1922 
edition, of the Bartholomew family and firm 
working with the Times. Its critical reception 
and reputati on have been excellent, especially 
since the Bartholomew name became associ- 
ated with the atlas. The atlas's influence is 
substantial in the scholarly world; if one can 
have only one world atlas, it should be the 
Times Atlas. As for future plans for new edi- 
tions, nothing had appeared in print on this 
matter as of mid- 1990, a time when certainly 
all map librarians — along with a good many 
other persons — were looking forward to see- 
ing the imminent eighth edition of this classic 
atlas. The computer may play a more impor- 
tant part in forthcoming editions as the use of 
computer cartography increases. Although 
rapidly becoming essential for base mapping 
(i.e., large-scale topographic mapping), com- 
puterized cartography has been used in atlases 
from time to time over the last ten years or so, 
but generally not to completely successful 
aesthetic effect. Perhaps once again the firm 
of Bartholomew can take a lead in innovation. 



284 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



Only new editions, not reprints, non-Brit- 
ish/U.S. editions, nor atlases derived from The 
Times Atlas, are included in the following list. 

"The Times" Atlas. London: The Times, 1895. iv> 
117p. of col. maps, 118p. 

The Times 'Atlas.Nevted. London: The Times, 1900. 
iv, 132 p. of col. maps, 120p, 

The Times Survey Atlas of the World, edited by John 
Bartholomew. [2nd ed.] London: The Times, 
1920-1922. 2 v.; vol. 1, 112 col. maps; vol. 2 
(index), xii, 259p. 

The Times Atlas of the World, edited by John 
Bartholomew. Mid-Century [3rd] ed. London: 
The Times; Boston: Houghton Mifflin., 1955- 
1959. 5 v.: v. 1, World, Australasia and East 
Asia (1958); v. 2, Southwest Asia and Russia 
(1959); v. 3, Northern Europe (1955); v. 4, 
Southern Europe and Africa (1956); v. 5, The 
Americas (1957). 

Index-gazetteer of the World. London; The Times, 

1965. xxxi, 964p. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1966. xxxi, 964p. 



The Times Atlas of the World. [1st comprehensive 

ed.] London: The Times. 1967. xliii, 123 col. 

maps, 272p. 
The Times Atlas of the World. 2nd ed. rev. London: 

Times Newspaper. 1968. xliii, 123 col. maps, 

272p. 
The Times Atlas of the World. 2nd ed. rev. [sic; 3rd 

ed.; for U.S. only] Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1971. xliii, 123 col. maps, 272p. 
The Times Atlas of the World. 4th ed rev. London: 

Times Newspapers, 1972. xl, 123 col. maps, 

272p. 
The Times Atlas of the World. 5th ed. London: Times 

Books, 1975. xl, 123 col. maps, 223p, 
The Times Atlas of the World. Comprehensive ed., 

6th ed. London: The Times, 1980. xl, 123 col. 

maps, 227p. 
The Times Atlas of the World. Comprehensive ed., 

7th ed. London: The Times, 1985. xl, 123 col. 

maps, 227p. 
The Times Atlas of the World. Comprehensive ed., 

8th ed. London: Times Books, 1990. xlvii, 245 

col. maps, 225p. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The secondary literature is composed al- 
most entirely of reviews in serials and other 
reference works; the most notable exception is 
Gardiner's history of the Bartholomew firm. 
While this is surprising — considering the 
prominence of the atlas — the indexes, most 
notably Bibliography of Cartography, 
Bibliographica Cartographies and Social 
Sciences and Humanities Index, are obdurate 
on this point. 

Allan, Douglas A. "John George Bartholomew, A 
Centenary." Scottish Geographical Magazine 
76 (1960): 85-88. 

Alonso, Patricia Greechie. "The First Atlases." Ca- 
nadian Cartographer 5 (1968): 108-21. 

Bagrow, Leo. "The Century of Atlases." InHistoryof 
Cartography, byR.A. Skelton, 179-89. 2nd ed. 
rey. & enl.Chicago: Precedent, 1955. 

Balchin, W.G.V. Review of The Times Atlas of the 
World, 6th ed. In Geographical Journal 147 
(1981): 120-21. 

"Bartholomew (John) and Son, Ltd" Choice 13 
(May, 1976): 344. 

Brown, Lloyd A. The Story of Maps. Boston: Little, 
Brown, 1949. 

Brown, R. N. Rudmose. "Bartholomew's "New Atlas 
(The Times Survey Atlas of the World, 1920)." 
Scottish Geographical Magazine 36 (July 15, 
1920): 180-81. 



"Dr. J. G. Bartholomew, 1860-1920." Scottish Geo- 
graphical Magazine 36 (July 15, 1920): 183— 
85. 

Gardiner, Leslie. Bartholomew, 150 Years. 
Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1976. 

Gomez-Ibanez, Daniel A. "World Atlases for Gen- 
eral Reference." Choice 6 (August, 1 969): 625- 
30. 

Gray, Richard A. Review of The Times Atlas of the 
World: Comprehensive Edition. American Ref- 
erence Books Annual (1976): 277. 

Katz, William A. "World Atlases." In Introduction 
to Reference Work; vol. 1, Basic Information 
Sources. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1 982. 

Kister, Kenneth F. Kister's Atlas Buying Guide. 
Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1984. 

Piggott, Charles. "Atlas Classic." Geographical 
Magazine 53 (November, 1980): 148-49. 

Review of The Times Atlas of the World, Mid- 
Century ed. Booklist and Subscription Books 
Bulletin 58 (September 1, 1961): 1-5. 

Review of The Times Atlas of the World, 6th ed. 
Booklist W (May 15, 1982): 1273. 

Review of 77ie Times Atlas of the World., 7th ed. 
Booklist 82 (June 15, 1986): 1524-25. 

Walsh, S. Padraig. General World Atlases in Print, 
1972-1973: AComparativeAnalysis.~NewYoTk: 
Bowker, 1973. 

Watson, J. Wreford. "Obituary, JohnBartholomew." 
Geographical Review 53 (January, 1963): 145- 
46. 



TIMES ATLAS OF THE WORLD 285 



NOTES 



1 Daniel A. Gomez-Ibiinez, "World Atlases for General 
Reference," Choice 6 (August 1969): 625-27. 

2 Leo Bagrow, "The Century of Atlases," in History of 
Cartography, 2nd ed. rev. & enl., by R.A. Skelton 
(Chicago: Precedent, 1985), 179. 

3 Patricia Greechie Alonso, "The First Atlases," Cana- 

dian Cartographer 5 (196S): 108-10, 119; Bagrow, 
187-59; Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps (Bos- 
ton: Little, Brown, 1949), 165-73, 

4 Douglas A. Allan, "John George Bartholomew, A 

Centenary," Scottish Geographical Magazine 76 
(1960): 85-86. 
J "Dr. J,G. Bartholomew, 1860-1920," Scottish Geo- 
graphical Magazine 36 (1920): 183-85; Douglas 
Allan, "John George Bartholomew, A Centenary," 
87. 

6 Leslie Gardiner, Bartholomew, 150 Years (Edinburgh: 

Bartholomew, 1976), 6-53. 

7 R.N. RudmoseBrown, "Bartholomew's New Atlas (The 

Times Survey Atlas of the World, 1920)," Scottish 



Geographical Magazine 36 (15 July 1920); 180- 
81; Allan, 86. 

8 See, for example, review of The Times Atlas of the 

World, Mid-Century ed.. Booklist and Subscription 
Books Bulletin 58 (1 September 1961): 1-5. 

9 Gomdz-Ibaiiez, 628. 

10 S. Padraig Walsh, General World Atlases in Print, 

2972-1973: A Comparative Analysis (New York: 
Bowker, 1973), 33-35. 

11 Richard A. Gray, review of The Times Atlas of the 

World: Comprehensive Edition, American Refer- 
ence Books Annual (1976): 277. 

n "Bartholomew (John) and Son, Ltd.," Choice 13 (May 
1976): 344. 

n Charles Piggott, "Atlas classic," Geographical Maga- 
zine 53 (November 1980): 148-49. 

14 Review of The Times Atlas of the World, 7th ed., 
Booklist 82 (15 June 1986): 1525. 




Legacy of Noah Webster: The 
Merriam- Webster Family 
of Dictionaries 



Marie C. Ellis 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

When George and Charles Merriam purchased 
thepublishingrightstoNoahWehster's^men'- 
can Dictionary of the English Language from 
his heirs in 1 843 , they could not have foreseen 
that 150 years later their name and that of 
Webster would continue to be linked in a 
successful dictionary publishing enterprise. 
Over the years, the G. & C. Merriam Company 
(which officially changed its name to Merriam- 
Webster Inc. in 1982) has survived the chal- 
lenges of controversies and intense competi- 
tion through its successful combination of 
dedication to editorial excellence and adroit 
marketing skills. In preserving and enhancing 
the legacy ofNoahWebster,Merriam- Webster 
has become one of the preeminent publishers 
of English-language dictionaries and other 
wordbooks, creating an entire family of dic- 
tionaries that bear the Merriam-Webster colo- 
phon and trademark. 

Although the first Merriam-Webster dic- 
tionary was published in 1 847, its roots can be 
traced back to the 1 780s when Noah Webster 
.first contemplated the idea of compiling a 
dictionary reflecting American usage of the 
English language. Webster publicly revealed 
his intentions to publish a series of dictionaries 
with an announcement in the New Haven 
newspapers on June 4, 1800, indicating that he 
planned to compile "a small Dictionary for 
schools, one for the counting-house, and a 



large one for men of science." Observing that 
"a workof this kind is absolutely necessary, on 
account of considerable differences between 
the American and English language " Webster 
concluded that those differences "will con- 
tinue to multiply, and render it necessary that 
we should have Dictionaries of the American 
language" 1 A man of many talents and wide 
interests, Webster drew on a broad range of 
experience for his new endeavor, having served 
variously as a schoolmaster, journalist, lec- 
turer, editor, lawyer, and legislator, before 
becoming a lexicographer. 

Noah Webster 

Born on a farm near Hartford, Connecti- 
cut, in 1758, Webster was more inclined to 
scholarly pursuits than to agrarian life and 
attended Yale University from 1774 to 1778, 
"a time when religious fervor was declining 
and secular interests were paramount." 2 With 
a college degree, but apparently with no par- 
ticular professional inclination, Webster un- 
dertook both school teaching and law practice 
during the 1780s. His teaching experience led 
him to prepare a series of textbooks, an ac- 
complishment for which he became widely 
known and which served as the springboard 
for his interest in language. In 1 783 the first of 
these texts appeared. Bound in blue cloth, A 
Grammatical Institute of the English Lan- 
guage . . . Parti soon came to be known as "the 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 287 



blue-backed speller," and the first edition of 
5,000 copies sold out in nine months , 3 In 1 788 , 
its title was changed to The American Spelling 
Book, and later it became The Elementary 
Spelling Book. 4 By 1801, one and one-half 
million copies had been sold, and Merriam- 
Webster now estimates that total sales of the 
speller eventually reached 70 million copies. 5 
The otherparts of Webster's textbook system, 
a grammar and a reader, were published in 
1 784 and 1 785, respectively, and also enjoyed 
a great deal of success. 6 

In preparing his speller, reader, and gram- 
mar, Webster had accumulated numerousnotes 
relating to etymology, language usage, spell- 
ing inconsistencies, and variances in pronun- 
ciation. In addition, he had become aware of 
the many new meanings and terms that had 
come into the English language since Samuel 
Johnson compiled his A Dictionary of the 
English Language in 1755, and he became 
convinced that what the nation needed was an 
American dictionary of the English language 
that would reflect the rapid changes that were 
taking place in the vocabulary of the average 
citizen. 7 It was this goal that Webster revealed 
in his press release of 1 800. His work was not 
to be the first American dictionary, however, 
since, by the time of its publication, six other 
small dictionaries had already appeared. 

Webster's first dictionary, A Compendi- 
ous Dictionary of the English Language , con- 
taining approximately 40,000 words, was pub- 
lished in 1 806. Basing his compilation on John 
Entick's New Spelling Dictionary (a work 
originally published in London in 1764 and 
widely available in the United States in a 
variety of editions), Webster added about 5,000 
words, improved Entick's definitions, revised 
the orthography to reflect his own ideas re- 
garding uniformity and analogy, and appended 
tables of currencies and weights and mea- 
sures, chronologies, population statistics, and 
a directory of post offices. Since Webster was 
greatly interested in simplifying American 
spelling, it is not surprising that he chose to 
sanction only one version of words in certain 



categories that had evolved with variant spell- 
ings . For example, he listed words like "honor" 
and "favor" without giving their historical 
variants ending in "-our," "music" and "pub- 
lic" without the final "k," "defense" and "of- 
fense" with an "s" instead of a "c," "theater" 
and "c enter" instead of their counterparts end- 
ing in "-re," and "check" and "mask" rather 
than "cheque" and "masque." While these 
spellings were controversial at the time, they 
ultimately came to be the preferred spellings 
in the United States. However, many of 
Webster's proposed spellings, such as 
"imagin," "crum ," "wimmen," and "soop," 
never gained acceptance, and they were even- 
tually dropped from later versions of his dic- 
tionaries. 8 The 1806 Compendious Dictionary 
was followed in 1807 and 1817 by concise 
versions for schools. Although his early lexi- 
cographical efforts were only moderately suc- 
cessful commercially, the indefatigable 
Webster was undaunted and turned his atten- 
tion to compiling the first unabridged Ameri- 
can dictionary, the work from which today's 
Webster 's Third New International is directly 
descended. Published in 1828 when Webster 
was 70 yeaTS old, An American Dictionary of 
the English Language was priced at $20 for 
two large quarto volumes. 9 An announcement 
in a contemporary newspaper noted that the 
compilation had been completed "at the ex- 
pense of twenty years of labor, and thirty 
thousand dollars in money." 10 However, the 
price and size of the work prohibited ready 
sales, and it was 13 years before the printing of 
2,500 copies had sold. 11 

Although contemporary critics generally 
praised Webster's skill at writing definitions, 
they were less receptive to some of his unor- 
thodox spellings and even more skeptical of 
his etymologies. However, both proponents 
and detractors generally acknowledged the 
magnitude of Webster's accomplishment. 
Twentieth-century scholars have corroborated 
the assessments of their nineteenth-century 
counterparts. James A.H. Murray, editor of 
the Oxford English Dictionary, praised 




28 8 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



"Webster as "a bom definer of words'" who 
"produced a work of great originality and 
value." George Krapp called it a "significant 
contribution to the growth of English lexicog- 
raphy" but noted that Webster's 1828 work 
was "only partially successful." While ac- 
knowledging that "Webster's work had seri- 
ous flaws," Joseph Friend concludes that "he 
wrote definitions that were more accurate, 
more comprehensive, and not less carefully 
divided and ordered than any previously done 
in English lexicography." Richard Rollins 
observes that Webster's "finisnedproduct was, 
by all standards, a monumental achievement. 
With 70,000 words all written out by his own 
hand, it was indeed a massive work, the last 
major dictionary ever compiled by a single 
individual." 12 

Prominent individuals such as John Jay 
praised Webster's work, andpublishers, courts, 
colleges, schools, and other establishments 
began using it as their authority. 13 An abridged 
edition, compiledby Joseph Emerson Worces- 
ter, became available in 1 829 in a reasonably 
priced octavo volume. This version sold well 
and insured the distribution and influence of 
Webster's dictionary among ordinary indi- 
viduals in addition to the institutions and 
monied class who had been able to purchase 
the two-volume edition. In 1841 a second 
edition of the unabridged appeared, contain- 
ing an additional 5,000 words. However, the 
price of $15 for the two- volume set placed it 
beyond the reach of many potential purchas- 
ers, and anumber of unbound copies remained 
at the time of Webster's death in 1843. 14 

George and Charles Merriam 

Fortuitously, it was atthispointthatGeorge 
and Charles Merriam made a decision to enter 
the dictionary publishing business. The 
Merriam brothers had moved to Springfield, 
Massachusetts, in 1831 to establish a book- 
store and printing office. Advertisements from 
the period indicate that they sold a variety of 
merchandise ranging from wallpaper and 



church music to pencils and toothbrushes. 15 
They also began publishing textbooks, Bibles, 
and legal works. Thus, when the opportunity 
arose for them to purchase the remaining 
unbound sheets ofthcAmerican Dictionary of 
1841 from the Amherst, Massachusetts, firm 
of J.S. & C. Adams, the Merriams were ready 
to expand their publishing venture in that 
direction. Astute businessmen, the brothers 
also purchased from Webster ' s heirs the rights 
to publish revisions. 16 

Soon after making the investment that 
would permanently change the nature of their 
enterprise, the Merriams developed plans to 
issue a revised and enlarged edition of the 
dictionary. Recognizing that the task was too 
large for any one individual, they enlisted 
Chauncey A. Goodrich, a professor at Yale 
and Webster's son-in-law, as principal editor 
and then assembled a distinguished group of 
scholars and specialists to assist him. Among 
the other editors were William Tully, who had 
edited the scientific terms forthe 1 841 edition; 
Noah Porter and S.W. Barnum, both profes- 
sors at Yale University; and William G. 
Webster, Noah Webster's son. Other Yale 
scholars were asked to serve as specialists for 
certain disciplines, such as chemistry, math- 
ematics, astronomy, and law, while James D. 
Dana, a renowned scientist and editor of the 
American Journal of Sciences and Arts, was 
responsible for geology. 17 Thus began the 
Merriam- Webster tradition of using a schol- 
arly corps of editors and specialists to produce 
lexicographical works. 

The new one-volume revised edition of 
An American Dictionary of the English Lan- 
guage was published in 1847 at a price of $6. 
"Merchandisers with a keen eye for a market 
and a sound knowledge of how to sell books in 
quantity," the Merriam brothers predicted 
correctly that the lower price would stimulate 
sales so that the total amount of profits would 
increase even though the profit per copy would 
decrease. 18 In 1 850, in accordance with an act 
of the state legislature, about 3,000 copies of 
the dictionary were distributed to the school 



m* 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 289 



districts of Massachusetts, and similar pro- 
grams were adopted by New Jersey and the 
state of New York. 19 

Praise poured in from all directions. A 
statement signedby 104 members of Congress 
read: "It is with pleasure that we greet thisnew 
and valuable contribution to American litera- 
ture. We recommend it to all who desire to 
possess the most complete, accurate and reli- 
able dictionary of the language." 20 Three presi- 
dents — James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, and 
Millard Fillmore — also provided glowing en- 
dorsements, but perhaps the most unexpected 
approval came from England when John 
Ogilvie wrote in his preface to the The Impe- 
rial Dictionary, published in 1850, that 
Webster's was "acknowledged both in this 
country and in America to be . . . superior to 
. . . every other dictionary hitherto pub- 
lished.'* 21 

Reviews in the press were equally favor- 
able. A lengthy commentary published in the 
NeH>i?«g/art<ie/moted that Professor Goodrich 
"has given to the work, a completeness, full- 
ness, and accuracy, hitherto unattained in a 
work of this kind" and concluded that 

we can not but view it as a sort of representa- 
tive of the English mind in its present ad- 
vanced state — as a transcript in miniature of 
the intellectual progress of the age — as a 
synopsis of arts, science, philosophy, truth in 
nature and truth in morals; in fine of all 
knowledge within the range of human investi- 
gation, so far as these maybe exhibited through 
the great medium of thought. 22 

Moreover, the London Literary Gazette de- 
clared the work "a noble monument of erudi- 
tion and indefatigable research; and the style 
and accuracy of its typography would do 
honorto the press of any country in Europe" 23 
The success of the 1847 edition of the 
American Dictionary was due not only to its 
reasonable price but also to Goodrich's re- 
moval of "most of the Websterian crotchets 
which still remained from the original (1828) 
work." 24 Mindful of the numerous objections 
to Webster's orthographic practices, Goodrich 
eliminated many of Webster's more radical 



reform spellings (e.g., "chimistry," "fether," 
"melasses," "ribin,""zink") andrestored those 
words to their more acceptable forms. In addi- 
tion, he showed both forms of other controver- 
sial spellings (e.g., "center" and "centre," 
"defense" and "defence"). Pronunciations 
were also revised to reflect the most recent 
authorities. 25 The new work included approxi- 
mately 85,000 entries in the main section and 
also contained supplementary tables of scrip- 
ture names, Greek and Latin proper names, 
and modern geographical names. 25 

War of the Dictionaries 

Following the 1847 publication of the 
American Dictionary ; competitive skirmishes 
between the Merriams and the publishers of 
another lexicographer, Joseph Emerson 
Worcester, increased and eventually esca- 
lated until they came to be called "the War of 
the Dictionaries," Stemming from events that 
had transpired prior to Noah Webster' s death, 
the war was fought in several stages and on 
various fronts and is generally conceded to 
have lasted from 1834 to 1864. A number of 
studies of this fascinating bit of Merriam- 
Webster's history treat thisperiodin far greater 
detail than space allows in this chapter. 27 

The opening stage for the first battle in 
this war was set when Joseph Worcester, the 
lexicographer who had been responsible for 
the 1 829 abridged edition of Webster's Ameri- 
can Dictionary, published his own dictionary 
in 1830. Worcester's Comprehensive Pro- 
nouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the 
English Language (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 
Little, and Wilkins) was favorably received, 
particularly by those factions who had op- 
posed Webster's somewhat unorthodox spell- 
ings and pronunciation, including "the Anglo- 
phile group in Massachusetts and those of 
conservative tendencies around the country." 28 
As sales of Worcester's dictionary climbed, 
Webster for the first time had a formidable 
American rival. On November 26, 1834, an 
article appeared in the Worcester Palladium 




290 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



accusing Worcester of taking advantage of his 
earlier association with Webster and "appro- 
priating to his own benefit the valuable labors, 
acquisitions, and productions of Mr. 
Webster." 29 Worcester's dignified response, 
published in the Palladium of December 3, 
1834, denied any plagiarism while providing 
particulars on his agreement with Webster in 
working on the abridgement and pointing out 
the variety of differences between his work 
and Webster' s. In a letter in the December 1 1 , 
1834, issue of the Palladium t Webster re- 
sponded to both the original editorial and 
Worcester' s reply, acknowledging that he felt 
some plagiarism had occurred. For more than 
a year, letters between Worcester and Webster 
on this issue were published in the Palladium, 
with the cycle ending on March 25, 183 5. 30 Of 
this first phase of the War of the Dictionaries, 
Friend concludes: "In genera], Worcester's 
defense is a good deal more impressive than 
Webster's accusations, which tend to grow 
querulous toward the end of the duel and 
reveal clearly that the older man felt his live- 
lihood endangered by the popular acceptance 
of the Comprehensive" 31 

The second phase of the war was not quite 
as civil as the first. Carried out primarily by the 
publishers of the competing dictionaries, this 
phase of "Worcester vs. Webster came to 
mean not only linguistic conservatives and 
moderates vs. radicals and liberals, but, with 
some inevitable extremist distortion and over- 
simplification, Anglophiles vs. Americanizers, 
Boston-Cambridge-Harvard vs, New Haven- 
Yale, upperclass elegance vs. underbred Yan- 
kee uncouthness." 32 This second stage of the 
controversy was sparked by fierce competi- 
tion for sales following the publication of 
Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictio- 
nary of the English Language in 1846 and 
Goodrich's unabridged edition of Webster's 
American Dictionary in 1847. Accusations 
and counter-accusations were made through 
the press, and pamphlets fanning the flames 
were distributed by both G. & C. Merriarn and 



the publishers of Worcester's dictionaries. 
Each side extended the competition to garner- 
ing and publishing endorsements and testimo- 
nials from prominent individuals, including 
college presidents, statesmen, authors, and 
booksellers. Matters were exacerbated by an 
unfortunate incident in 1 853 when Worcester's 
dictionary was published in London with the 
added notation on the title page "compiled 
from the materials of Noah Webster, LL.D,, 
by Joseph E. Worcester." 33 Although the Brit- 
ish publisher was obviously at fault, the 
Merriams were quick to claim this statement 
as an acknowledgement of Worcester's debt 
to Webster. 

In the course of planning anewprinting of 
the 1847 edition to be published in 1859, the 
Merriams learned that Worcester was prepar- 
ing a third edition of his work that would be 
illustrated. Deciding that the new words and 
supplements, including a 300-page section of 
synonyms, they were adding would not be 
sufficient to compete with an illustrated 
Worcester, the Merriams hastily made ar- 
rangements to insert a special section of illus- 
trations at the front of their edition since there 
was no time to place the illustrations within the 
text. Thus, the title page of the 1859 edition 
includes the claim that it is the first illustrated 
American dictionary. 34 Upon the publication 
of Worcester's illustrated^ Dictionary of the 
English Language in 1860, the controversy 
between the two rivals began anew. Again 
reviewers in newspapers and periodicals made 
claims for their favorites, and the publishers 
issued pamphlets supporting their respective 
publications by reprinting favorable notices 
and reproducing endorsements from promi- 
nent individuals. While the business tactics 
and advertising strategies used during this 
period appear to have frequently been unscru- 
pulous, there is no doubt that the fierce com- 
petition led to improvements in both works, 
prompting a reviewer for theiVew York World 
to conclude: "In some respects, Worcester and 
Webster supplement each other, and every 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OP DICTIONARIES 291 



literary man who can, will choose to have the 
two." 35 

The Merriams, however, were already 
making plans for an entirely new edition. 
Chauncey Goodrich had died in 1 860 but not 
before choosing Noah Porter to be his succes- 
sor. On Porter's advice, the German philolo- 
gist C. A.F. Mann had been selected to replace 
Webster's outmoded etymologies with ones 
that reflected current scholarship. In addition, 
a team of approximately 30 scholars hadbeen 
chosen to serve as consultants in specific 
fields, while an additional corps of readers, 
writers, and editors worked on various other 
aspects of the compilation. 

In September 1864, during the midst of 
the Civil War, the Royal Quarto Edition of An 
American Dictionary of the English Language 
rolled off the presses. Known as the Webster- 
Mahn edition, it marked the beginning of the 
end of the War of the Dictionaries, "ironically 
by abandoning everything characteristic of 
Webster and adopting Worcester's virtues." 36 
As Raven I. McDavid has observed, the 
Webster-Mahn edition was "the foundation of 
the Merriam tradition; with professional edi- 
tors and a growing file of citations, it soon 
achieved preeminence — aided by the death of 
Worcester and the failure of Worcester J s pub- 
lishers to provide for further revisions," 37 The 
removal of many of the controversial aspects 
of Noah Webster's lexicography paved the 
way formore general acceptance of the Ameri- 
can Dictionary. Prominent literary figures 
such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and John 
Greenleaf Whittier acknowledged its author- 
ity and superiority, and business establish- 
ments, schools, legislative bodies, courts, and 
publishers adopted it as their standard. It even 
came to be the authority for the United States 
Government Printing Office and the Supreme 
Court. 38 In addition, the American Dictionary 
enjoyed commercial success in Great Britain, 
where it was distributed by George Bell & 
Sons, and it was also sold throughout the 
British Empire as well as to various Asian 
countries. 39 



Continuous Revision and 
Expansion 

Following the death of George Merriam 
in 1 8 80 „ Orlando M. B aker became the driving 
force in the company. Baker had joined the 
firm as a representative of Ivison, Blakeman, 
Taylor & Co. after they purchased Charles 
Merriam' s shares in 1S77. 40 Concerned be- 
cause the copyright on the 1847 edition was 
due to expire in 1889, after which any printer 
would be able to sell "Webster's Dictionary," 
Baker established a program of continuous 
revision, with the goal of eventually produc- 
ing an entirely new edition, while in the in- 
terim offering several updated versions with 
new features. Thus, the 1879 edition intro- 
duced a biographical supplement that included 
listings for 10,000 individuals, while the 1884 
version added a gazetteer identifying more 
than 22,000 place names. Other projects com- 
pleted during this period included an 1882 
edition designed specifically for subscription 
purchase and several revisions of the National 
Pictorial abridgement, which later was to 
become Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 41 

Clearly the Merriam- Webster family of 
dictionaries was expanding rapidly. By 1858 
ten versions in addition to the unabridged 
were available; the Royal Octavo, National 
Pictorial, University, Counting House, Aca- 
demic, High School, Common School, Pri- 
mary, Pocket, and Army and Navy Pocket. 42 
Some of these abridgements were leased to 
other publishers, and the series of Webster 
school dictionaries was later contracted to the 
American Book Company, a New York firm 
which agreed to publish and sell the books 
while the Merriam Company maintained the 
editorial content. 43 

In 1 890 the culmination of ten years of 
preparation by a large staff of editors, subject 
authorities, and editorial assistants appeared 
under the new title Webster's International 
Dictionary. William A. Neilson, editor-in- 
chief of the 1934 edition, observed that this 
title change reflected "both the extension of 



292 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



the vogue and authority of the work through- 
out the English-speaking world, and ... the 
inclusion of foreign scholars among its con- 
tributors." 44 Produced again under the able 
editorship of Noah Porter, assisted by Loomis 
J. Campbell serving as general editor, the 
work contained more than 175,000 entries, 
56,000 more than the 1 864 edition. The effort 
had cost the Merriams approximately 
$334,000. As Robert Leavitt concluded, "Dic- 
tionary making had become a task that could 
be carried out only by a major business and 
editorial institution." 45 The first Webster's 
Collegiate Dictionary was published in 1 898. 
The largest of the abridged dictionaries based 
on the unabridged edition, its intent was "to 
present the most essential parts of Webster's 
International Dictionary in a compact and 
convenient form, suited to the general reader 
and especially to the college student." 46 

Webster's New international 
Dictionary 

In 1900 a revision of Webster 's Interna- 
tional with an additional 25,000 entries ap- 
peared, and in 1 909 a completely new edition, 
Webster's New International Dictionary, was 
published at a cost of approximately half a 
million dollars. Dr. William T. Harris, former 
United States commissioner of education, 
served as editor-in-chief of this edition, while 
F. Sturges Allen was general editor. Their 
staff included 50 specialists, 10 revising edi- 
tors, and alarge number of readers, proofread- 
ers, and other assistants. Noted scholars asso- 
ciated with this edition included George Lyman 
Kittredge and John Livingston Lowes of 
Harvard and A.T. Hadley, president of Yale. 47 
Containing more than 400,000 entries, the 
New International initiated the use of the 
divided page with less frequently used terms, 
such as obsolete words and spellings, foreign 
words and phrases, and abbreviations, re- 
moved from the main alphabetical sequence 
and placed in a separate section at the bottom 
of each page. Since the lower section was in 
finer print, this technique saved space. While 



the 1 909 edition was not widely reviewed, the 
critiques that did appear were mixed. The 
reviewer for the Educational Review reacted 
favorably, while the reviewer in the Nation 
was less enthusiastic, finding the "treatment 
of synonyms very satisfactory," but noting 
that "the New International is extremely sus- 
ceptible to the appeal of slang." 48 Reviewers 
for Life and the New York Sun were generally 
positive and were particularly impressed by 
the increase in the number of words covered, 
twice as many as in the 1890 edition. 49 

The Second New International 

Many of the specialists who had compiled 
the 1909 edition were retained to continue 
adding to the company's growing citation files 
and to work on revising the other titles in the 
Merriam-Webster family: the Collegiate (of 
which new editions based on the 1909 un- 
abridged edition were published in 1910, 1916, 
and 193 1), the Reference History Edition of 
the unabridged for subscription purchasers, 
and the various dictionaries for schools that 
were published by the American Book Com- 
pany. Preparation for the next major revision 
of the unabridged got underway in the 1920s, 
and it developed into "perhaps the most ambi- 
tious project in co-operative scholarship ever 
undertaken in America up to that time." 50 
William Allen Neilson, a Shakespeare scholar 
and president of Smith College, was ap- 
pointed editor-in-chief, while Thomas A. 
Knott, formerly professor of English at the 
University of Iowa, served as general editor. 
Paul W. Carhart continued as pronunciation 
editor while also serving as managing editor, 
and Harold H. Bender of Princeton University 
was appointed to revise the etymologies, In 
addition to the staff in Springfield, the enter- 
prise also depended on a corps of consultants 
composed of 207 scholars, scientists, and other 
authorities from throughout the country who 
were responsible for "collecting, choosing, 
and defining terms in their respective fields." 51 
Another group of trained, professional read- 
ers, as Thomas Knott recounts, "attacked thou- 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 293 



sands of books, magazines, newspapers, and 
catalogues in search of new or unrecorded 
words, new meanings of old words, and evi- 
dence about capitalization, accents, hyphens, 
italics for foreign words, and plurals," a search 
thatresulted in the collection of approximately 
"1 ,665,000 citations with 'defining quotations,' 
and nearly as many more from special fields 
that called for further research." Knott went 
on to describe the final stages of preparation 
as a 

pouring together of all the contributory 
streams — literary and vernacular, geographi- 
cal and biographical, scientific and technical, 
pictorial, etymological, and pronunciations]; 
the exact 'styling' of the manuscript for spell- 
ing, compounding, capitalization, etc; the 
checking and correcting of hundreds of thou- 
sands of cross references; and the final adjust- 
ment and condensation of materials to make 
themfitinto the allotted space of 3 ,350 pages.* 2 

Heralded by its publishers as "the most 
notable publishing event of the century" and 
even "greater than its famous predecessors," 
the second edition of Webster '$ New Interna- 
tional Dictionary appeared in 1934. 53 Pre- 
pared at a cost of $1,300,000, the completely 
revised work contained more than 550,000 
vocabulary entries, "the largest number ever 
included in a dictionary of any language." 54 
The 36,000 names in the gazetteer, 13,000 in 
the biographical dictionary, and 5,000 listings 
in the new table of abbreviations brought the 
total number of entries to more than 600,000. 
All aspects of the work, including the illustra- 
tions, had been examined and updated, or 
replaced as necessary. In the preface, Neilson 
pointed out the difficulties of finding space 
"for thousands of new terms and new uses of 
old terms " stemming from scientific advances, 
new inventions, and changes in art, as well as 
the effects of World War I on almost every 
field of endeavor. In order to make room for 
these new terms, most words that had become 
obsolete before 1 500 were omitted, thus greatly 
reducing the size of the section containing 
obsolete words and cross-references at the 
bottom of each page. Neilson noted that "tra- 



ditional features that have stood the test of 
time have been retained. . .but more important 
has been the task of making the dictionary 
serve as an interpreter of the culture and 
civilization of today, as ISfoah Webster made 
the first edition serve for the America of 
1828." 55 

For themostpart, reviewers of the second 
edition of the New International agreed that it 
admirably achieved this goal. The Saturday 
Review of Literature and the American Mer- 
cury both praised the work. 56 Writing in the 
Nation, H.L. Mencken criticized the inconsis- 
tent coverage of derivative terms and the 
inclusion of English forms without specifying 
the American preference (e.g., "tire," "tyre"). 
He also questioned the utility ofthe illustrative 
quotations. However, Mencken concluded that 
"the new Webster comes close enough to 
completeness to be a very useful work." 57 
William Lyon Phelps' commentary in 
Scribner 's Magazine extolled the encyclope- 
dic nature ofthe volume and added "it would 
be difficult to praise ittoo highly." 58 The New 
Yorker reviewer was particularly impressed 
with the way in which the Merriam "corps of 
citation-hunters" had gathered more than a 
million examples of word usage by reading 
"among other things, every word in 
Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Fannie 
Farmer's Cook Book, Sears Roebuck's cata- 
logue, the works of Milton, Spenser, and 
Tennyson, thoEncyclopaediaBritannica, four 
hundred magazines, five hundred manu- 
facturer's catalogues, countless menu cards, 
and fifty daily newspapers." In addition, the 
reviewer noted that the editors had solicited 
the advice of 1 14 consultants throughout the 
country in determining pronunciations of ques- 
tionable words. 59 

Reviews in scholarly journals tended to 
be more critical, particularly regarding the 
system of pronunciation, which Kemp Malone 
in Modern Language Notes characterized as a 
"relic of a pre-scientific age,"* The review in 
American Speech concurred, observing that 
the pronunciations were often "provincial and 



294 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



unrepresentative" and that the failure to use 
the International Phonetic Alphabet "hampers 
the whole enterprise." 61 However, this was the 
only serious complaint, and the remainder of 
the review praised other aspects of the dictio- 
nary, such as format, definitions, and etymol- 
ogy. By the time the third edition of Webster 's 
New International was published in 1961, the 
second edition had become as revered as its 
namesake. 

Introduction of Specialized 
Dictionaries 

In the nearly 30 years that elapsed before 
the publication of a new edition of the un- 
abridged, the Merriam staff was busy with 
revisions of the other dictionaries in their 
charge as well as with compiling entirely new 
works. The fifth and sixth editions of the 
Collegiate appeared in 1936 and 1949, re- 
spectively, while the first Webster 's Dictio- 
nary of Synonyms was published in 1 942. This 
new compilation allowed the editors to treat 
synonyms in greater depth than in the New 
International and to provide more extensive 
coverage of antonyms and analogous and con- 
trasted words. In addition, the work incorpo- 
ratedmany illustrative quotations gleaned from 
the firm's vast file of citations. In 1942, the 
company issued Webster 's Biographical Dic- 
tionary, which provided brief biographical 
information for more than 40,000 significant 
individuals from throughout history and also 
indicated pronunciation and syllabic division 
for the names included. 

Perhaps in response to the criticisms of 
the pronunciation system used in the second 
edition of the New International, the Merriam 
Company published A Pronouncing Dictio- 
nary of American English in 1944. Compiled 
by John Samuel Kenyon and Thomas Albert 
Knott, the work utilized the International Pho- 
netic Alphabet "to show the pronunciation of 
cultivated colloquial English in the United 
States." 62 Since regional differences frequently 
affect pronunciation, the editors made an ef- 



fort to record all acceptable variant pronun- 
ciations. As this highly productive decade— 
which is even more remarkable considering 
the far-reaching effects of World War II — 
drew to a close, the firm produced its first 
Webster's Geographical Dictionary in 1949. 
This gazetteer provided historical and geo- 
graphical information on more than 40,000 
places throughout the world. In addition, en- 
tries indicated pronunciation for each place 
and included population, area, and economic 
data. A variety of maps and tables supple- 
mented the text. The Geographical Dictio- 
nary, the Biographical Dictionary, and the 
Dictionary of Synonyms soon became staples 
in even the smallest of reference collections. 

Webster's Third 

During the 1950s the Merriam staff con- 
centrated on preparing a completely new edi- 
tion of the unabridged dictionary. Philip Gove, 
a member of the firm since 1946, became 
general editor in 1952, and was appointed 
editor-in-chief early in 196 1 . w Webster 's Third 
New International Dictionary was published 
in September of that year. In his preface to the 
new edition, Gove calculated that it had been 
produced at a cost of more than $3,500,000 
and had "absorbed 757 editor-years," a figure 
that did not include the time of the approxi- 
mately 200 consultants or of typists and other 
clerical assistants. Describing Webster 's Third 
as "a completely new work, redesigned, 
res ty led, and reset," Gove emphasized that 
"every line of it is new." In order to provide 
adequate treatment of the more than 450,000 
words covered, the editors deleted most words 
that had become obsolete by 1755. They also 
revised the pronunciation key and included a 
greater variety of acceptable pronunciations, 
reflecting regional differences in "general 
cultivated conversational usage . . . through- 
out the English-speaking world." S4 

In preparing Webster's Third, the edito- 
rial staff continued the kind of citation-gather- 
ing that had been used in compiling the previ- 



THE MBRRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 295 



ous edition, The resulting file of over 
10,000,000 citations provided the basis for 
writing definitions of new words and identify- 
ing new usages of old words, a monumental 
undertaking since the 1961 edition included 
approximately 100,000 new words or new 
meanings. The definitions were supplemented 
by more than 3,000 black-and-white illustra- 
tions and 20 full-color plates. 65 Remarking 
that the English language "has already be- 
come the most important language on earth," 
Gove asserted that the "new Merriam- Webster 
unabridged is the record of this language as it 
is written and spoken." 66 

Instead of the acclaim that might have 
been expected for this new edition of a vener- 
ated work, the appearance of Webster 's Third 
sparked an unprecedented critical controversy 
that had repercussions for more than a decade. 
Early rumblings of discontent following 
Merriam' s press releases soon reached earth- 
quake proportions. Thus began a new episode 
in the history of the Merriam company that 
was to test the firm's staff much as the War of 
the Dictionaries had tested their nineteenth- 
century forebears. The news media and popu- 
lar press launched scathing attacks on the 
Third's permissiveness, with reviewers' sen- 
timents reflected in such headlines as 
"Webster's Lays an Egg," "Keep Your Old 
Webster's," "Sabotage in Springfield," and 
"It 'Ain't' Good." 67 The New York Times, 
which termed the work a "disastrous" devel- 
opmentand faulted the editors fornot livingup 
to their public responsibility to provide "a 
peerless authority on American English," later 
directed its staff "to follow Webster's Second 
Edition for spelling and usage" and use 
Webster's Third "only for new, principally 
scientific words." 68 An editorial in Life an- 
nouncing that the publication would continue 
to depend on Webster 's Second for such mat- 
ters as style and good English, deplored the 
inclusion in Webster's Third of such "non- 
words" as "irregardless" and "finalize" and 
accused the dictionary of "joining the say-as- 
you-go school of permissive English" and all 
but abandoning "any effort to distinguish be- 
tween good and bad usage." 69 



In his response to the New York Times 
editorial, Philip Gove commented: 

When a peerless newspaper that in 110 years 
has proved itself again and again to be the 
most respected and reputable everyday pro- 
fessional user of words in the United States 
attacks an established organization that has 
been from an even longer time a respected and 
reputable observer and recorder of word us- 
age, the impact is bound to disturb a good 
many people. 

He observed that the compilers of Webster's 
Third relied heavily on the evidence gathered 
from daily newspapers and general periodi- 
cals to determine current patterns of language 
usage and had in fact quoted the New York 
Times more than 700 times. Govt concluded 
that "whether you or I or others who fixed our 
linguistic notions several decades ago like it or 
not," the language of the 1960s is not the 
languageof the 1920s and 1930s. 70 Ina shorter 
missive to the editor of Life, Gove asserted: 
"The responsibility of a dictionary is to record 
the language, not set its style. For us to attempt 
to prescribe the language would be like Life 
reporting the news as its editors would prefer 
it to happen." 71 

Gove must have soon decided, however, 
that he could not respond to every negative 
review of Webster's Third, for such reviews 
continued to appear with depressing regular- 
ity. The editor of the American Bar Associa- 
tion Journal aligned that publication with the 
New York Times and Life, calling the third 
edition "a serious blow" that "has recently 
befallen the cause of good English" and con- 
cluding that it "will be of no use to us." The 
reviewer for Library Journal termed the dic- 
tionary "indispensable for its new (and re- 
vised old) material, deplorable for its whole- 
sale abridgements — as well as its obfuscation 
of the boundaries between prestige and non- 
prestige usages." In one of the most vicious 
reviews, Wilson Follett, writing for the Atlan- 
tic, proclaimed that "the anxiously awaited 
work that was to have crowned cisatlantic 
linguistic scholarship with a particular glory 
turns out to be a scandal and a disaster." Follett 
faulted the editors for whittling away at "tra- 



a" 'JJUJW^ 



296 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



ditionary controls " for excessive use of con- 
temporary quotations, and for defining terms 
with "some of the oddestprose ever concocted 
by pundits.*' 72 

In a lengthy review for the New Yorker, 
Dwight Macdonald found little to praise and 
much to disparage, concluding that the lexi- 
cographers who compiled Webster's Third 
"have untuned the string, made a sop of the 
solid structure of English, and encouraged the 
language to eat up himself." 73 Macdonald's 
review expounded on many of the objections 
and concerns voiced by other critics. Most of 
these early complaints fell into five major 
categories: (1) the elimination of certain usage 
labels, such as "colloquial" and "vulgar," and 
the drastic reduction of terms labelled "slang," 
which resulted in words such as "ain't," "fi- 
nalize," "goof," and "enthuse" being listed 
with no restrictive labels; (2) the use of illus- 
trative quotations from many contemporary 
individuals who were not noted for their facil- 
ity with language, e.g., Ethel Merman, Polly 
Adler, and Willie Mays; (3) the omission of 
much of the encyclopedic material, including 
the biographical dictionary and gazetteer; (4) 
the use (with the exception of "God") of 
lower-case letters for words traditionally capi- 
talized, e.g. "hawaiian," "christmas"; and (5) 
the omission of the pronunciation key at the 
bottom of each page. In short, as one favorable 
reviewer put it: "The essential complaint 
against Webster 's Third is that it professes to 
be authoritative, while its critics want it to be 
authoritarian." 74 

Not all of the reviews in the popular press 
were negative, however. The Louisville Times 
noted that "no language remains constantfrom 
one generation to another" and concluded that 
Webster's Third "is the new authority on our 
language." Describing the work as "all that the 
seekers after truth could hope for," the St. 
Louis Post-Dispatch considered it "a stagger- 
ing accomplishment," while the Christian 
Science Monitor characterized the third edi- 
tion as "an intensely interesting and distin- 
guished scholarly work, an important mile- 



stone in the history of a particularly living, 
flexible, and beautiful language."Referringto 
the various negative reviews and editorials as 
"a flurry of nitwitted commentary," the re- 
view in Editor & Publisher pointed out that 
"the Webster editors are conforming with 
scholarly conclusions that have developed 
over the last half-century and are now so 
firmly established as to be beyond question." 
Moreover, in an article in the Atlantic, Bergen 
Evans called "the storm of abuse" that the 
popular press had showered on Webster's 
77»>^a"curiousphenomenon.''Afterrespond- 
ing to a number of the specific criticisms 
regarding the dictionary's "permissiveness," 
Evans concluded: "anyone who solemnly an- 
nounces in the year 1 962 that he will be guided 
in matters of English usage by a dictionary 
published in 1934 is talking ignorant and pre- 
tentious nonsense." 75 

In addition, the reception of Webster's 
Third abroad was generally very positive. 
Observing that "the new Webster is first and 
fore-most a dictionary of present-day En- 
glish," the London Times Literary Supplement 
noted that its American origin should not 
trouble British users since "the British forms 
are included as well." Randolph Quirk, writ- 
ing in the New Statesman, termed the new 
edition "magnificent and meticulously com- 
plete," and, while he criticized certain edito- 
rial decisions, he concluded that "the publica- 
tion of the new Webster is a major event in the 
lexicography ofEnglish."Reviewers for other 
British publications, such as the Glasgow 
Herald, the Scotsman, and the Manchester 
Guardian Weekly, wrote in a similarly admir- 
ing vein, with no evidence of the vitriolic 
prose penned by their American counterparts. 76 
Most of the initial reviews of Webster's 
Third in the popular American press were 
written by journalists or other lay writers. 
Following a delay of about a year, however, 
calmer, more rational commentary began to 
appear in scholarly journals. Written by En- 
glish teachers and professors, linguists, and 
lexicographers, these reviews tempered criti- 
cism of various aspects of the Third with 



mm 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 297 



recognition and understanding of the linguis- 
tic principles upon which the dictionary was 
based and with admiration for the work's 
many positive features. Clarence L. Bamhart, 
who considered Webster's Thirdly far the 
largest andbest descriptive dictionary of mod- 
em English," provided a detailed synthesis of 
many of the scholarly reviews in an article 
published in American Speech? 1 

Representative of some of the scholarly 
commentary is an article in College English in 
which Atcheson L. Hench criticized the work' s 
inadequate labelling and inconsistency in pro- 
viding historical explanations but concluded 
that it was "on the whole a magnificent com- 
pilation." R.W. Burchfield, editor of the 
Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, 
commended the editors of Webster 's Third for 
using contemporary quotations as a basis for 
much of the dictionary; however, he ques- 
tioned other editorial decisions, such as the 
use of lower-case initial letters for proper 
names and the abandonment of many restric- 
tive labels. In his critique, Harold Allen re- 
marked that Webster's Third "already has 
established its worth among responsibleschol- 
ars and critics ." The noted Hungarian lexicog- 
rapher, Ladislas Orszagh, was more whole- 
heartedly enthusiastic about Webster's Third 
than his American and English colleagues, 
calling it "not only a monument of learning, 
the significant and welcoming breaking of 
fresh ground in English lexicography, but also 
a matchless precision instrument, a standard 
work not likely to be surpassed in the remain- 
ing years of our century." 78 

The controversy over Webster's Third 
generated a remarkable number of reviews 
and scholarly articles. It even resulted in works 
devoted to the controversy itself. In 1962, 
James Sledd and Wilma Ebbitt compiled a 
casebook of many of the early newspaper and 
magazine reviews, while Raven I. McDavid 
later analyzed the critical commentary that 
had appeared prior to the official date of 
publication of Webster's Third. Noting the 
many similarities in content and wording 
among the various news stories about the 



Third published between September 6 and 
September 28, 1961, McDavid concluded that 
the articles were based on information con- 
tained in Merriam' s initial press release, which 
apparently focused on such aspects of the 
dictionary as the use of illustrative quotations 
from contemporary sports and entertainment 
figures, the inclusion of various terms (such as 
"beatnik" and "goof) generally considered 
slang orinformal, andthe description of "ain't" 
as "used orally in most parts of the United 
States by cultivated speakers." The news me- 
dia seized on these and other statements in the 
release as novelties or innovations and then 
reacted to them. Thus, ironically, by identify- 
ing and promoting those very features that 
were most controversial, the press release 
played a significantrole in provoking the early 
negative publicity. 79 

Other scholars have tried to identify the 
reasons why many reviewers responded with 
such intense hostility. Karl W. Dykema attrib- 
uted the excessive criticism in part to cultural 
lag, terming some of the reviewers "medi- 
eval" in their thinking about language. Walter 
J. Ong agreed with Dykema but also proposed 
the theory that people were accustomed to 
dictionaries based almost entirely on the writ- 
ten language and thus were not prepared for 
Webster 's Third, which had achieved a break- 
through by representing oral communication 
to a much greater degree. A decade later, 
Rosemary M. Laughlin traced the vehemence 
of the negative reviews to the "social and 
psychological milieu" oftheearly 1960s. More 
recently, David Gold viewed the debate from 
the perspective of 25 years later, concluding 
thatmostof thejustified criticisms centered on 
the Third's underlabeling, which was seen as 
permissiveness. 80 Today, most people would 
agree with the recent assessment in General 
Reference Books for Adults that "Webster's 
Third New International Dictionary is widely 
recognized as the most authoritative general 
American dictionary of its kind." 81 

For the Merriam-Webster staff who had 
labored so long and hard over the third edition 
of the unabridged, the "lexicographical don- 



298 DISTINGUISHED CLAS SICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



nybrook" that greeted its publication must 
have been disheartening, 82 To make matters 
worse, in 1962 they were faced with the pos- 
sibility of a takeover by American Heritage 
Publishing Company, whose president, James 
Parton, had been particularly critical of the 
Third. Forbes reported that if Parton gained 
control of the Merriam firm, he intended to 
"retire the Third Edition, reissue the Second, 
and undertake a revision of the badly botched 
Third." Parton' s attempts to purchase control- 
ling shares were unsuccessful, however, and 
in September 1 964 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
Inc., acquired the G. & C. Merriam Co. 83 

Other Merriam-Webster 
Dictionaries 

Meanwhile, the task of compiling and 
revising dictionaries continued unabated. In 
1963, the first collegiate dictionary based on 
Webster's Third was published. Webster's 
Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, contain- 
ing approximately 130,000 entries, received a 
much warmer reception than did its parent 
volume, perhaps because some of the features 
that had been criticized in the Third were not 
replicated in the collegiate version. For ex- 
ample, theSeventh New Collegiate retainedits 
encyclopedic material, such as its gazetteer 
and biographical section; capitalized proper 
names; and provided a brief pronunciation 
key at the bottom of every other page. 84 How- 
ever, one disgruntled reviewer compared the 
1963 Collegiate with its 1949 predecessor, 
particularly in the wording of definitions and 
in usage labels, and concluded that the Sev- 
enth "presents a mess the like of which has 
perhaps been unknown since the Augean stable 
before Herakles' visit." 85 

Appearing in 1973, the eighth edition of 
the Collegiate was entitled simply Webster's 
New Collegiate Dictionary. With salesof more 
than a million copies a year, the eighth edition 
became thebest-selling dictionary in the United 
States. Kenneth Kister attributed this phe- 
nomenal success to one reason: ''Webster's 



New Collegiate is an outstanding dictionary." 
Realistically, however, some credit must be 
given to the innovative advertisements used to 
promote the dictionary, described by Publish- 
ers Weekly as "one of the most imaginative ad 
campaigns conducted for any hardcover book 
every published." 86 The New Collegiate added 
approximately 22,000 new words and mean- 
ings, including almost all of the previously 
taboo common terms referring to sexual and 
other bodily functions and organs. It also 
revised its treatment of synonyms to a brief 
statement providing the shared meaning of 
similar terms. 87 

Having added an eight-page Addenda 
Section to Webster's Third in 1966 and then 
doubling it to 16 pages in 1971, the Merriam 
editors produced a separate supplement, 6, 000 
Words, in 1976. Reflecting the tremendous 
growth in the English language over a 1 5 -year 
period, 6,000 Words also demonstrated that its 
publisher couldbe receptive to criticism, since 
the editors used capital letters for proper nouns 
and adjectives. Merriam continued to update 
the Addenda in Webster's Third every five 
years and published additional cumulative 
supplementary volumes, 9,000 Words and 
12,000 Words, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. 
Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms ap- 
peared in 1968, while Webster's New Geo- 
graphical Dictionary, expanded to 47,000 en- 
tries, was published in 1972. These revisions 
were followed by two new titles: Webster 's 
Secretarial Handbook in 1974 and Webster's 
Collegiate Thesaurus in 1976. 

The 1980s were an especially active de- 
cade for the Merriam Company, which offi- 
cially changed its name to Merriam-Webster 
Inc. in 1982. In 1983, two of its established 
publications appeared in new editions: 
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 
and Webster 's New Biographical Dictionary. 
The Ninth New Collegiate introduced several 
new features: usage notes accompany ap- 
proximately 100 entries "for words posing 
special problems of confused or disputed us- 
age," and generic terms are followed by the 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 299 



date of the earliest established occurrence of 
that sense of the word. 88 Surprisingly, shades 
of the controversy over the 1 96 1 edition of the 
unabridged surfaced in some of the reviews of 
the Ninth Collegiate. The review in the Nation 
referred to the new Collegiate as "a model of 
scholarship, a delight to read and a genuine 
description of our language," while American 
Speech termed it "the best Collegiate to date." 
On the other hand, Fortune commented that 
"it is hard to believe that the lexicographers' 
new permissiveness is good for our language," 
and a mixed review in New York regretfully 
observed that "the new Collegiate seems to 
demonstrate a preference for allowing two 
words to function interchangeably rather than 
reserving each to mean something slightly 
different." 89 Nonetheless, Webster 'sNinth New 
Collegiate Dictionary is the best-selling dic- 
tionary in the United States today, with more 
than 6.4 million copies sold between its pub- 
lication in 1983 and the end of 1989. 90 

Other publications revised during the 
1 980s included the three dictionaries designed 
to span the years from elementary grades 
through high school. Variously titled and for- 
matted over the years, the series now includes: 
Webster 's Elementary Dictionary (previously 
Webster's Beginning Dictionary and before 
that Webster 's New Elementary Dictionary), 
intended for students in the fourth through 
sixth grades; Webster's Intermediate Dictio- 
nary, aimed at students in grades five through 
eight; and Webster's School Dictionary (for- 
merly Webster's New Students Dictionary), 
designed for high school students. 

In the second half of the decade Merriam- 
Webster published a number of new titles. 
Webster's Standard American Style Manual 
and Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary ap- 
peared in 1986, followed in 1989 by Webster's 
Word Histories and Webster's Dictionary of 
English Usage. The approximately 2,300 en- 
tries in the latter treat many of the disputed 
usages that made Webster 's Third so contro- 
versial. Entries include illustrative quotations 
of both historical and contemporary usage and 



also summarize the opinions of noted authori- 
ties on usage. Clearly Merriam- Webster is not 
prepared to rest on its laurels and confine itself 
simply to publishing revisions of its standard 
publications. 

Merriam*Webster Today 

As the twentieth century draws to a close, 
Merriam-Websteris in the process of convert- 
ing all of its publications to machine-readable 
form. The company plans to begin publishing 
electronic versions of its dictionaries in con- 
junction with its corporate affiliate Britannica 
Software, and it may eventually release some 
electronic products on its own. 91 Meanwhile, 
Merriam- Webster has authorized other com- 
panies to use its works in electronic formats. 
For instance, in 1989 Webster's Ninth New 
Collegiate Dictionary became available on 
CD-ROM for use with the Macintosh personal 
computer. Frederick C. Mish„ Merriam 
Webster's current editorial director, points 
out that this product's graphic capability 
"makes it different from other electronic dic- 
tionaries. It reproduces the dictionary page in 
its entirety, including pronunciation charac- 
ters, etymologies, illustrations, and tables." 92 
In addition, the CD-ROM includes "digitally 
recorded pronunciations of each main entry 
word." 93 Mish observes that the CD-ROM 
gives only one pronunciation for each entry; 
therefore, the Merriam- Webster editors were 
faced with the difficult decision of choosing 
which pronunciation to include since the first 
one listed in the dictionary is not necessarily 
more common or better than the others. The 
editors also checked all of the recorded pro- 
nunciations for accuracy. 94 

Another product utilizing Merriam- 
Webster publications is the NeXT computer 
academic workstation introduced by Steven 
P. Jobs in 1988. At the time of its release, 
William A. Llewellyn, president of Merriam- 
Webster, noted that the system provides ac- 
cess to the "entire contents of the Ninth Colle- 
giate Dictionary, including the illustrations 




300 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



and the tables, phis the entire contents of the 
Collegiate Thesaurus.^ 5 In addition, 
Canpton's Multimedia Encyclopedia, pro- 
duced in 1989, provides access to the defini- 
tions of the approximately 60,000 words in 
Webster's Intermediate Dictionary and in- 
cludes an audio component that gives the 
pronunciation of approximately 1,500 of the 
terms . ss 

The Merriam-Webster firm currently pub- 
lishes more than 30 dictionaries, handbooks, 
and other reference books. The editorial staff 
continues to rely heavily on the citation file, 
which now includes more than 14 million 
citations, In addition, each editor spends a 
portion of the day reading a variety of maga- 
zines, newspapers, and books and marking 
new citations to be recorded on 3" x 5" slips, 
adding between 12,000 to 25,000 slips to the 
file each month. Editors look not only for 
"examples of new words and for unusual 
applications of familiar words" but also for 
"evidence of the current status of variant spell- 
ings, inflected forms, and the stylings of com- 
pound words" as well as for "examples that 
maybe quotable as illustrations of typical use" 
and other useful information. Beginning with 
the mid-1980s, citations have alsobeen stored 
in machine-readable form. Since the citation 
file includes not only the specific citation but 
also the surrounding text, the machine-read- 
able version can be searched to establish evi- 
dence of frequency of certain collocations as 
well as to determine changes in traditional 
words and meanings. 97 

In addition to its mammoth citation file, 
the Merriam-Webster staff maintains a pro- 
nunciation file, which currently includes ap- 
proximately 750,000 slips. Each 3" x 5" slip 
contains a transcription of the pronunciation 
of a word and also notes the date, the name of 
the speaker, and other appropriate identifying 
information. Pronunciation editors gather the 
evidence for these slips by listening to radio 
and television broadcasts, by monitoring short- 
wave radio broadcasts, and by taking notes 
during meetings, conferences, and other en- 
counters with live speech. 98 



When asked in early 1990 about rumors 
that Merriam-Webster was not planning to 
publish a fourth edition of the unabridged, 
Frederick Mish responded: "I am confident 
that there will be a fourth edition in time but 
not very soon," explaining that the company 
first had to create a machine-readable version 
of Webster 's Third and that preliminary steps 
hadbeen taken in thatregard. Mish added that 
he did "not expect the fourth edition to be as 
different from the third as the third was from 
the second," noting that the Merriam-Webster 
editors still subscribe to the same definition of 
the role of the dictionary promulgated by the 
previous edition." 

Even before 1 889, the year that the copy- 
right expired on the 1 847 edition of Webster's 
American Dictionary of the English Lan- 
guage, the Merriam Company had to contend 
with the problem of other publishers produc- 
ing "Webster's" dictionaries and thus taking 
advantage of the prestige and salability of the 
Webster name. For more than a century, the 
firm was involved in various litigations in an 
attempt to retain the name "Webster" for its 
exclusive use. Decisions in such suits as those 
involving the Saalfield Co. in 1917 and the 
World Publishing Company in 1949 have, 
while restricting the advertising claims of 
other publishers, indicated that the name 
"Webster' s" is in the public domain and there- 
fore can be used by any publisher. In its 1 949 
ruling, the Federal Trade Commission con- 
cluded: "The greater weight of the evidence is 
that to the public the word 'Webster's ' simply 
means a dictionary. It does not mean any 
particular dictionary, nor the dictionary of a 
particular publishing company." 100 Therefore, 
to protect its heritage as literary successors to 
Noah Webster, the Merriam firm uses several 
registered trademarks to identify its publica- 
tions, including the familiar colophon consist- 
ing of a wreath encircling Noah Webster's 
monogram, the words "A Merriam-Webster," 
and the word "Collegiate." 101 

As the 150th anniversary of the publica- 
tion of the first Merriam-Webster dictionary 
approaches, the firm's position as one of the 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 301 



most prestigious publishers of dictionaries in 
the world remains secure. Thus, it is safe and 
comforting to assume that Merriam-Webster 
trademarks, symbolizing a commitment to 



scholarship and editorial excellence, will grace 
the title pages of dictionaries and other refer- 
ence works for many years to come. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



The Unabridged 

An American Dictionary of the English Language, by 
Noah Webster. 2 vols. New York: S. Converse, 
1828. 

An American Dictionary of the English Language: 
First Edition in Octavo, Containing the Whole 
Vocabulary of the Quarto, with Corrections, 
Improvements, and Several Thousand Addi- 
tional Words . . ., by Noah Webster. 2 vols. New 
Haven: The Author, 1841. 

An American Dictionary of the English Language, 
by Noah Webster; revised and enlarged by 
Chauncey A. Goodrich. Springfield, MA: 
George and Charles Merriam, 1847. 

An American Dictionary of the English Language, by 
Noah Webster; thoroughly revised, and greatly 
enlarged and improved by Chauncey A, 
Goodrich and Noah Porter. Royal Quarto Edi- 
tion. 2 vols. Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 
1864. 

Webster's International Dictionary of the English 
Language, revised and enlarged under the su- 
pervision of Noah Porter. Springfield, MA: G. 
& C. Merriam & Co., 1890. 

Webster 's New International Dictionary of the En- 
glish Language, W.T. Harris, editor in chief; F. 
Sturges Allen, general editor. Springfield, MA: 
G. & C. Merriam Company, 1909. 

Webster's New International Dictionary of the En- 
glish Language, edited by William Allan Neilson, 
Thomas A. Knott, and Paul W. Carhart. 2nd ed ., 
unabridged. Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam 
Company, 1934. 

Webster 's Third New International Dictionary of the 
English Language, edited by Philip Babcock 
Gove and the Merriam-Webster editorial staff. 
Springfield, MA: G. & C, Merriam Co., 1961. 

Supplements to the above have been pub- 
lished as follows: 

6,000 Words: A Supplement to Webster's Third New 

International Dictionary. Springfield, MA: G. 

& C. Merriam Co., 1976. 
9, 000 Words: A Supplement to Webster '$ Third New 

International Dictionary. Springfield, MA: 

Merriam-Webster Inc., 1983. 
J 2,000 Words: A Supplement to Webster's Third 

New International Dictionary. Springfield, MA: 

Merriam-Webster Inc., 1986. 



The Collegiate 

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA: 
G.&C. Merriam, 1898. 

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. [2nd ed.] Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1910. 

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 3rd ed. Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1916. 

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 4th ed. Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1931 . 

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 5th ed. Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co,, 1936. 

Webster 'sNew Collegiate Dictionary. 6thed. Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1949. 

Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. 
Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1963. 

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. [8th ed.] 
Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1973. 

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Spring- 
field, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1983. 



Selected Other Dictionaries 

Webster 's Biographical Dictionary. Springfield, MA: 
G. & C. Merriam Co., 1943. 

Webster's New Biographical Dictionary. Spring- 
field, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1983. 

Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms; A Dictionary of 
Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and 
Analogous and Contrasted Words. Springfield, 
MA: G. & C Merriam Co., 1942. 

Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms; A Dictio- 
nary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms 
and Analogous and Contrasted Words. Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1968. 

Webster's Geographical Dictionary. Springfield, 
MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1949. 

Webster's New Geographical Dictionary. Spring- 
field, MA: G. & C Merriam Co., 1972. 

Note: At frequent intervals between ma- 
jor editions, Merriam-Webster dictionaries 
are issued in revised versions with new copy- 
right dates. 



302 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The amount of secondary material per- 
taining to Merriarn-Webster and its publica- 
tions is remarkably rich and varied. More than 
100 articles and reviews have been written on 
Webster's Third New International Dictio- 
nary alone. This bibliography is, of necessity, 
highly selective. The following articles and 
books were chosen either for their coverage of 
variousperiods inMerriam- Webster' s history 
or for their representative commentaries on 
Merriam-Webster's major dictionaries. This 
selection, includes a mixture of scholarly and 
general publications to insure that a certain 
percentage of the items will be readily avail- 
able in most public and academic libraries. 

Algeo, John. "American Lexicography." In 
Warterbucher: Ein Internationales Handbuch 
zur Lexikographie/Dictionaries: An Interna- 
tional Encyclopedia ofLexicography .... vol. 2, 
edited by Franz Josef Hausmann, 1987-2009. 
Berlin; Walter de Gruyter, 1990. 

Barnhart, Clarence L. "American Lexicography, 
1945-1973." American Speech 53 (Spring, 
1978): 83-140. 

Beriet, William Rose, "Noah's Ark: The Origin and 
Making of Webster's International Dictionary." 
Saturday Review of Literature 15 (January 2, 
1937): 3-4,14-16. 

Burkett, Eva Mae. American Dictionaries of the 
English Language before J 861. Metuchen, NJ: 
Scarecrow Press, 1979. 

Carter, Robert A. "The War of Words." Publishers 
Weekly (October 2, 1987): 27-28, 33-36. 

Chadbourne, Robert. "Keeping Up with the Conver- 
sation: Merriam- Webster Is on the Job." Wilson 
Library Bulletin 62 (September, 1987): 41-44. 

Dykema, Karl W, "Cultural Lag and Reviewers of 
Webster III." AAUP Bulletin 49 (December, 
1963): 364-69. 

Friend, Joseph H. The Development of American 
Lexicography, 1798-1864. The Hague: Mou- 
ton, 1967. 

G. & C. Merriam Co. 100th Anniversary of the 
Establishment ofG. & C. Merriam Company, 
Springfield, Massachusetts, 1831-1931. Spring- 
field, MA., 1931. 

Gold, David L. "The Debate over Webster's Third 
Twenty- five Years Later: Winnowing the Chaff 



from the Grain." Dictionaries 7 (1985): 225- 
36. 

. "An End to Dictionary-Bashing or Just a 

Lull? (On Some Published Reactions to 
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary).^ 
Dictionaries 10 (1988): 81-91. 

Gove, Philip B. "Lexicography and the English 
Teacher." College English 25 (February, 1 964): 
344-57. 

Gove, Philip B., ed. The Role of the Dictionary. 
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967. 

Gunderson, Robert D., ed. "New Books in Review: 
Webster's Third New International Dictionary: 
A Symposium." Quarterly Journal of Speech 
48 (December, 1962): 431-40. 

Kraus, Janice A. "Caveat Auctor; The War of the 
Dictionaries," Journal of the Rutgers Univer- 
sity Libraries 48 (December, 1986): 75-90. 

Laughlin, Rosemary M. "The Predecessors of That 
Dictionary." American Speech 42 (May, 1967): 
105-13. 

. "Prescriptivism, Psychology, and That Dic- 
tionary," In Studies in Linguistics in Honor of 
Raven I. McDavid, Jr., edited by Lawrence M. 
Davis, 377- 95. University, AL: University of 
Alabama Press, 1972. 

Leavitt, Robert Keith. Noah 's Ark, New England 
Yankees and the Endless Quest. Springfield, 
MA, 1947. 

Marckwardt, Albert H. "Dictionaries and the English 
Language." English Journal 52 (May, 1963): 
336-45. 

McDavid, Raven I., Jr. "False Scents and Cold 
Trails: The Pre-Publication Criticism of the 
Merriam Third . " Journal of English Linguistics 
5 (1971): 101-21. 

Moss, Richard J. Noah Webster. Boston: Twayne 
Publishers, 1984. 

Pei, Mario. "The Dictionary as a Battlefront: English 
Teachers' Dilemma." Saturday Review 45 (July 
21, 1962): 44-46, 55-56. 

Read, Allen Walker. "That Dictionary or The Dictio- 
nary?" Consumer Reports 28 (October, 1963): 
488-92. 

Sledd, James, and Wilma R. Ebbitt, eds. Dictionar- 
ies and THAT Dictionary: A Casebook on the 
Aims of Lexicographers and the Targets of 
Reviewers. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co., 
1962. 

Wells, Ronald A. Dictionaries and the Authoritarian 
Tradition: A Study in English Usage and 
Lexicography. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER. FAMILY OP DICTIONARIES 303 



NOTES 



1 Quoted in Harry R. Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmas- 
ter to America (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 289. 
Italics in original. 

J Richard J. Moss, Noah Webster (Boston: Twayne, 
1984), 2. 

'Richard M. Rollins, The Long Journey of Noah Webster 
(n.p. : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1 980), 34- 
35. 

"Robert Keith Leavitt, Noah 's Ark, New England Yan- 
kees and the Endless Quest (Springfield, MA: G. & 
C. Merriam Co., 1947), 7. 

5 Rollins, 35. 

6 Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute . . . Part II 

(Hartford, CT: Hudson and Goodwin, 1784); 
Webster, A Grammatical Institute , . . Part III 
(Hartford, CT: Barlow and Babcock, 1785). 

7 Leavitt, 14, 16. 

a HX, Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry 
into the Development of English in the United 
States, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), 
38 1-87; Chris M. Anson, "Erroursun&Endeavors: 
A Case Study in American Orthography," Interna- 
tional Journal of Lexicography 3 (Spring 1990): 
35-63. 

9 Leavitt, 29. 

10 Quoted in Leavitt, 29. 

11 G. & C. Merriam Co., 1 00th Anniversary of the Estab- 
lishment of G. & C. Merriam Company, Springfield, 
Massachusetts, 1831-1931 ([Springfield, 1931]), 
[2]- 

12 James A.H, Murray, The Evolution of English Lexicog- 
raphy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900; reprint ed., 
College Park, MD: McGrathPublishingCo., 1 970), 
43; George Philip Krapp, The English Language in 
America,vol. 1 (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1925), 
362-63; Joseph H. Friend, The Development of 
American Lexicography, 1798-1864 (The Hague: 
Mouton, 1967), 36; Rollins, 123. 

"Leavitt, 34-35. 

w Ibid., 37. 

!J G. & C. Merriam Co., The House That Merriam- 
Webster Built ([Windham, CT: Printed atHawthom 
House] 1940), 7. 

"Leavitt, 45. 

"Ibid., 49. 

18 Ibid., 48. 

19 Eva Mae Burkett, A merican Dictionaries of the English 
Language before 1861 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow 
Press, 1979), 1 84; G.&C. Merriam Co., The Ho use 
That Merriam-Webster Built, 9. 

10 Quoted in Leavitt, 50. 

21 Ibid, 51. 

22 New Englander 6 (January 1848); 30,40. 

"Burkett, 185. 

M Leavitt, 50. 

"Burkett, 183. 

25 Leavitt, 50; Burkett, 184. 

21 See, for example, Burkett, 221-57; Friend, 82-103; 
Janice A. Kraus, "Caveat Auctor: The War of the 
Dictionaries," Journal of the Rutgers University 



Libraries 48 (December 1986): 75-90; Sidney L 
Landau, "Webster and Worcester: The War of the 
Dictionaries," Wilscn Library Bulletin 58 (April 
1984): 545-^9; Allen Walker Read, "The War of 
the Dictionaries in the Middle West," in Papers on 
Lexicography in Honor of Warren N. Cordell, ed. 
by J.E. Congleton, J. Edward Gates, and Donald 
Hobar (Terre Haute, IN: Dictionary Society of 
North America, 1979), 3-15. 

28 Janice A, Kraus, 82. 

29 Quoted in Burkett, 222. 
30 Burkett, 223-26 

31 Friend, 83-84. 

32 Ibid., 85. Italics in original. 

33 Ibid., 86. 

34 Leavitt, 58. 

3i New York World, June 1 5, 1 860, quoted in Burkett, 249. 

36 Sidney L Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of 
Lexicography (New York: Scribner's, 1984), 64. 

57 Raven I. McDavid, "Dictionary Makers and Their 
Problems," in Language and Language Teaching: 
Essays in Honor of W. Wilbur Hatfield^ ed. by 
Virginia McDavid ([Chicago]: Chicago State Col- 
lege, 1969), 73. 

"Leavitt, 67. 

39 Ibid., 69. 

*■ Ibid., 69,71, 

4l Ibid.,73,75. 

42 Merriam-Webster Inc., "Merriam- Webster TimeLine" 

(three-page typescript), [1]. 

43 Leavitt, 75. 

44 William A. Neilson, "Preface," Webster's New Inter- 

national Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd 
ed. (Springfield, MA: G. &C. Merriam Co,, 1934), 
v. 

"Leavitt, 77. 

" 6 Quoted in "Merriam Celebrates 100 Years of Publish- 
ing Merriam-Webster Dictionaries," Word Study 
22 (February 1947): 3. 

47 Leavitt, 82; G. & C. Merriam Co., The House that 
Merriam-Webster Built, 10-11; "Merriam Cel- 
ebrates 100 Years of Publishing Merriam-Webster 
Dictionaries," 2. 

Ai Educational Review! 8 (November 1 909): 425 ; Nation 
89 (4 November 1909): 435, 

Ai Rosemary M. Laughlin, "The Predecessors of That 
Dictionary," American Speech 42 (May 1967): 
106-07. 

50 Leavitt, 83. 

5 'Neilson, "Preface," vi. 

"Thomas A. Knott, "The New Webster Dictionary," 
American Scholar 4 (May 1935): 372-73. 

i3 Advertisement in back of Webster's New International 
Dictionary, 2nd ed, 

54 "Publisher's Statement," Webster's New International 

Dictionary, 2nd ed., iv; Neilson, "Preface," vi, 

55 Neilson, "Preface, 1 * v. 

56 Saturday Review of Literature 1 1 (12 January 1935): 

419', American Afercwy 36 (December 1935): 507. 

57 Nation 139 (17 October 1934): 450-51. 



304 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



58 WilliamLyonPhelps,"As ILikelt," Scribner's Maga- 
zine 96 (December 1934): 381. 
99 New Yorker 10 (6 October 1934): 18. 

60 Kemp Malone, "Some Linguistic Studies of 1933 and 

1934," Modern Language Notes 50 (December 
1935): 515. 

61 American Speech 10 (April 1935): 140. 

62 Quoted in Word Study 19 (May 1 944): 4. 

63 Word Study 36 (February 1961): [8], 

64 Philip B. Gove, ''Preface," Webster's Third New Inter- 

national Dictionary (Springfield, MA: G. & C. 
Merriam Co., 1961), 6a-7a. 

""Announcing the Publication of Webster's Third New 
International Dictionary," Word Study 37 (October 
1961): 1-2- 

6 *Gove, "Preface," 7a, 

'""Webster's Lays an Egg," Richmond News Leader, 3 
January 1962, reprinted in James Sledd and Wilma 
Ebbitt, Dictionaries and THAT Dictionary (Chi- 
cago: Scott, Foresiruin and Co. 1962), 121-22; 
"Keep Your Old Webster's," Washington Post ( 1 7 
January 1962), reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 125- 
26; Wilson Follett, "Sabotage in Springfield," At- 
lantic (January 1962), 73-77, reprinted in Sledd 
and Ebbitt, 11 1-1 9; "It 'Ain't' Good," Washington 
Sunday Star (10 September 1961), reprinted in 
Sledd, 55- 56. 

68 "Webster's New Word Book,"Afew York Times, 12 

October 1961, reprinted in Sledd andEbbitt, 78-79; 
"A Directive Issued to the Staff of the New York 
Times," Winners & Sinners (4 January 1962), re- 
printed in Sledd and Ebbitt, 122-23. 

69 "A Non-Word Deluge," Life (27 October 1961), 4, 

reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 84, 

70 PhilipB. Gove, "ALetterto the Editor ofthe New York 
Times," New York Times (5 November 1961), re- 
printed in Sledd and Ebbitt, 88-90. 

71 Philip B. Gove, "A Letter to the Editor of Life Maga- 
zine," Life (17 November 1961), 13, reprinted in 
Sledd and Ebbitt, 91-92. 

n "Logomachy-Debased Verbal Currency," American 
Bar Association Journal (January 1962), 48-49, 
reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 105-08; B. Hunter 
Smeaton,"AReviev/ of Webster's ThirdNew Inter- 
nationa] Dictionary," Library Journal 87 (15 Janu- 
ary 1962): 2 11, reprinted in Sledd andEbbitt, 123— 
25 (italics in original); Wilson Follett, "Sabotage in 
Springfield," Atlantic (January 1962), 73-77, re- 
printed in Sledd and Ebbitt, 111-19, 

73 Dwight Macdonald, "The String Untuned," jv*e>v Yorker 

(10 March 1962), 130-34, 137-40, 143-50, 153- 
60, reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 166-88. 

74 Harold E. Maynard, "The Battle of the Dictionaries," 

Public Relations Journal 19 (August 1963); 11. 

75 Norman E. Isaacs, "And Now, the War on Words," 

Louisville Times, 18 October 1961, reprinted in 
Sledd and Ebbitt, 79-80; Ethel Strainchamps, 
"Words, Watchers, and Lexicographers," St. Louis 
Post-Dispatch (29 October 1 96 1), reprintedin Sledd 
and Ebbitt, 86-88; Millicent Taylor, "The New 
Dictionary," Christian Science Monitor (29 No- 
vember 1961), 13, reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 
99-101; Roy H. Copperud, "English As It's Used 



Belongs in the Dictionary," Editor & Publisher (25 
November 1 96 1 ), 44, reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 
96-99; Bergen Evans, "But What's a Dictionary 
For?" Atlantic (May 1962), 57-62, reprinted in 
Sledd and Ebbitt, 238-48. 

76 "New World of Words," London Times Literary Supple- 
ment (16 Much 1982), 187, reprintedin Sledd and 
Ebbitt, 197-98; RandoIphQuirk, The New States- 
man (2 March 1962), 304, reprinted in Sledd and 
Ebbitt, 151-54; Christopher Small, "A Review of 
Webster's Third New International Dictionary," 
Glasgow Herald (27 February 1962), reprinted in 
Sledd and Ebbitt, 136-37;Moray McLaren, "Twenty 
Guineas Worth of Webster," Scotsman (10 March 
1962), 4, reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, 161-62; 
Alan S.C. Ross, "Words without End ," Manchester 
Guardian Weekly ( 1 5 March 1 962), 1 0, reprinte d in 
Sledd and Ebbitt, 194-96. 

"ClarenceL. Barnhart, "American Lexicography, 1 945- 
1973," American Speech 53 (Spring 1978): 100- 
13. 

78 Atcheson L. Hench, "Notes on Reading Webster HI" 

College English 24 (May 1963): 613-18; R. W. 
Burchfield, "Webster's Third New International 
Dictionary," Review of English Studies, n.s., 14 
(1963): 3 19-23; Harold B. Allen, "Webster's Third 
New International Dictionary: A Symposium," 
Quarterly Journal of Speeches (December 1962): 
431-33; Ladislas Orszagh, "Webster's Third New 
International Dictionary of the English Language," 
Hungarian Studies in English 1 (1963): 133-39. 

79 Sledd and Ebbitt, Dictionaries and THAT Dictionary; 

Raven I. McDavid, Jr., "False Scents and Cold 
Trails; The Pre-PublicationCriticismoftheMerriam 
Third" Journal of English Linguistics 5 (1971): 
101-21. 

80 Karl W. Dykema, "Cultural Lag and the Reviewers of 

Webster III," AAUP Bulletin 49 (December 1963): 
364-69; Walter J. Ong, "Hostility, Literacy and 
Webster 111," College English 26 (November 1 964): 
106-11; Rosemary M. Laughlin, "Prescriptivism, 
Psychology, and That Dictionary," in Studies in 
Linguistics in Honor of Raven I. McDavid, Jr., ed. 
Lawrence M. Davis (University, AL: University of 
Alabama Press, 1972), 377-95; David Gold, "The 
Debate over Webster's Third Twenty-five Years 
Later: Winnowing the Chaff from the Grain," Dic- 
tionaries 7 (1985): 225-36. 

81 Marion Sader, ed., General Reference Books for Adults: 
Authoritative Evaluations of Encyclopedias, At- 
lases, and Dictionaries (New York: Bowker, 1988), 
395. 

"James B. McMillan, "Dictionaries and Usage," Word 
Study 39 (February 1964): [1]. 

""Battle of the Book," Forbes 89 (15 April 1962): 47; 
"Encyclopaedia Britannica Will Buy G. & C. 
lAemam," Publishers Weekly, 21 September 1964, 
36-37. 

84 David M. Glixon, "The Best of References," Saturday 
Review 46 (23 March 1963): 36; Booklist and 
Subscription Books Bulletin 59 (15 July 1963): 
909-1 l;Priscilla Tyler, "AnEnglishTeacherLooks 
at Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary," 
Word Study 38 (April 1963): [l]-8. 



THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER FAMILY OF DICTIONARIES 305 



!J John J. Enck, "The Ruptured Duck Flies Again: 
Webster's Seventh Collegiate," College English 27 
(January 1966): 302-09. 

as Kenneth F. Kister, Dictionary Buying Guide: A Con- 
sumer Guide to General English-Language Word- 
books in Print (New York: Bowker, 1977), 92; 
Publishers Weekly (22 July 1974), 60. 

87 Clarence L. Barnhart, "American Lexicography, 1945- 
1973 ^American Speech 53 (Spring 1978); 121. 

88 Frederick C. Mish, "Preface," Webster's Ninth New 
Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam- 
Webster, 1983), 6. 

8 »JimQuinn, "Lingo," Nation 237 (23-30July 1983): 90; 
Thomas L. Clark, "Praise for Webster's Ninth," 
American Speech 59 (Spring 1984): [70]; Andrew 
Hacker, "A Do-Your-Own-Thing Dictionary," 
Fortune 108 (3 October 1983): 272; Peter Devine, 
"Webster's NinthNew Collegiate Dictionary," New 
York 16 (21 November 1983): 105. 

90 Daisy Maryles, "A Decade of Megasellers," Publishers 
Weekly, 5 January 1990, 26. 

M Jane Tencza, secretary to Joseph J. Esposito, President 
of Merriam-Webster Inc., letter to the author, 2 
April 1991, 

92 Dr. Frederick C. Mish, Editorial Director, Meiriam- 
Webster Inc., telephone conversation with the au- 
thor, 20 March 1990. 



93 Brochure from Highlighted Data, Inc., Washington, 

DC 

94 Mish, telephone conversation with author, 20 March 

1990. 

95 "News Release: Webster 's Ninth New Collegiate Dic- 

tionary and Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus Fea- 
tured on New NeXT Computer System," Merriam- 
Webster Inc., 1 November 1988. 

96 Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin 86 (15 November 

1989): 689. 

97 "The English Language in the Dictionary," Webster's 

Ninth New Collffgiats Dictionary (Spnr\gtie\d,MA: 
Merriam-Webster Inc., 1989),28; also Dr. Frederick 
C. Mish, telephone conversation with author, 20 
March 1990. 

n "Guide to Pronunciation," Webster 's NinthNew Colle- 
giate Dictionary, 33; also Dr, Frederick C. Mish, 
telephone conversation with author, 20March 1990. 

s *Mish, telephone conversation with author, 20 March 
1990. 

100 "Another Decision in Webster's Dictionary Case," 

Publishers Weekly (20 January 1917), 160-65; 
quoted in "FTC Defines World's Use of 'Webster 5 
Name," Publishers Weekly (10 December 1949), 
2375-76. 

101 WordStudy22(April 1947): 4; Merriam-Webster Inc., 

"Is There More Than One Webster?" (1-page type- 
script, no date). 



Afternoon Tea, Parliament, and . . . 

Who 's Who 



Linda K. Simons 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

This is the story of a book which slumbered 
through its childhood and youth, underwent a 
midlife transformation at age 47, and emerged 
to become not only one of the best known 
reference works in English but also the re- 
spected ancestor of a whole family of refer- 
encebooks. Soon tobea century and ahalf old, 
it remains the prototype for biographical dic- 
tionaries which contain short entries supplied 
by the subjects themselves. It has spawned 
dozens of imitators in countries all over the 
world. This is the story of Who 's Who. 

Antecedents 

Information about famous people has ex- 
isted for along time. The earliest biographical 
dictionaries in modern Europe concerned 
themselves with royal and noble families. One 
of the oldest was the Almanack de Gotha, 
begun in 1763 , which listed the families of the 
royal houses of Europe and also listed "the 
principal executive, legislative, and diplomatic 
officials" 1 of selected countries of the world. 
This work was published regularly until 1 960. 
In England two publishers in particular are 
associated with records of landed and titled 
families, Debrett's published The New Peer- 
age starting in 1 769. Known by various names 
in later editions, Debrett's Peerage continues 
to be published. It was supplemented by The 
New Baronetage of England also begun in 
1769. This work has also changed names but 



continues to exist. John Burke began publish- 
ing Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic His- 
tory of the Peerage, Baronetage, and 
Knightage in 1826. Several years later Burke 
published his Genealogical and Heraldic Dic- 
tionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain 
and Ireland, The men (and some women) 
listed in these works were included because 
they were born into the aristocracy. There 
were also books which listed people by virtue 
of the positions they held. Some examples of 
these works include the New Law List, a direc- 
tory of the legal professions, started in 1798; 
the Medical Directory, started in 1845; and, 
later, Crochford's Clerical Directory, started 
in 1858, and listing the name and address of 
every clergy member in the Church of En- 
gland. 

The first Who 's Who appeared in 1 849, a 
small book published by Alfred Head Baily. 
His firm, Baily Brothers, had offices in the 
Cornhill section of London. 2 As editor for the 
first edition Baily Brothers chose Col. Henry 
Robert Addison, an Irishman in his forties. He 
had been a soldier and a police magistrate as 
well as a writer of verse, plays, novels, and 
even an opera. 3 The first edition of Who 's Who 
was merely a group of lists: members of the 
Houses of Parliament, bishops, and so forth. 
No biographical information was given ex- 
cept for members of Parliament whose age, 
political affiliation, and constituency were 
listed. 4 Who 's Who was evidently a success 
because it was published annually in an un- 
changed format through 1896. 



WHO'S WHO 307 



The Blacks 

By that year the copyright for Who 's Who 
had passed from Baily Brothers to the firm of 
Simkin, Hamilton, Kent, and Company who 
decided to put it up for sale. One of the 
publishers interested in buying the copyright 
was A and C Black. Adam Black had founded 
the company in Edinburgh in 1807. Under his 
leadership and then his sons ' management, the 
firm had prospered and had moved to London 
in 1889. It was known chiefly for being the 
publisher of Sir Walter Scott's novels, but its 
list also included serious books of scholarly 
interest. Blacks had published three editions 
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, including 
the great ninth edition. That work, even today 
considered one of the greatest encyclopedias 
ever published, consumed much of the firm' s 
energies between 1875 and 1888. By 1896, 
however, the sales of the Britannica had 
slowed. The first and second generations of 
the family were dead or retired, and the firm 
was in the hands of two grandsons of the 
founder, cousins who were both named Adam. 
Looking for new works to publish, the cousins 
had contemplated buying Men and Women of 
the Times. This publication, which attempted 
to be a sort of national biographical dictionary 
of the living, had appeared irregularly since 
1 852. When its current owner, G. Routledge 
and Sons Ltd., insisted on a price of 1,000 
pounds sterling, however, the Blacks decided 
against purchase. (Blacks did eventually buy 
Men and Women of the Times, in 1900). 5 
When Adam Black learned that Who's Who 
was to be auctioned at the London auction 
house of Hodgsons, he saw an opportunity to 
acquire a work similar to Men and Women of 
the Times. The day of the sale he met his friend 
George Whitaker, publisher of Whitaker's 
Almanack, at Hodgsons. The two men discov- 
ered that they were both interested in purchas- 
ing Who 's Who and sensibly decided not to bid 
against each other. They tossed a coin to 
decide who would bid. Black won the toss and 
bought the copyright for 30 pounds. 6 Thus 



chance dictated that A and C Black rather than 
J. Whitaker and Sons became the publishers of 
Who's Who. 

Adam Black immediately started work- 
ing on changing the scope and format of the 
book. He hired anew editor, Douglas Sladen, 
a man whose background looked curiously 
similar to that of the first editor, Addison. 
Sladen was 40 years old and a prolific writer 
of novels, poetry, and travel books. 7 He had 
taken a firstinhistory at Oxford andhad taught 
at the University of Sydney in Australia. 8 
Since some of his books hadbeenpublishedby 
Blacks, the publishers had some idea of his 
abilities. 9 Together with the Black cousins, 
Sladencompiledalistofpotential biographees. 
Names from the original lists were supple- 
mentedbypeople whose biographies mightbe 
of interest to the public. The Blacks decided 
that people would be chosen for their refer- 
ence merit alone. No one could pay for an 
entry, and biographees would not be able to 
purchase the book at a reduced price. This 
fundamental decisionplaced Who 's Who above 
charges of being a vanity work. 

A second fundamentalpolicy was that the 
biographees themselves would supply the in- 
formation for the entries. The Black cousins 
and Sladen created a list of headings (virtually 
unchanged today) and designed a question- 
naire which biographees were asked to com- 
plete. The form asked for standard biographi- 
cal items such as address, birth date, parents' 
names, spouse' s name, schools attended, clubs, 
occupation, publications, and so on. In 1896 
Who's Who invited 5,000 people to partici- 
pate. The firm mailed the questionnaire and 
invitation in a specially designed blue enve- 
lope with a dark blue seal, similar to those used 
for British Cabinet mailings, to distinguish it 
from other mail. They hoped that recipients 
would be curious enough to open the enve- 
lope, read the invitation, and accept the Blacks' 
offer. Since Sladen had obtained permission 
from the Duke of Rutland and A J. Balfour to 
use their biographies as samples, these were 
included in the mailing as well. 10 



308 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



The originality of the Blacks' plan lay first in 
a wider choice of subjects than those covered 
by the existing reference books, which were 
limited to the titled and the wealthy, and 
secondly in giving a degree of latitude to the 
biographee so that, while critical comment 
was excluded, the entries might have some 
personal and revealing quality — an intention 
which was greatly assisted by the decision to 
ask an entrant to declare his recreation. 11 

Of the 5,000 asked to participate in the 
1897 edition, all but two, Lord Salisbury and 
Joseph Chamberlain, eventually agreed to do 
so. Sladen used a number of tactics to induce 
people to complete their forms. When W.S. 
Gilbert refused to fill out his questionnaire, 
Sladen sent him a completed form which said, 
"W.S. Gilbert, journalist, writes thelibretti for 
Sir Arthur Sullivan's operas." Gilbert, who 
always believed that his most important work 
consisted of his serious plays, immediately 
filled out his questionnaire in greater detail! 12 
Sladen also completed a form for one woman, 
deliberately adding 10 years to her age. When 
he sentitto her for her approval, she sent back 
a corrected form, omitting her age altogether 
but adding other interesting biographical de- 
tails. 13 In the end, nearly everyone submitted 
to Sladen's flattery or threats and returned the 
questionnaire. 

Besides overseeing preparation of the lists 
and entries, Sladen composed the preface to 
the 1 897 edition. In it, he explained the changes 
in the book and noted what distinguished it 
from its competitors. He emphasized the great 
number of writers included in Who 's Who, 
noting that journalism and literature had not 
been adequately covered in the other works. 
He stated his goal of including all prominent 
English people, regardless of their family back- 
ground, and he pointed out that many women 
were included in the list. (On this last point, 
Sladen's perception of "many women" was 
not shared by Julian Huxley. In 1935 he as- 
serted that only 3 percent of that year's entries 
were claimed by females. 14 A random check 
of the 1990 edition suggests that percentage 
has increased to 6 percent, still a relatively 
small number.) Finally, Sladen noted the many 



tables and lists carried over from the old 
Who 's Who. These were placed in the front of 
the volume and the biographies of the persons 
named in the lists were integrated into the 
alphabetical order. A and C Black issued the 
1 897 edition in the late fall of 1896, advertis- 
ing it in the firm's fall catalog: 

Who's Who 1897. Forty-ninth year of issue. 
Entirely remodelled. Crown 8vo. Price 3 s. 6d. 
net. Contains a complete list of all who have 
the right to bear any British title; also biogra- 
phies,mostly autobiographies, of all the promi- 
nent persons in the United Kingdom. 13 



Sladen's Departure 

Although the book did not make money at 
first, it eventually became an important item 
of Black's list. In 1898 the Black cousins and 
Sladen disagreed over terms of employment 
and payment and the Blacks decided to take 
the editorship inside the house. 16 Sladen went 
on to a distinguished career as a travel writer. 
Adam Rimmer Black took on the job of editor, 
one he kept until his death in 1936. As the 
years passed, he devoted more and more time 
to Who 's Who until he was spending virtually 
all his time on it. 17 He worked anonymously, 
and at his death the editorial duties were 
assumed by another anonymous staff mem- 
ber. To this day, the firm guards closely the 
name of the editor. 

Who 's Who has been published continu- 
ously since 1897, including through the two 
world wars. During the Second World War the 
female staff of the publication was evacuated 
to a village in the Cotswolds where work could 
proceed without fear of bombing attacks. 18 
The wartime paper shortage was another prob- 
lem. Before 1943 no entries had ever been 
dropped except when a person died, but the 
paper shortage impelled the firm to drop sev- 
eral thousand names of marginal interest. 
Nevertheless, it took the personal intervention 
of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to assure 
the full publication and distribution of Who 's 
Who despite the paper rationing. 19 



WHO'S WHO 309 



An Enduring Format and Process 

The format of the work has remained 
essentially the same since 1897, The preface 
is followed by a table of abbreviations; an 
annual necrology; a genealogical chart of the 
British Royal Family; and the alphabetically 
arranged biographies. The many tables car- 
ried over from the original work were dropped 
from the volume in 1903 to provide more 
space for the biographies. The number of 
persons included has grown from 5,500 to 
more than 28,000. Currently the number of 
biographies is increasing by 150-200 each 
year 20 and the physical size of the volume has 
grown to accommodate the additional entries. 
Throughout its existence, however, Who's 
Who has kept its red binding with gold letter- 
ing, and the current issue would be instantly 
recognizable to Douglas Sladen. The entries 
would also appear essentially the same to him. 
The editorial staff of Who 's Who monitors 
newspapers and other sources of information 
to discover names of potential biographees 
each year. A Selection Board chooses about 
half of the new entries for each edition. The 
other 50 percent are automatically chosen 
when people are elected or appointed to cer- 
tain posts (such as member of Parliament) or 
succeed to certain titles of nobility. Although 
the majority of biographees are British, agreat 
many foreigners are included. In a 1 93 5 article 
for Saturday Review, Julian Huxley estimated 
about 12 percent of the entries were non- 
Britishers, and in a second article written in 
1946, he noted the inclusion of Hitler (com- 
plete with telephone number!), Mussolini, 
Stalin, and other heads or former heads of 
state. 21 An estimated 30 percent of the 1990 
Who 's Who subjects are not British. 

A new biographee is invited to complete 
a questionnaire which is then editedby Who 's 
Who so that it conforms to the style of the 
publication. Each year thereafter abiographee 
checks and corrects the next edition's proof. 
The editorial staff also monitors changes 
through its reading of the press. Since 1943 
biographies have occasionally been shortened 
or otherwise made to conform with the book's 



overall style. But the entries are essentially 
autobiographies since each entrant chooses 
what to say about himself or herself Who 's 
Who does not verify all details, but only those 
which the editor suspects to be untrue. If a 
person does not return the questionnaire, the 
staff will write a biography, but Who 's Who 
will not print it without the person's consent. 
In fact, in the last 20 years the editors have 
included only fourpeople against their wishes, 
"all holders of prominent public office." 22 

The questionnaire and resultant biogra- 
phies emphasize one's career and publica- 
tions, but the subject which has aroused the 
most comment is the category "recreation." 
Devised by Adam Black as a way to personal- 
ize the entry, "recreation" hasprovided amuse- 
ment to many readers. As early as 1898 the 
Times book reviewer noted that Cecil Rhodes' 
leisure activities, including riding two hours 
each morning, collecting old china, and keep- 
ing lions and uncaged zebras, scarcely lefthim 
time to do any work! 23 JulianHuxley delighted 
in quoting recreations from the 1 93 5 and 1945 
editions, including George Bernard Shaw's 
"Anything except sport" and Ernest 
Hemingway's "Drinking." 24 He quoted one 
Lawrence Meynell whose entry "ends on a 
pathetic note— 'walking, canoeing, tree-fell- 
ing, reading, trying to write a play!'" zs 

Despite allthe fuss about recreation, how- 
ever, the standard biographical details are 
what constitute the real reference value of 
Who 's Who. Generally, an entry follows this 
form; 

Name; Position; Beginning date of current 
position; Birthdate; Parents ' names; Marriage 
date and spouse's name; Number of sons and 
daughters; Education; Information about ca- 
reer, positions previously held, and accom- 
plishments; PubUcations;Recreation; Address; 
Telephone; Clubs. 

Within this format, there is much leeway. 
Some people choose to leave out various cat- 
egories such as recreation or clubs. Some 
detail their education very carefully while 
others skim over it with phrases such as "edu- 
cated privately" or "at home." Some authors 
meticulously list everything they have written 



310 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



while others list only their most important 
works. One of the longest entries in the 1990 
edition is that of Barbara Cartland, the writer 
of romance fiction, who seems to have listed 
everything she has ever published. 

When, a biographee dies, the publisher 
transfers the entry with death date added to the 
next volume of Who Was Who. Thus, the 
record of notable living becomes a record of 
past notables as well. The first Who Was Who 
was published in June 1920, and additional 
volumes have been issued at approximately 
10-year intervals. Generally, the biographical 
information is the same as it last appeared in 
Who 's Who with the death date added. 26 

Imitators 

Who's Who has inspired a great many 
imitators, including Who 's Who in America 
and similar volumes for many other countries. 
Albert Nelson Marquis published the first 
Who 's Who in America in 1 899, just two years 
after Black started its new format, and Mar- 
quis admitted his book was a copy of the 
British title. 27 Besides the national biogra- 
phies inspired by Who 's Who there are innu- 
merable specialty biographical dictionaries 
such as Who 's Who in Finance and Industry 
(Chicago: Marquis) and even Who's Who 
Among American High School Students (Lake 
Forest,IL: Educational Communications, Inc.). 
The most recent edition of Eugene Sheehy's 
Guide to Reference Books lists 123 titles be- 
ginning "Who's Who"; this count does not 
include foreign titles such as the German Wer 
1st Wer? 2S Nor does it count local publications 
nor biographical compendia whose titles be- 
gin with other words. 

Wiio 's Who remains the reference book of 
choice if a reader wishes to find basic bio- 
graphical information about a British subject 
or a famous non-Britisher. Indeed, it fulfills its 
task so well that it has eliminated any impor- 
tant competition in its own niche. Debreit's 
Handbook concentrates on the nobility and 
business people and has many fewer entries. 
As its patron, Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, 
notes in the preface, Debrett 's concerns itself 



more with social status while Who 's Who is 
more concerned with academic status or per- 
sonal achievement. 29 Whitaker's Almanack 
contains many of the lists that the original 
Who 's Who contained, but does notprint biog- 
raphies. The Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy still limits itself to those who have been 
dead long enough that an objective view of 
their lives can be attempted. The other bio- 
graphical dictionaries are more specialized 
and not as broad-based. Moreover, since the 
nineteenth century the British, because of 
their huge empire and, later, Commonwealth, 
have had a remarkably cosmopolitan attitude 
toward events and persons. Because Who's 
Who contains biographies of African, Asian, 
andlndianpoliticians, writers, and otherpromi- 
nent people, its usefulness is certainly not 
limited to the British Isles. 

Although the term "who's who" was not 
originated by the publication, it owes its fame 
to the association with the book. The Oxford 
English Dictionary cites Who 's Who in one of 
its definitions for "who" and quotes several 
uses of the term "who's who" meaning "who 
each of a number of persons is, or what posi- 
tion each holds." One colorful example is 
from the 1917 National Police Gazette: "We 
don't believe that Ed W. Dunn's latest effu- 
sion would win a place for him in the poet's 
'Who's who!' corner." 30 To say that a list is a 
"who's who" of something implies that it 
contains people with the best or most of a 
certain quality. In this respect, "Who's Who" 
has entered the language of people who have 
never consulted the original publication. 

Who 's Who continues to publish annu- 
ally, adding more names each time. The page 
size was enlarged in 1985, and the editor does 
not anticipate enlarging it again soon. Nor are 
there current plans to issue the book in an 
electronic form. 31 Who 's Who will continue to 
do what it does best, provide basic biographi- 
cal information about "people who, through 
their careers, affect the political, economic, 
scientific and artistic life of the country," 31 
Like afternoon tea and Parliament, Who's 
Who represents the best of British tradition 
and contemporary excellence. 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 



WHO'S WHO 311 



Who 's Who; An Annual Biographical Dictionary. 
1849- Annual. Absorbed Men and Women of 



the Time with volume 53, 190 1 . Subtitle varies; 
volumes for 1849-1898, 1904-1912 issued with- 
out subtitle. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The best source for information about 
Who 's Who is the history of Adam & Charles 
Black Ltd. which provides good background 
on the company and a fair history of the 
publication from 1896 to 1957, JulianHuxley's 
two articles address the issue of who is in- 
cluded and quote many of the more amusing or 
unusual entries. In an early article, Joseph 
Jacobs studied Who 's Who to see what influ- 
ence place of birth, career choice, and educa- 
tion have had on obtaining an entry in the 
book. Unfortunately, this study appears not to 
have been replicated, although a number of 
similar studies exist for Who 's Who in America, 
Douglas Sladen's preface to the 1897 edition 
is essential to understanding his vision of what 
the new Who 's Who should be. 

Adam & Charles Black; 1807-1957; Some Chapters 
in the History of a Publishing House, London: 
Adam & Charles Black, 1957. 



"A Century of 'Who's Who,"' Times (London), July 
7, 1948, p, 3. 

Harris, Leon. "What's What with America's Who 's 
Who ." Smithsonian 12 (November, 1981): 204- 
206-h 

Huxley, Julian. "The Analysis of Fame; A Revela- 
tion of theHumanDocuments in 'Who's Who. '" 
Saturday Review of Literature 12 (May 11, 
1935): 12-13. 

. "Berlin 116191 Does Not Answer." Satur- 
day Review of Literature 29 (April 13, 1946): 
11-14. 

Jacobs, Joseph. "The Paths of Glory." Living Age 
Littell's 224 (February 24, 1900): 515-522. 

Sladon, Douglas. My Long Life; Anecdotes and Ad- 
venture. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1939. 

— . "Preface" in Who's Who. London: A. & C. 

Black, 1897, iii-vi, 

"Who's Not Who in England." Literary Digest 104 
(February 1, 1930): 44-45. 

"'Who's Who' Celebrates 100th Anniversary." 
Publisher's Weekly 154 (December 25, 1948): 
2479. 



NOTES 



'Eugene P. Sheehy, ed,, Guide to Reference Books, 10th 
ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1 9 86), 
867. 

^Adam & Charles Black; 1807-1957; Some Chapters in 
the History of a Publishing House (London: Adam 
& Charles Black, 1957), 71. 

'David James O'Donoghue, ed., The Poets of Ireland; A 
Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of 
Irish Writers of English Verse (Dublin: Hodges, 
Figgis & Co., 1912), 6. 

A Adam & Charles Black, 71. 

5 Ibid., 70-71. 

6 "A Century of 'Who's Who,'" Times (London), 7 July 
1948, p. 3. 

^Who Was Who 1941-1950 (Loudon: Adam & Charles 
Black, 1952), 1062. 

*Adam & Charles Black, 73. 

'Ibid., 60. 

'"Douglas Sladen, My Long Life; Anecdotes and Adven- 
tures (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1939), 190-91. 

n Adam & Charles Black, 72. 



u Sladen, 191. 

13 Ibid., 191-92. 

"Julian Huxley, "The Analysisof Fame; A Revelation of 
the Human Documents in ' Who's "Who,"' Saturday 
Review of Literature 12(11 May 1935): 12. 

li Adam & Charles Black, 73. 

"Sladen, 193-94. 

11 Adam & Charles Black, 99. 

,s Ibid„ 103. 

"Ibid., 108. 

i0 A & C Black (Publishers) Ltd., letter to the author, 14 
March 1990. 

2i Huxley, "Analysis," 12; Julian Huxley, "Berlin 1 1 
6191 Does Not Answer," Saturday Review of Lit- 
erature 29 (13 April 1946): 11-12. 

" A & C Black (Publishers) Ltd., letter to the author, 14 
March 1990. 

""Who's Who, 1899," Times (London), 6 December 
1898, p. 4. 

24 Huxley, "Analysis," 13, 

"Huxley, "Berlin," 14. 



312 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



" Sheehy, 300. 30 Oxford English Dictionary,2nA<s±{Ox£ai&: Clarendon 
27 Leon Harris, "What's What with America's Who's Press, 1989), see "who." 

Who," Smithsonian 12 (9 November 1981): 204. " A & C Black (Publishers) Ltd., letter to the author, 14 
2S Sheehy, 1553. March 1990. 

^DeBrett 'sHandbook 1982 (London: Dehrett's Peerage » Who 's Who (London: Adam &Charles Black, 1990X7. 

Limited, 1981), 12-13. 



m 



i] 



s for All People: 
brld Almanac 



Margaret Morrison 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

"Doth the moon shine the night we play our 
play?" asks Snout in A Midsummer Night's 
Dream (III, i, 52-53), to which Bottom cries 
"A calendar, acalendar! look in the almanack; 
find out moonshine, find out moonshine" (III, 
i, 54-55). Bottom certainly knew his refer- 
ence sources; he and his friends neededmoon- 
light for their production of Pyramus and 
Thisby, and an almanac was definitely the 
place to look. In fact, by the time Bottom 
called for his almanac in 1590, centuries of 
common folk and royalty alike had relied on 
almanacs for their knowledge of the seasons, 
the phases of the moon, and much more. 
Today, 400 years later, people still consult 
almanacs for a great variety of questions, from 
the colors of their favorite college teams to the 
height of the world's mountains, Without 
doubt, the almanac most consulted in the United 
States is the World Almanac and Book of 
Facts, now well into its second century of 
publication. 

Calendars, the physical recording of peri- 
ods of time, have existed for at least 5,000 
years. They were essential to agriculture and 
have been found in ancient civilizations 
throughout the world. So important was the 
match between calendar time and solar time 
that in the sixteenth century Pope Gregory 
himself adjusted the existing calendartomake 
up for lost days . Calendars and almanacs were 
once nearly identical, although by Bottom's 



time an almanac usually included at least two 
kinds of calendars: a list of days, weeks, and 
months with annotations for ecclesiastical fes- 
tivals, saint's days, and other religious obser- 
vances; and an astronomical table showing the 
phases of the moon, position of the planets, 
eclipse predictions, and weather forecasts. 1 

History of the Almanac 

Manuscript almanacs may have existed in 
Alexandria in the second century a.d. The 
earliest Christian almanac appeared in 354 on 
parchment. The thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies saw a number of manuscript almanacs, 
while the ornate Books of Hours, which re- 
flected many features of the almanac, flour- 
ished between the thirteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. Johann Gutenberg composed the 
astronomical calendar in 1448 in Mainz, and 
another printer, Johann Mueller, known as 
Regiomontanus, produced the Kalendarium 
novum, the oldest existing copy of which is 
dated 1476. Printed in red and black on 12 
leaves, or 24 pages, it was illustrated, con- 
tained a calendar, table of eclipses, the posi- 
tion of the planets — and a complete and deco- 
rated title page. A title page did not appear in 
another book for 20 years. 

The first English almanac, The 
Shepheard's Kakndar by Richard Pynson, 
appeared in 1495. During the first half of the 
sixteenth century, the infamous Michel de 
Nostradamus created almanacs forecasting 



3 14 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



royal deaths, natural disasters, and political 
events. During this and the next century, as- 
trology gained in influence, and predictions of 
all sorts abounded. These worried the royalty 
and clergy of the time. Henry III of France 
forbade political prophecies, as didLouisXIII, 
while the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 
Bishop of London oversaw the publication of 
English almanacs. 2 Throughout Europe alma- 
nacs grew in popularity, some becoming quite 
specialized, appealing to particular political 
parties or religious groups. 

Almanacs in North America 

In North America in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, almanac printing was a major industry. 
Almanacs served as almost the only secular 
source of information in the colonies, and the 
number of almanacs published in the 1600s 
and 1700s exceeded the number of all other 
books combined, including religious litera- 
ture. Since the first American newspapers and 
magazines did not appear until the first half of 
the eighteenth century, the early colonial al- 
manacs found an audience for literary expres- 
sion as well as for factual data. Early Ameri- 
can almanacs were of very high quality, thanks 
to their capable editors. Before 1687 most 
almanacs produced in Massachusetts were 
edited by Harvard graduates who were "tu- 
tors," or graduate students. These included 
Cotton and Nathaniel Mather, the Puritan min- 
isters, and Uriah Oakes, a future president of 
Harvard, who included extra space below his 
calendars to provide a summary of the events 
of each century. These almanacs, known as 
Cambridge or philomath almanacs, seem to 
have offered an opportunity for young schol- 
ars to display both their mathematical abilities 
and their poetic talents. 

As almanacs became increasingly worldly 
in the eighteenth century, two new kinds ap- 
peared. One, the pocket almanac, specialized 
in current affairs. The other, the register, was 
larger than the pocket almanac, contained no 
literature and included more miscellaneous 



government data. 3 This reference volume ob- 
viously prefigures almanacs like the World. 
Almanacs of this time often voiced political 
opposition to British rule and took on a variety 
of social issues. Benjamin Banneker, 
America's only black almanac-maker, cre- 
ated almanacs which contained essays on sla- 
very; and Mary K. Goddard, postmistress of 
Baltimore, printed beautiful almanacs with 
special features for women. 

Prominent families of Americans special- 
ized in printing almanacs. James Franklin, Sr., 
brother of Benjamin, printed The Rhode Is- 
land Almanac, "Poor Robin," in 1728. Anne 
Franklin, his widow, was one of six women, 
including M.K. Goddard, who printed alma- 
nacs before 1800. James Jr., Ben's nephew, 
wrote the "Poor Job" almanacs in the 1750s. 

Benjamin Franklin, however, enjoyed the 
greatest fame with his Poor Richard's Alma- 
nac, which survived from 1732 to 1 758. Adbpt- 
ingthecharacterofRichardSaunders,Franklin 
created a uniquely witty and colloquial style 
for the usual aphorisms that had appeared in 
almanacs for centuries. Franklin's wit and 
talent for self-promotionhelpedPoori?zc/*<3raf 
sell well, approximately 10,000 copies annu- 
ally, one for every 100 colonists. 4 After 1748 
PoorRichardbecamGPoorRichardlmproved, 
with 36 pages instead of 24 and woodcuts. 
Although the humor was more sophisticated, 
it did not seem as much fun, and the almanac 
ceased publication in 1758. 

In thenineteenth century, almanacs broad- 
ened their scope, presenting fewer astronomi- 
cal data, fewer moralizing tracts, and more 
practical reference information. In 1793 Rob- 
ert B. Thomas began production of the most 
popular of all nineteenth-century almanacs, 
the Old Farmer 's Almanac, which survives to 
this day under the same family's leadership. 
Religious almanacs by denomination were 
common. The first medical almanac, the 
Physician 's Almanac from Boston, appeared 
in 1817, and in 1844 the first almanac to be 
produced by a commercial firm, this one ad- 
vertising patent medicine, came on the scene. 



WORLD ALMANAC 315 



Historian Peter Force printed the National 
Calendar from 1 820 to 1836 and included in 
it brief histories of federal government depart- 
ments and agencies. Even more contemporary 
in format, the American Almanac, published 
from 1830 to 1861 and again from 1878 to 
1889, contained information on state govern- 
ments, colleges, railroads, and an annual chro- 
nology of events. In addition to these factual 
compendia, a wide variety of comic almanacs , 
filled with jokes and pictures, found an eager 
audience. Among these was Davy Crockett's 
Almanack of Wild Sports of the West, and Life 
in the Backwoods, which contained tall tales, 
humorous stories, and vivid drawings of 
woodsmen and wild animals. Begun in Ten- 
nessee in 1835, this almanac survived 
Crockett's death in 1836 by 20 years. 

The newspaper almanacs had their origin 
in the political almanacs that promoted the 
people and platforms of political parties. The 
Democrat's Almanac was one such volume; 
its rival, the Whig Almanac and Political Reg- 
ister, was published in New York by Horace 
Greeley. Started in 1836, the Whig Almanac 
changed its title several times and in 1856 
became the Tribune Almanac, the oldest of the 
newspaper almanacs. However the Herald 
Almanac of 1 849, also published inNew York, 
was the first to carry a newspaper's name. 5 

The First World Almanac 

In 1 860 Alexander Cummings, a newspa- 
per publisher from Philadelphia, established 
the World in New York City as a one -cent 
religious daily. The Worldhad immediate and 
continuing financial problems; and within a 
year the very capablejournalistMantonMarble 
became its part-owner and editor, redefining it 
as a calm, conservative newspaper supporting 
the Democratic Party of New York, By late 
1869 Marble had full control of the paper. Its 
style was sophisticated, its readers upper class, 
and its circulation weak. 

The World Almanac, named for itsparent, 
was first published in 1868. While there are 



very few records of the history of the Alma- 
nac, it may have been Marble's demands for 
accuracy in the newspaper that prompted the 
creation of this handbook used to provide 
background information, names of prominent 
people, and statistical data about the U.S. The 
1868 Almanac cost about 20 cents, was 120 
pages long, and carried 12 pages of advertis- 
ing appearing at the front and back of the 
volume. After the title page and index, the 
calendars and astronomical data opened the 
text. Fourteen pages discussed the ongoing 
issues of Reconstruction. Election returns for 
1866 to 1868 occupied 17 pages. In addition, 
4 pages heralded the excellence of the World, 
but other than a listing of state political offi- 
cials , there is surprisingly little information on 
New York. The type face was fancy and the 
print minute. 

In 1876 when Republican Rutherford B. 
Hayes was chosen president by the Electoral 
College over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden who 
had won thepopular vote, Marble despaired of 
chances for the Democrats and for apaper that 
supported them. He offered the paper to his 
associate editor, William Henry Hurlbert, who 
found financing from Thomas A. Scott, presi- 
dent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Hurlbert's 
style was even more elegant — and stuffier — 
than Marble's. The Almanac, which had been 
published annually since its inception, died 
the year of the sale. 

Scott had wanted to use the paper as a 
voice for his own investment plans but grew 
tired of losing money on it. In 1 879 he sold the 
World to Wall Street shark Jay Gould as a 
minor part of the sale of the Texas & Pacific 
railroad. Gould claimed that he never wanted 
the World, but the paper did give him a vehicle 
of his own in the city. Gould's reputation was 
so bad, however, that even the World's tradi- 
tion of solid, stodgy journalism could not halt 
the paper's decline, and it cost Gould $40,000 
a year to run. 

Joseph Pulitzer contacted Jay Gouldabout 
purchasing the World. After some negotia- 
tions Pulitzer paid $346,000 for the languish- 



316 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



ing newspaper in 1883. WithPulitzer' s acqui- 
sition of the Worlds William Henry Hurlbert 
resigned; his brand of dry, conservative, aca- 
demic journalism was not compatible with 
Pulitzer's tight, colloquial, sensational style. 
Withnew editorial staff brought in by Pulitzer, 
the World thrived. 

The Pulitzer Renewal 

As a newspaperman, Pulitzer demanded 
"Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. Also terse- 
ness . . ." 6 Perhaps to encourage these quali- 
ties, he recreated the World Almanac in 1886. 
Pulitzer desired to make the Almanac a "com- 
pendium of universal knowledge," and al- 
though it remained primarily a reference tool 
for journalists, its scope broadened with each 
year's publication. More than twice as long as 
the first issue of the World Almanac, with 
twice the advertising pages and priced at 25 
cents, the renewed World Almanac wore an 
illustrated cover and, following some of the 
advertising, a title page that trumpeted the 
success of the parent newspaper. For ten years 
a thermometer on the left side of the title page 
registered the World's circulation statistics, 
climbing from zero in 1882 to 605,980 in 
1 892. The index followed the title page; then 
came the calendars and astronomical and 
weather data. As in the earlier issues, election 
returns concluded the volumes. New features 
of the Pulitzer-era Almanac included more 
statistical tables on religion, education, labor, 
and public finance and a six- to eight-page 
summary of the accomplishments of the World, 
a boastful vehicle that nevertheless pointed 
out many of the sensational events in New 
York city and state politics. Also recorded 
were college cheers ("'Rah, 'rah!, 'rah, 'rah!, 
'rah, 'rah!" for Brown, Harvard, Swathmore, 
Tufts, and Yale); sports data, especially horse 
racing and sailing; lists of state holidays and 
marriage laws; a list of members of the British 
Parliament; and some statistics for foreign 
countries, including a category titled "Mur- 
derous nations" on those countries with the 
highest homicide rates past and present. 



Five years after its revival, the World 
Almanac was strong and healthy. The 1892 
edition had 450 pages, about 50 of which were 
advertisements. The volume's introduction 
pointed out that it had added 40 pages of local 
New York City information — names and titles, 
maps, lists of businesses. Contents included 
statistical tables of all sorts, a list of living 
Union and Confederate generals, and sports 
records, including those for pool and cricket. 
The discussion of scientific achievements in- 
cluded the discovery that liquid oxygen is 
blue. As for the results of the recent 1890 
census, the preface lamented, "Disappoint- 
ment will naturally be felt that greater progress 
has not been made by the Government in the 
publication of statistics gathered by the census 
takers." 7 The 1893 edition added several pages 
of information about and a map of Chicago. 

The new title adopted in 1894, the World 
A Imanac and Encyclopedia, reflected broader 
scope. By 1922 the Almanac ran about 750 
pages with more than 200 pages of advertise- 
ments, including a 2-page spread for an eti- 
quette book that described a bride's abject 
humiliation for some unnamed blunder at her 
wedding. 

Robert Hunt Lyman 

With the 1923 edition the title became The 
World Almanac and Book of Facts. While the 
editor or editors of the earlier volumes toiled 
anonymously, this new title was in the care of 
Robert Hunt Lyman, a graduate of Yale and a 
man of considerable newspaper experience. 
He had edited the Yale News while in college, 
was a reporter and editor for the New York 
Herald, working for two years as the manag- 
ing editor of the Herald's London edition. 
Back in New York he went to work for the 
World, where he became night editor, then 
assistant managing editor, then acting manag- 
ing editor, and served on Pulitzer's secretarial 
staff. Lyman spoke about the Almanac to the 
Special Libraries Association: 



WOULD ALMANAC 317 



After this long experience, when editorial 
charge of The Almanac was given to me in 
1922, 1 had one fixed idea in my mind: — To 
make The Almanac as valuable as possible for 
the man at the copy desk and for the man 
preparing an article. The special aim now was 
to make the accumulation of figures and facts 
as available as possible. 8 

So closely linked were Lyman and the 
Almanac that Lyman's entry in the National 
Cyclopaedia of A merican Biography includes 
a lengthy tribute to the Almanac: 

Under Lyman 's direction it grew steadily and 
late issues contained more than 1000 pages, 
some of the pages containing as many as 577 
facts. At the time of his death it had an annual 
circulation of 300,000. It became virtually 
indispensable for reference in newspaper, 
magazine, and publishing offices generally 
and it became perhaps the most widely and 
frequently consulted book of general refer- 
ence in existence. Executives in business and 
finance often use it, and probably no other 
book extant came into so much use for the 
settling ofbets, particularly on sporting events . 
Lyman's long and varied newspaper experi- 
ence, his interest in science and his passion for 
accuracy made him particularly competent to 
edit such a work, 9 

Lyman's first volume had more than 850 
pages, 200 of which were advertisements, 
each carrying a structured subject heading at 
the top of the page — "Advertisements — Mus- 
cular Development" or "Advertisements — 
Cure for Stammering." Three text pages cov- 
ered the enforcement of the new prohibition 
laws. Information on foreign policy and inter- 
national affairs greatly expanded. The 1925 
issue marked the first appearance of the regu- 
lar feature "Biographies of the Presidents and 
their Wives." These are wonderful, very per- 
sonal glimpses of national political figures. 
George Washington "attended horse shows 
and races, took part in card games, fox-hunt- 
ing, cock fighting, and was a regular 
theatregoer." Andrew Jackson, whose marital 
difficulties are clearly laid out, "was shot at, in 
the Capitol in Washington, January 29, 1835, 
by Richard Lawrence, a house painter. The 
weapon missed fire. Jackson was a Presbyte- 



rian, tall and thin." Polk "was a Methodist in 
his later days, wore his hair long, was demo- 
cratic and affable." 

Lyman struggled to give the book a more 
predictable structure. He added a table of 
contents before the index, which still appeared 
at the front of the volume following advertise- 
ments, and he grouped statistical tables by 
general subjectsuchas agriculture, education, 
and population. Election results, as always, 
were last. Lyman explained that this complex 
organization resulted from the printing sched- 
ule for the Almanac. Because of the large 
number of copies to be published and the 
requirement for current data, the book had to 
be put together in pieces, or forms, from the 
inside out, Robert Lyman had to do this by 
hand. For his 300,000 copies, the first forms 
had to be printed by October 1 and the last ones 
by December 20 in order to have the book on 
the market by the first week of January. To 
make the Almanac as current as possible, the 
first forms, those at the center of the book, 
reflected those features (e.g., the text of the 
Declaration of Independence, the Monroe 
Doctrine, or the descriptions of foreign coun- 
tries) that changed very little and so could be 
ready early. The most recent information, 
especially election data and sports results, are 
included in the later forms which appear at the 
beginning and end of the book. 10 

After Pulitzer's death in 1911, the news- 
papers,by nowthe Morning World, thoEvening 
World, and the Sunday World, were held in 
trust by his three sons. By 1930, the Press 
Publishing Co., as the new enterprise was 
known, saw both its circulation and its profits 
slipping. That year the brothers entered into 
conference with Roy W. Howard of Scripps- 
Howard for the possible sale of the papers. In 
January 1931, a sale contract was signed, but 
the deal had to go through the court to deter- 
mine if the sale met the conditions of Pulitzer's 
will. When the court allowed the sale in Feb- 
ruary, two days of frenzied activity occurred 
as the staff of the World tried to buy the papers 
on their own, but the sale of the World to 



3 1 8 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Scripps-Howard became final. If the 
Almanac 's staff felt any turmoil, none showed. 
Lyman continued, apparently unruffled. 

New Editors 

After Lyman's death in 1 937 the editorship 
of the Almanac passed to E. Eastman Irvine. 
Irvine too was an old newspaper hand, with 35 
years experience before becoming the editor, 
including 14 years with the New York World- 
Evening Telegram. Eastman continued 
Lyman's general editorial direction. During 
his tenure, however, the Almanac made a 
major change. On the title page of the 1945 
edition, this notice appeared: 

This edition of The World Almanac — the 
sixtieth — appears with all advertising elimi- 
nated to maintain the policy of making the 
publication of greatest interest and value to 
the greatest number of people. The acute 
paper shortage has curtailed supplies but the 
elimination of advertising has permitted The 
Almanac to continue its high volume of 
coverage of previous years of factual infor- 
mation in all the important fields of Ameri- 
can and world activity. 

The current Almanac editor, Mark S. Hoffman, 
sees in the decision to cut advertising revenues 
rather than information a clear outline of the 
priorities held by the publication. 11 

Irvine, who died on his way to work one 
day in 1 949, was succeeded by Harry Hansen, 
another journalist of long experience. Hansen 
had been a war correspondent during the First 
World War and had come to the World in 
1926. During Hansen's editorship the Alma- 
nac continued its traditionally broad cover- 
age. In response to changing tastes and phi- 
losophies of journalism, the biographies of the 
presidents became less personal and more 
academic — and not as much fun to read. 
George Washington was described as "re- 
sourceful, a stern disciplinarian," and Polk's 
long hair and affability were not mentioned. 
Hansen gave up the editorship in 1965 and 
continued with other publishing ventures until 
his death in 1977. 



Luman H. Long became the Almanac's 
editor in 1966 after working at the New York 
Sun and the World-Telegram and Sun for 
almost 25 years. To Long fell the inclusion of 
zip codes in 1966, the first colored maps in a 
center section in 1967, and the addition of 
colored pages of national flags in 1970. The 
1972 edition of the Almanac carried Long's 
obituary. He had had thoracic surgery three 
days before his death. "Concerned with meet- 
ing the deadline of the 1972 edition of the 
Almanac, he had worked intensely up to the 
day before he entered the hospital." 12 George 
Delury assumed the editorship in 1973; the 
first woman editor, Hana Umlauf Lane, began 
in 1981; and Mark S. Hoffman has served 
since 1987. 

An Abiding Structure 

The Almanac of today retains Robert 
Lyman's sense of organization and his vision 
of making accessible all kinds of data. Tables 
are still grouped by subject, although the cal- 
endars and astronomical data which used to 
come first now appear 300 pages into the 
volume. Elections returns have moved to the 
front part of the Almanac. The lists of promi- 
nent people have grown to include artists, 
scholars, and entertainers of all sorts. Feature 
articles discuss such topics as stress, personal 
finance, consumer information, and space 
exploration. Sports items, now among the 
categories near the back of the book, have 
become less aristocratic and cover the major 
team sports, both professional and college (the 
cheers have disappeared), as well as golf, 
tennis, and fishing. Clearly, the Almanac has 
grown but it has not abandoned its original 
intentions. 

Publication problems similar to those 
Lyman faced also remain. Fifty years after his 
time, in 1985, editor HanaUmlauf Lane talked 
■ about the constraints she felt. The final publi- 
cation date has been moved to November, so 
her print run of 1 .8 million copies had its first 
deadlines in early August and its last just two 



WORLD ALMANAC 319 



days after the elections in November. Al- 
though at that time all of the World Almanac 
data resided on a computer, only 20 percent 
was updated online. 13 With the most recent 
annual issues of the A Imanac, the same pattern 
is repeated. The now more than two million 
copies are made up of 15 percent relatively 
stable information, such as the Constitution or 
the flags, 60 percent updatable information, 
such as government statistics, biographical 
data, and geopolitical information, and 25 
percent that is completely new each year, like 
the "Chronology of Events" and specialty 
articles. Lyman's "Table of Contents" had 
been renamed "Quick Reference Index" in 
1968 and moved to the back of the volume in 
1975. The index, vastly expanded from the 
days when Lyman wrestled to perfect it, still 
must be produced last and occupies, as ever, 
the volume's opening pages. 

The editors of the Almanac who face 
these deadlines often suffer from the vagaries 
of world events. Lane lamented that the 1982 
Falklands crisis occurred on a final deadline 
day, and so the story had to wait until the 1 983 
edition. 14 Mark Hoffman saw the San Fran- 
cisco earthquake disrupt the 1989 World Se- 
ries, so that the 1990 World Almanac contains 
incomplete Series information for the first 
time since coverage of the event began in 
1 903 . Hoffman jokes, "Even though I am a big 
baseball fan, since working for the World 
Almanac, I find myself torn between rooting 
for my favorite team and hoping for no rain 
delays and a sweep. My job has also altered 
my political feelings come election time, as I 
am now more concerned (at least for one 
night) with the election being clearly decided 
by early Wednesday morning than with who 
wins." 15 

Along with the timeliness of its informa- 
tion, the World Almanac has always valued 
the accuracy and authority of its data. Since its 
early issues, the Almanac has tried to indicate, 
at least in some general way, the source of its 
material. Lyman took pains to explain his use 
of international reference tools, survey ques- 



tionnaires, government documents, telephone 
inquiries, and subject experts to collect his 
data. He boasted that although typographical 
errors may occur, he himself let only one get 
into finalprint — the date ofPresidentGarfield's 
death being listed as September 10 instead of 
September 1 9. 16 The accuracy of ih& Almanac's 
data was such that Lyman felt that one of the 
book's greatestuses was in settling bets. "Daily 
I get telephone calls. . . . The winner never 
splits with me. Never! Sometimes the loser 
will send an indignant protest, hinting that he 
lost $5,00." 17 No doubt it is due to stories like 
Lyman's that the verso of the title page of all 
recent issues of fas Almanac states "The World 
Almanac does not decide wagers." 

Critical Reception 

While the World Almanachashzen. around 
for a good while, reviews have been infre- 
quent until fairly recently. Sol Linowitz, writ- 
ing for the Saturday Review in 1956, humor- 
ously discussed the biographical sketches; 18 
another very brief note appeared in Saturday 
Review in 1969. 19 The Almanac appeared with 
its three closest cousins, thQlnformationPlease 
Almanac, the New York Times Encyclopedic 
Almanac, and the Reader 's Digest Almanac, 
in the first volume of Bohdan Wynar's^meri- 
can Reference Books Annual™ and again in 
ARBA in 1977, where it was noted that the 
Almanac has sold more copies that any other 
book except the Bible. 21 Wynar again in- 
cluded the Almanac in his selection of Best 
Reference Books 198J-1985. 22 Catholic Li- 
brary World called the Almanac, "perhaps the 
best one- volume resource of its kind," 23 The 
American Library Association's Reference 
and Subscription Books Review called it "one 
of the best known and most often consulted of 
ready-reference books." 24 Most of these re- 
views have cited the variety of information 
available, the updating of its data, and the 
usefulness of its index. 

Not everything about the Almanac has 
received praise. Wynar, with sympathy, criti- 



320 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



cized the aesthetics of the publication: "As 
one can expect, the physical format of The 
World Almanac represents an obyious com- 
promise between the factors of price, size and 
usability. The volume is especially marred by 
the 7-point typeface which is slightly difficult 
to read, The layout is decidedly utilitarian 
rather than aesthetic." 25 The complaint was 
echoed by the American Library Association' s 
Reference and Subscription Books Review 
Board: "Fine print, crowded lines, harsh beige 
paper do not make World Almanac pleasing to 
sight and touch; but then it is produced as an 
inexpensive and utilitarian work, not as an 
aesthetic object." 26 

Julia Miller and Jane Bryan studied in 
detail four similar almanacs: the World; the 
Hammond Almanac of a Million Facts, 
Records, Forecasts (originally the New York 
Times Encyclopedic Almanac, then the Offi- 
cial Associated Press Almanac, then the CBS 
News Almanac), which began in 1970; Infor- 
mation Please Almanac, begun in 1947; and 
HheReader'sDigestAlmanac,startedm.l966. 21 
The authors asked each almanac 20 questions, 
like "How many women own major league 
baseball teams?" "What magazines have the 
highest circulation?" and "How many Bud- 
dhists are there in America?" They also ana- 
lyzed each volume's coverageof business and 
economics, and sports, entertainment, and the 
arts. The World Almanac could answer or 
partly answer 13 of the reference questions, 
got praise for its entries on business and con- 
sumer directories and for its wide coverage of 
entertainment and sports. Information Please 



fared much the same. Hammond responded to 
1 8 of the reference questions but did not rank 
quite as high on its business and directory 
information. Reader 's Digest, the researchers 
decided, envisioned a different purpose for its 
much more text-oriented almanac. 

Currently, of these 4 titles, only the World 
Almanac misinformation Please still publish. 
Hammond ceased publication in 1982 and 
Reader's Digest in 1987. In fact, many of the 
more recent reviews of the World Almanac 
also mention Information Please, not as an 
alternative but as a companion reference tool. 

In its long history, the World Almanac has 
had wide influence. Mark Hoffman tells sto- 
ries he has heard around the Almanac of- 
fices — that World War II GIs carried the 
Almanac in their footlockers along with pin- 
ups of Betty Grable; that the oath of office 
taken by Lyndon Johnson after John Kennedy's 
assassination was read from the World Alma- 
nac, that a copy of the Almanac was somehow 
smuggled to the hostages in Tehran, Iran, in 
1979 — their only news link to the outside 
world. 28 

The Almanac promises to continue its 
distinguished traditions. The new political or- 
ganization of Europe, scientific discoveries of 
space exploration, and new prize winners of 
all sorts will take their place alongside the 
dates for Easter for the past and future centu- 
ries and the carefully documented phases of 
the moon. After almost a century and a half, 
the World Almanac andBookofFactsvemams 
a valuable and fascinating reference tool for 
everyone. 



3 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

World Almanac. New York: Press Publishing Co., 
1868-1893. Annual. Publication suspended 
1 876, reinstituted 1886. 

World Almanac and Encyclopedia. New York: Press 
Publishing Co., 1894-1922. Annual. 



World Almanac and Book of Facts. Press Publishing 
Co., 1923; the New York World, 1924-1931; 
the New York World-Telegram, 1932-1950; 
theNew York World-Telegram and Sun, 195 1- 
1 966; Newspaper Enterprise Association 1967- 
1986; Pharos Books, 1987- . Annual. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



In spite of its age and wide availability, 
the World Almanac has received very little 



attention in print. The lengthiest treatment 
comes from Robert Hunt Lyman, the 



WORLD ALMANAC 321 



Almanac's editor for 15 years during the sec- 
ond quarter of this century, who described in 
detail how information was gathered and the 
book was produced. No one else has done so 
in the 65 years since. The Saturday Review 
twice paid it brief tribute as a fact-filled and 
entertaining volume. The only analytical study 
ever published was done by Miller and Bryan 
more than ten years ago. Indeed, more has 
been written about the distinguished editors of 
the Almanac than about the Almanac itself. 
American almanacs in general offer great 
opportunity for researchers. Research centers 
on almanac makers, especially Benjamin 
Franklin. In contrast to the colonial period, 
nineteenth-century almanacs, mass produced 
and usually edited anonymously, have not 
been studied thoroughly. 

"Answers to a Manufacturing Task That Aren't in the 
World Almmac." Publishers WeeklylTl (March 
1, 1985): 66-68. 



Barret, James Wyman. Joseph Pulitzer and His 
World. New York; Vanguard Press, 1941. 

Drake, Milton. Almanacs of the United States. New 
York: Scarecrow Press, 1962. 

Linowitz, Sol M. "The Fact Arsenal." Saturday 
Review39 (March 24, 1956): 42. 

Lyman, Robert Hunt. "Saving Time in Research." 
Special Libraries 17 (1926): 352-59. 

Miller, Julia E., and Jane G. Bryan. "Wealth of 
Information: A Review of Four 1979 Alma- 
nacs." Reference Services Review 17 (1979): 
67-78. 

Sagendorph, Robb. America and Her Almanacs. 
Dublin, NH: Yankee; Boston: Little, Brown and 
Co., 1970. 

Seitz, Don C. Joseph Pulitzer, His Life and Letters. 
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1924. 

Stowell, Marion Barber. Early American Almanacs: 
The Colonial Weekday Bible. New York: Burt 
Franklin, 1977, 

. "Revolutionary Almanac-Makers." Biblio- 
graphical Society of America Papers 73 
(1979):41-61. 

Swanberg, W.A. Pulitzer. New York: Charles 
Scribner's Sons, 1967. 



NOTES 



1 Milton Drake, Almanacs of the United States, vol. 1 
(New York: Scarecrow Press, 1962), p. viii. 

^MarionBarberStowell.ii'flWv American AlmanacsQ^ew 
York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 7. 

J Ibid., 65. 

4 Ibid., x. 

'Clarence S, Brigham, "Report of the Librarian," Pro- 
ceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, new 
ser., 35 (1925): 217. 

6 Don C. Seitz, Joseph Pulitzer, His Life and Letters (New 
York: Simon and Schuster, 1924), 126-27. 

1 World Almanac, 1892,7. 

8 Robert Hunt Lyman, Special Libraries 1 7 ( 1 926): 3 52- 
53. 

9 National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, see 
"Lyman, Robert Hunt." 

10 Lyman, "Saving Time in Research," 353. 

1 ' Mark S. Hoffman, speech given to Rockland County, 
New York, public librarians, 18 April 1990, 

12 World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1972, 3. 

13 "Answers to a Manufacturing Task That Aren't in the 

World Almanac," Publishers Weekly 227 (1 March 
1985): 68. 

14 Ibid., 66. 

"Hoffman, speech, 18 April 1990. 



14 Lyman, 358. 

17 Ibid. 

18 SolM. Linowitz, "The Fact Arsenal," Saturday Review 

39 (24 March 1956): 42. 
"David W. Qlixon, "Where to Look It Up," Saturday 

Review 52 (17 May 1969): 31. 

20 American Reference Books Annual 1 (1970): 31, 

21 Review of World Almanac and Book of Facts; Ameri- 

can Reference Books Annual 8 (1977): 62. 
"Bohdan S, Wynar, ed., Best Reference Books 1981- 
1985 (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1986), 5. 

23 Review of World Almanac and Bookof Facts, Catholic 

Library World 19 (1978): 358. 

24 Review of World Almanac and Book of Facts, Refer- 

ence and Subscription Books Reviews ( 1 December 
1981): 518. 
2i Review of World Almanac and Book of Facts, Ameri- 
can Reference Books Annual 1 (1970): 31. 

26 Review of World Almanac and Book of Facts, Refer- 

ence and Subscription Books Reviews (1 December 
1981): 518. 

27 Julia E. Miller and Jane G. Bryan, "Wealth of Informa- 

tion: AReviewofFoiir 1 979 Almanacs," Reference 
Services Review 17 (1979): 67-78. 
"Hoffman, speech, 18 April 1990. 




"The Best of Its Type": 
World Book Encyclopedia 



Holly D. Rogerson andE. Paige Weston 



fo. 



0m 



DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY 

Early in this century, World Book was recog- 
nized as the "best of its type." 1 It was also the 
first of its type: a comprehensive family ency- 
clopedia for North Americans. Over its long 
history, World Bookhas not strayed from its 
original intent: to make information acces- 
sible to its primary audience of families with 
children while meeting the needs of users of 
all ages. Indeed, World Book's early and in- 
creasingly sophisticated efforts to keep in 
touch with its audience are the very story of its 
success. 

On June 24, 1915, James H. Hanson, 
president of the Hanson-Bellows Company, 
wrote to Michael Vincent O'Shea, a nation- 
ally known educator and expert on child de- 
velopment. Hoping to interest O'Shea in re- 
vising The New Practical Reference Library, 
a moderately successful six-volume general 
encyclopedia first published in 1907, Hanson 
said, "the needs of the boy and girl in the 
grades are to be our first consideration. In style 
we are determined to write down to the mind 
of the child in all those articles in which 
children are mainly interested." 2 O'Shea took 
the bait, and Hanson signed him on as editor- 
in-chief. Within weeks, however, it was clear 
O'Shea was shaping not a revision, but a 
wholly new work — a family encyclopedia 
eventually named World Book: Organized 
Knowledge in Story and Picture? 

The process by which the title of the new 
work was chosen is perhaps symbolic of the 



link World Book would always have with the 
education systems in the United States and 
Canada. The publisher solicited suggestions 
from over 25,000 leading educators and of- 
fered cash prizes not only for a winning title, 
but also for useful editorial comments. What 
started out as a publicity device became an 
early finger on the pulse of the educators. 
Ninety-six of the nearly 5,000 naming-contest 
submissions included the word "world" and so 
World Book was born. 

From its beginnings, making information 
accessible to a broad audience has been World 
Book's goal. Over the years its editors have 
refined their techniques for assuring attain- 
ment of that goal. Today World Bookis its own 
best example of a family encyclopedia as 
defined in its article "Encyclopedia": "Family 
encyclopedias aim to meet the reference and 
study needs of students in elementary school, 
junior high school, high school, and beyond. 
They are also designed as everyday reference 
tools for the entire family, for teachers, for 
librarians, and for other professional and busi- 
ness people." 4 In the 75 years since Hanson 
first wrote to O ' Shea, World Bookhas doubled 
its size, developed its "style," and broadened 
its scope; but it has never needed to redefine its 
audience. In 1947, Dorothy Canfield Fisher 
wrote, 

Don't forget that all of us, in many facets and 
aspects of our personalities, are "young" in the 
sense of being uninformed and inexperienced. 
For instance, I am quite my own age (close to 
seventy) as to French literature, because that 



WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 323 



has been a special interest of mine nearly all 
my life. But in the matter of information 
about, say, ocean currents, or the ethnology of 
the people of Nicaragua, I cannot claim a 
mental age of more than twelve. That is the 
age for which these cheerful, colorful vol- 
umes of bright red and blue were produced. 
For me too, this outward aspect is encourag- 
ing. It suggests to me (as to the eighth-grader) 
that what I find inside will not, by its cold 
scholarly rigidity, swamp and drown my not 
very deep or keen (but all the same living) 
interest in a subject, aroused perhaps by a 
casual reference in something I have been 
reading. 5 

The view from within the World Book organi- 
zation echoes this. Executive Editor A. Rich- 
ard Harraet attributes World Book's success to 
its remarkable continuity of purpose, sus- 
tained in large measure by the loyalty and 
longevity of its editorial personnel; by the 
belief that "World Bookers," from salesper- 
son to CEO, have in the World Book product; 
and by its appropriateness for American 
homes. 6 



Michael Vincent O'Shea 

O'Shea set World Book on its path by 
making a decisive break in content between it 
and its forebears. However, he recognized 
those elements in the Hanson-Bellows opera- 
tion that would further his purpose for his new 
creation. Notable among these was the Con- 
sultation Department of the New Practical 
Reference Library. This department, estab- 
lished by Arno Roach, a forceful Missouri 
book jobber who handled the New Practical 
Reference Library, the American Educator, 
and World Book, answered mail queries from 
subscribers so that they were not limited to the 
information contained in the encyclopedia 
they had purchased. When an inquiry came 
into the Consultation Department, "Roach 
would ask himself whether the information 
requested should actually be included in the 
encyclopedia itself, and, if so, it was prepared 
for inclusion in the ensuing edition. This way, 
he and his staff kept their fingers on the public 
pulse. " 7 A popular selling point, the consulta- 



tion service was an early model for the now 
finely honed curricular responsiveness of 
World Book. 

O'Shea also took note of the successful 
communication-through-sales strategies used 
with the American Educator and the New 
Practical Reference Library. He felt that the 
sales force was an important conduit for feed- 
back about readers. O'Shea, "a salesman's 
editor " believed that the only people quali- 
fied to make a judgment and give advice on 
what should be included in World Book "were 
those who were in daily communication with 
the public " 8 It is this level of attention to its 
audience's needs and interests that even today 
sets World Book apart from others of its kind. 

Although the current edition of World 
Book looks, naturally enough, vastly different 
from the first edition, founding editor O'Shea 
would recognize its commitment to the stan- 
dards he set. Some of the central features 
present in the first edition can be seen in 
today's World Book: articles on topics of high 
interest, written in simple language and with 
illustrations of key concepts. As an early indi- 
cation of World Book's close ties with the 
education system, the first edition of World 
Book contained a variety of special articles on 
education topics, such as "Modern Educa- 
tion" and "Measurement of Intelligence." 
Many other articles, on topics such as "Home- 
making" and "Cooperation Between Home 
and School," were aimed at helping families. 

Four Major Revisions 

Since its inception, World Book has un- 
dergone four majorrevisions, each time intro- 
ducing features that have made it a more 
responsive reference tool for its family audi- 
ence. Across intervening editions, however, 
only World Book's physical growth, from 8 to 
22 volumes, can be easily charted. Most of the 
changes — to the selection of topics, the num- 
ber and type of illustrations, the vocabulary, 
the finding aids, and the structure of the ar- 
ticles and of the work overall — were intro- 
duced gradually, as editors and staff analysts 



324 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



learned new and better ways to tailor their 
product to the inclinations, abilities, andneeds 
of American families. 

The first major revision to World Book 
resulted in the 13-volume 1929/30 edition. For 
the first time, the final volume of the set was 
devoted toa"Reading and Study Guide."This 
500-page separate volume, designed prima- 
rily for teachers, contained approximately 40 
outlines that attempted to integrate the various 
articles dealing with a given subject area in the 
encyclopedia. Also included were projects 
illustrating the application of bookknowledge 
to practical life; reviews of major school sub- 
jects with page references to the other vol- 
umes of the encyclopedia; and reading lists. 
Also for the first time — possibly in the history 
of reference work publishing — the print size, 
line length, and overall page design of the set 
were systematically tested through classroom 
experiments conducted by the School of Edu- 
cation at the University of Chicago, to ensure 
that World Book was easy to read. The next 
year World Bookptoudly introduced the modi- 
fied unit-letter arrangement, in which each 
letter of the alphabet is covered by one volume 
(with two volumes devoted to a few of the 
more frequently used letters). World Book 
continues to use a modified unit-letter ar- 
rangement today. While the unit-letter ar- 
rangementresults in volumes ofuneven length 
rather than the uniform volume length favored 
by some other encyclopedia publishers, editor 
Harmet believes that this arrangement helps 
readers in their search for information. 9 In 
1933 the set expanded to 19 volumes, and 
included a bibliography of books for further 
reading. The much-lauded bibliography, 
placed in the final volume, was in the form of 
a classified book list and indicated the level of 
each book as adult or juvenile. 

In 1936 World Book secured its ties with 
the American educational system by estab- 
lishing its first Editorial Advisory Board, with 
six distinguished educators as members. Dr. 
George H. Reavis, assistant superintendent in 
the Cincinnati school system, served as chair- 
man. Reavis strongly urged that World Book 



articles, at that time written at the seventh 
grade level or higher, be written at the level of 
the grade for which the topic was appropriate 
(so that, for instance, the article "Dog" would 
be written in a much simpler style than the 
article "Donizetti"). Editors agreed, and the 
Advisory Board began a series of research 
projects with the goal of grade-appropriate 
articles in mind. Aside from Reavis, two men 
played central roles in the original research 
process. Dr. Hollis L. Caswell, who would 
later become president of Columbia 
University's Teachers College, surveyed what 
was taught at each grade level across the 
country. William Scott Gray, a reading spe- 
cialist at the University of Chicago, studied 
students' reading levels in each grade and 
established the editorial guidelines to be used 
in World Book to ensure readability. Other 
researchers examined various subject areas, 
as well as how students of different ages used 
encyclopedias. 10 Funds made available by the 
Field family after the Marshall Field purchase 
of World Book in 1945 strengthened the re- 
search activities behind World Book. Thus, 
the World Book ethos of writing for "the girl 
and boy in the grades" was made more prac- 
ticable with the development of such system- 
atic analysis of the schools and the students. 

The results of the studies were incorpo- 
rated into World Book's second major revi- 
sion, the 1947 "post-war" edition, still nine- 
teen volumes long but enormously different in 
style and content. For the first time, each 
article had been written or rewritten at the 
level of the school grade in which its topic was 
taught, as specified by Caswell's study. While 
the celebrated contributors to the edition in- 
cluded such diverse individuals as J. Edgar 
Hoover writing on the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, Emily Post on etiquette, and 
Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen on a variety of 
religion-related topics, a painstaking 15-step 
editorial process retained each author's style 
but insured the suitability of reading level. 11 

In the 1948 edition, graded bibliographies 
attached to major articles replaced the longer 
bibliography at the end of the set. Then, in 



WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 325 



I960, came the third major revision, and an 
expansion to 20 volumes. "Although the only 
real innovation was the Trans- Vision®, a vi- 
sual aid showing various layers or levels of a 
subject [such as the anatomy of a frog] by 
means of a series of acetate overlays in color, 
everything in the new set had been freshly 
approached and executed." 12 By this time, as 
S. Padraig Walsh has noted, "the work had 
almost doubled in size (11,600 pages) from 
the original edition, and the number of illustra- 
tions had more than doubled to more than 
21 ,000, with a very substantial increase in the 
use of color," 13 

In 1971 the set expanded again to 22 
volumes, with the final volume consisting of 
theResearch Guide and anlndex with 150,000 
entries. The Research Guide portion of the 
volume contained an instructional section en- 
titled "How to Do Research" and more than 
200 subject-specific Reading and Study Guides 
designed to help students and teachers plan 
independent study units. During the 1 970s and 
1980s World Book introduced a computer- 
compiled index to supplement its abundant 
internal cross-references; metric equivalents 
for all measurements; and many more color 
illustrations. Also during these years, World 
Book editors worked both to eliminate sexist 
and racist stereotyping from text and illustra- 
tions and to meet, with expanded coverage, 
the growing public and curricular interest in 
the history of women, blacks, and Native 
Americans. But there was not another major 
overhaul to the set until the 1988 edition for 
which nearly 1,000 entries were completely 
revised, and since which approximately one- 
third of the space in 21 volumes has been 
devoted to illustrations, in color wherever 
appropriate. 

Critical and Popular Reception 

World Book's popularity has never wa- 
vered. It is difficult, in fact, to distinguish its 
critical reception from its popular reception. 
The many hundreds of book reviews of World 
Book that have been published over the years 



are more celebratory than critical. Reviewers 
have tended only hesitatingly to mention mi- 
nor flaws. The following, from a 1943 review 
by Lucile Fargo, is typical: 

'Continuous revision' has anintriguing sound, 
but is such a complicated process that the 
encyclopedia maker who does not every once 
in a while stub his toe is among the thrice 
blessed, For what he cuts out or inserts or fully 
rewrites in one spot starts embarrassing reper- 
cussions throughout the set. The World Book, 
twenty-fifth anniversary edition, probably does 
as well in continuous revision as is humanly 
possible. But anyone who takes the trouble to 
run down inconsistencies in the resulting patch- 
work will find them. 14 

The favorable critical reviews were rou- 
tinely mentioned in sales talks, of course. 
Long after the first edition, for instance, sales- 
men quoted a one-liner about it from the 
October 1918 issue of Booklist: "thebestofits 
type." Stringent editing, thoughtful illustrat- 
ing, and rigorous testing made World Book 
"best of its type"; salesmanship, however, 
made it best selling. For most of its life, World 
Book has been sold door-to-door to parents. 
According to William Murray, World Book 
ranked as the bestselling encyclopedia of its 
kind as early as 1 935, I5 and this title has never 
since been challenged. Interviewed for 
Murray's 1966 book, World Book salesman 
Bill Hayes said: 

It's been a tremendous growth, though it was 
a gradual thing. We didn't have an increase 
every year, just a general trend upward. We 
didn't have public relations and advertising 
programs to back us up either. I doubt if there 
was any one year under Quarrie when the 
Company spent as much as $25,000 for adver- 
tising. It was all accomplished largely by the 
sweat of the brow of the people who were 
doing it." 16 

To read the secondary literature is to realize 
that "World Book" refers to a selling organi- 
zation, as well as a high caliber publication. 
When Scott & Fetzer acquired World Book 
from Field Enterprises in 1978, they were 
buying a sales force as much as a product. 
Editor A. Richard Harmet now says: "Ency- 
clopedias need to be sold. They're a little like 




326 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



insurance in that way. A person doesn't wake 
up in the morning and say, 'I feel like buying 
an encyclopedia today.' The salesperson needs 
to demonstrate the need, use, and value of an 
encyclopedia. But since we have a nonprofes- 
sional sales force, you have to know they 
believe in the product." 17 

Maintaining High Standards 

How does World Book remain the high- 
quality encyclopedia in which its sellers be- 
lieve so strongly? Expert contributors, of text 
and illustration, have never been enough. From 
the World Book, Inc., internal document"Sub- 
ject: Editorial Objectives," comes the topic 
sentence, "World Book's aim is to present 
information from the vast reservoir of knowl- 
edge in the most accessible and usable form." 
In support of this objective, World Book's 
researchers and editors put tremendous effort 
into six complementary strategies: 

1 . analyzing current school curricula, to 
ensure that World Book covers topics 
of interest; 

2. writing every article "to grade level," 
so that each article is accessible to 
readers at the grade level at which the 
topic is most likely to interest; 

3. using all vocabulary advisedly, and 
defining "difficult" words in context 
wherever possible; 

4. maintaining stringent editorial stan- 
dards for clarity and organization, while 
striving to maintain the individual char- 
acter of contributors' own prose; 

5. designing an easy-to-read index vol- 
ume and an admirable system of cross- 
references, from one article to others, 
and from unused headings to valid 
entries; and 

6. systematically testing World Book in 
real classrooms, to learn whether stu- 
dents can, in fact, use it successfully. 

The first strategy, school curricula analy- 
sis, began with the studies by Caswell in 1 936 



and to this day are an ongoing process at World 
Book. Caswell himself chaired the Editorial 
Advisory Board for 19 years and remained on 
the Board for 30 years. In the 1950s Caswell 
and Dr. William H. Nault concluded a bench- 
mark study of the curricula in grades kinder- 
garten through 12 in hundreds of U.S. and 
Canadian schools. This study, the Caswell- 
Nault Analysis of Courses of Study, was fol- 
lowed by a number of similar studies commis- 
sioned by World Booh Today, the 61 -volume 
Nault-Caswell-Brain Analysis of Courses of 
Study and its 30-volume supplement serve as 
essential research tools to help World Book 
editors design articles and place them at the 
appropriate grade level. The studies, collec- 
tively referred to as the Curriculum Analysis at 
World Book, show which topics are taught in 
which grades, and the actual information cov- 
ered each time the topic is discussed in a cross- 
section of North American schools. The Cur- 
riculum Analysis has also served as an impor- 
tant tool for the World Book salespeople, en- 
abling them to convey to the customers how 
closely World Book is geared to the school 
curriculum. 

A second study accomplished by a survey 
of curriculum guides and other instructional 
materials is the Typical Course of Study, which 
lists by grade and academic discipline topics 
usually covered in schools, While the Typical 
Course of Study might seem to serve much the 
same purpose as the Nault-Caswell-Brain 
Analysis of Courses of Study, the two studies' 
purposes and formats are complementary rather 
than identical. A careful comparison of sub- 
jects in World Book reveals how well the 
encyclopedia covers the topics determined in 
the Typical Course of Study. On the other 
hand, the Curriculum Analysis lets the editors 
know what questions students are likely to 
have at each level on a given topic. 18 

Writing each article "to grade level" and 
using all vocabulary advisedly, including de- 
fining difficult words in context, are strategies 
involving painstaking editorial control. Since 
1976, editors have referred to Edward Dale 



WOULD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 327 



and Joseph O'Rourke's Living Word Vocabu- 
lary for information on how well known a 
particular word is — even a particular sense of 
a particular word. According to Dale and 
O'Rourke, "... a word with a [recognition] 
score of 50% or less is generally a hard word 
and should be reconsidered before using in 
writtenmaterial." 19 Harmetreports that World 
Bookuses a score of 67 percent to indicate "an 
understandable word." 20 Since 1981, when 
the most recent edition of The Living Word 
was published, Harmet says, "we have up- 
dated the database with some 5,000 new and 
retested words. It remains a key editorial 
source." 21 However, World Book's editorial 
policy is not one of using a "controlled vo- 
cabulary." Difficult words are used, but all 
new or difficult vocabulary used in World 
Book articles is defined in context if possible. 
The WorldBook, Inc., internal document "Easy 
Reading is Hard Writing" instructs new edi- 
tors on word definition. 

We always put a new word (or old word used 
in a new sense, which makes it also a new 
word) in italics. Sometimes merely putting a 
word in italics is enough. 

After roll call, the men wash and shave, 
and then go to the mess hall for break- 
fast. 

Even an unskilled reader would realize that 
the mess hall is a room in which meals are 
served. And putting mess in italics identifies 
an uncommon use of the word. 22 

Readability, however, depends on a vari- 
ety of factors in addition to vocabulary level. 
Therefore, the length and structures of sen- 
tences and paragraphs are carefully moni- 
tored by WorldBook editors. The readability 
of longer, more complex articles is also pur- 
posely pyramidal in structure, with the initial 
paragraphs written much more simply than 
later ones describing more complex aspects of 
the topic if it is of interest to various age 
groups. The obvious effect of such pyramidal 
structure is that of potential access by a broader 
audience. 

Although WorldBook editors have never 
made a secret of their role in achieving the 



remarkable clarity of World BookpxosQ, many 
reviewers over the years have commented on 
this clarity, as if it were one of life's mysteries. 
World Bookh&s, in fact, always been "heavily 
edited," says Richard Harmet. "It has never 
been a collection of scholarly essays like the 
[Britannica] Macropaedia.'" n Articles for the 
First edition of WorldBook went through seven 
careful readings before being committed to 
type. 24 The "Basic steps in the preparation of 
a WorldBook article," which are listed in the 
"Encyclopedia" article in the current edition 
of WorldBook, make clear the editing process 
is even more involved today, Reflecting on her 
work for the 1947 edition, Martha Simmonds, 
then supervising editor for WorldBook style, 
wrote: 

Of course, styling means rules. They differ. 
We had to choose what we considered the best 
authorities in grammar, sentence structure, 
punctuation, spelling, and pronunciation, be- 
cause we could not take some rules here and 
others there. But we made exceptions in spe- 
cial cases, and always on good authority. For 
instance, our spelling authority prefers amoeba, 
but we decided to use ameba, in line with the 
most up-to-date science textbooks. For the 
same reason, we wrote sulfur instead of sul- 
phur, except in the case of a name, such as 
Sulphur Springs. 25 

But under Simmonds, as today, World Book 
copy editors retained an author's own style, as 
far as possible. Simmonds quotes with plea- 
sure the following, from the 1947 edition's 
article "Camel:" 

There is nothing romantic about the camel's 
personal appearance. It is a shaggy, awkward, 
stiff-legged, goose-necked, humpbacked beast. 
It has a split upper lip, popeyes, loosely hung 
jaws, and a stupid, sad expression on its too- 
small face. Its temper is sad and sullen, inter- 
rupted by fits of anger and rage. The camel's 
personal habits are so bad that it has few 
friends, even among other camels. 

World Book's editorial policy on access, 
including indexing and cross-referencing, has 
resulted in a system allowing easy location of 
information. Describing a late 1980s' edition 
of World Book, Kenneth Kister noted that its 
index included an entry for every 70 words of 



: ■ : I 




».~,\; 



328 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



text. "Only the Academic American Encyclo- 
pedia (1:45), Collier's Encyclopedia (1:50), 
and Merit Students Encyclopedia (1:65) have 
better ratios." 26 In addition to this index are 
abundant cross-references. Speaking in 1976, 
Harmet told his audience that World Book 
editors "were aware that Americans generally 
were not index users, and so we developed a 
carefully designed system of short articles, 
cross-references, and other features to guide 
readers in their search for information." 27 Sig- 
nificantly, even the Preface of the current 
edition includes a cross-reference to another 
World Book entry. 

When the five strategies described so far 
are not enough to ensure that World Book is 
easy to use, the sixth strategy, testing World 
Book in more than 400 real classrooms across 
the U.S. and Canada, finds where they have 
failed. Housed in large metal filing cabinets in 
the World Book editorial offices in Chicago is 
perhaps the world's most charming database: 
a database of cards filled out by students. It is 
a database of the questions World Book's real 
users pose of it, of the "search strategies" they 
used, and of the success they met with. Harmet 
chuckles over questions: How does salt get in 
the ocean? Do fish close their eyes when they 
sleep? Editors are on the alert for "tellable 
facts," he says, to bring out in the articles. 
"The information may be there, but if a fourth 
grader ' s the one who would want to know, and 
it' s not in a place a fourth grader can find it, or 
in a form a fourth grader can understand, that ' s 
not good enough." 28 

However, World Book editors see the 
hands-on testing of materials by their intended 
audience as much more than a mop-up opera- 
tion, designed to catch problems that made 
their way by the first five strategies. Rather, 
the Classroom ResearchProject, as itis called, 
constitutes another aspect of audience and 
curricular responsiveness. The 100,000-plus 
cards returned to the World Book Research 
Department each year from students in the test 
classrooms are processed by computers to 
provide editors with summaries of data on 
article usage in each grade and subject. Thus, 



the results of testing affect not only the mate- 
rial tested, but also subsequent editorial deci- 
sions on later articles. 29 

Graphics 

World Book works hard to match its clear 
writing with graphics that are equally helpful. 
The visual appeal of a set of books like World 
Book is significant, as both book reviewers 
and World Book researchers will confirm. As 
part of the major revision effort for the 1929/ 
30 edition, then owner William F. Quarrie 
commissioned experiments, at the University 
of Chicago's School of Education, on the 
relative readability of various page designs, 
type styles, and type sizes. At the time, 9-point 
Baskerville on pages 6.5" x 9.75" was deter- 
mined to be optimum. Before the 1988 con- 
version to anew sans-serif font, dubbed "World 
Book Modern," World Book likewise under- 
tookacareful study of modern readers' tastes. 
World Book publishers have also been cau- 
tious in introducing new bindings. Overcom- 
ing a long reluctance to use the color green, the 
now-familiar white and green "Aristocrat" 
binding was made available in 1955, after a 
specially bound white and green set was pre- 
sented to, and well-received by, Pope Pius 
XII. 

The other aspect of World Book's visual 
appeal, of course, is its abundant illustrations. 
Illustrations have never been superfluous to 
World Book, clear though its prose has been. 
Reviewing the 25th anniversary edition, Lucile 
Fargo wrote, "What was of primary impor- 
tance in 1917 (as now) was that pictures 
should illustrate the text and not simply deco- 
rate it. The skill with which illustrations are 
now used to illuminate and clarify the text is 
remarkable. Almost as in a movie, processes 
are broken down into series of operations 
pictorially displayed. And of the use of charts 
and pictographs there is no end." 30 

Important and impressive as they were, 
the illustrations were accomplished on a shoe- 
string budget. Historically the most thinly 
staffed department in the company, the Art 



WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 329 



Department was allowed to grow briefly while 
work on the 1947 edition was under way, but 
then was pruned back again. Not until 1960 
and the next major revision, with new Field 
Enterprises money and new rotary presses that 
could reproduce illustrations more inexpen- 
sively, did the Art Department begin to ex- 
pand once more. As further technological 
advances have allowed, illustrations havebeen 
added, enlarged, colored, and more fully inte- 
grated with the texts they supplement. The 
relative importance of illustrations, and the 
relative contribution of illustrators, has also 
been allowed to grow. Today, article illustra- 
tions are reviewed, edited, and verified by 
experts, as carefully as article texts. The use of 
color in the 1988 edition, product of a major 
revision, was greeted with enthusiasm byre- 
viewers. 

The infusion of color in the state and province 
articles is but a small part of a welcome 
overhaul of the look of World Book. , . . Color 
photos and drawings appeared through previ- 
ous World Book editions, but not in the num- 
bers used in the 1988 edition. The total num- 
ber of illustrations, approximately 29,000, 
remains aboutthe same. However, now 24,000 
of them — a remarkable one-year increase of 
10,000— are in color. 31 

In the 1990 edition, according to the "Re- 
viewing Aid," illustrations account for ap- 
proximately one third of the space used. "The 
use of color extends to all subjects, except for 
small biographical portraits, historical black- 
and-white photographs and drawings, and ' one 
of a kind' illustrations." 32 

Accuracy 

Clear prose and visual appeal would mean 
little without accuracy and World Book's re- 
searchers meticulously verify all data included. 
For this purpose, World Book* s own reference 
library contains 22,000 volumes and 450 pe- 
riodical titles. Many other libraries in Chicago 
and throughout the country are used in the 
research effort, as well as thousands of phone 
and letter inquiries. The internal document 



"Research behind World Bool? (undated, but 
presumably still current) says, "World Book's 
researchers, under the direction of Mary 
Norton, use an average of 20 sources for each 
article they authenticate." 33 Another internal 
document, "Subject; Editorial Objectives," 
urges staff members to maintain accuracy by 
thinking critically and checking all informa- 
tion, against primary sources, when possible. 
If only secondary sources are available, ex- 
tensive research in multiple secondary sources 
is advised. 34 

Though book reviews and sales records 
suggest World Bookhas sailed from strength 
to strength, it has, over the years, weathered 
some storms. For instance, although it is now 
known for the expert contributors who sign 
their articles, and for the staff researchers who 
verify every fact, World Book was once open 
to acharge ofplagiarism, and narrowly averted 
a damaging lawsuit. On November 16, 1930, 
the New York Times published a piece under 
the headline: "Plagiarism Charged in 
Encyclopaedia Suit: Britannica Concern Asks 
Writ and $250,000 Damages from Chicago 
Publisher." 35 The article elaborated, "The 
plaintiff . . . charges that the defendant com- 
pany not only openly plagiarized material 
contained in the plaintiff s publication but re- 
wrote other material tomake it seem original." 
When it became clear to W.F. Quarrie & Co. 
that the charge was in earnest, the publishers 
mobilized a dozen researchers to prove that 
the Britannica and World Book articles in 
question drew their facts, and their phrasing, 
from a common source. These researchers 
managed to establish only that about half of 
the 77 articles in question drew from a com- 
mon source. Further investigation by World 
Book's Robert Preble, however, showed that 
"certain changes had been made in the quota- 
tions taken from Britannica itself to conform 
more closely to the claims made in the suit." 3 * 
At this point, though it had become clear that 
some of the World Book articles in question 
did, in fact, contain instances of "heavy crib- 
bing," 37 the Britannica publisher agreed to 



330 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



drop the suit. After this time, World Book 
contributors were required to fill out three 
cards with each submission: one certifying 
they had not committed plagiarism, a second 
listing their primary sources, and a third giv- 
ing pertinent biographical data about them- 
selves. This practice continues today. 

Foreign Sales and Marketing 

World Book has also found marketing 
abroad to be a challenge. World Book is in- 
eluctably an American product. Versions of 
the encyclopedia have sold internationally 
(primarily in Great Britain), but overseas sales 
have always been eclipsed by U.S. and Cana- 
dian sales. In 1936 the New Era Publishing 
Company, of London, did bring out a 10- 
volume World Book: British Empire Edition. 
Harold Shelton was general editor of this 
venture; Lord Gorell was advisory editor, "a 
purely nominal position," according to Walsh. 
Then, in 1961, Field Enterprises renewed the 
effort. From 1966 to 1968 they published a 12- 
volume International Edition, edited by Gil- 
bert C.E. Smith. While not a disaster, the 
International Edition lacked the strengths of 
World Book at home, and sold accordingly. 
The International Edition was not so off- 
puttingly tied to American school curricula, 
but then neither was it tied to British or Aus- 
tralian curricula. Since 1968 the domestic 
edition has been sold abroad. World Book as 
sold abroad, however, whether in the Interna- 
tional Edition or in the domestic edition, sac- 
rifices some of its famous ease-of-use, since it 
has been sold abroad in two alphabetic se- 
quences, with the first sequence consisting of 
the domestic World Book and the second se- 
quence consisting of two additional volumes 
treating topics from the point of view of the 
readers in that area of the world. 

World Booh has kept its text up to date 
with world news and with American attitudes 
through research and technology. The "Re- 
viewing Aid" for the 1 990 edition emphasizes 
that research "provides the basis for the an- 



nual revision of World Book and for the long- 
range planning that makes World Book a. con- 
tinuously evolving resource. In this respect, 
the current edition is one point on a continuum 
of effort. It reflects the experience gained 
from the past and points the way for the future 
as new data and experience provide further 
guidance." 38 In more concrete terms, how- 
ever, it is the printing presses, text manage- 
ment software, and telecommunications lines 
in which World Book's publishers have in- 
vested that allow the kind of currency World 
Book's readers now expect. "From 1947 on," 
Murray wrote, "the type for every page was 
kept standing in racks instead of being de- 
stroyed, as had previously been done once the 
printing plates had been made. This enabled 
the editors to make any changes they desired 
in a particular page." 39 And as early as 1975, 
FieldEnterprises Educational Corporation an- 
nounced that World BookEncyclopedia would 
soon begin the move to an electronic editorial/ 
composition system specifically designed for 
encyclopedia operations. 40 According to 
Kister, this system was then the most ad- 
vanced in the encyclopedia industry. 41 Today 
the text and illustrations of World Book ar- 
ticles canbechanged, almost at the last minute. 
The "Reviewing Aid" is worth quoting at 
length: 

A newly copyrighted and revised edition of 
World Book is available to subscribers late in 
the calendar year prior to the year of the 
copyright. For example, shipment of the up- 
dated sets for the 1990 edition began on De- 
cember 20, 1989. An elaborate typesetting 
and printing schedule was necessary to assure 
that new sets were available on that date. 
Because of the large pressrun, it was neces- 
sary to begin the printing in early September 
to assure the availability of books late in 
December. The binding of completed vol- 
umes began in mid-November. 

In developing a production schedule, the 
editors attempted to identify those pages that 
seemed most likely to require revision and 
placed them later in the printing schedule. For 
example, the World Series table in the Base- 
ball article was handled in this way. Changes 
in pages at the end of the printing schedule 



WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 331 



could conceivably be made as late as the third 
week of November. 

The editors also reacted to late-breaking 
events affecting the content of World Book 
that occurred after the deadline for those pages 
... In November, the presses were stopped to 
revise the Germany article to include men- 
tion of the opening of the Berlin Wall. 42 

Family purchasers of World Book, of 
course, are unlikely to take advantage of the 
"continuum of effort" that produces a new 
edition every year. They are unlikely, that is, 
to purchase many new editions. Many fami- 
lies and many more libraries, however, decide 
they can afford an annual supplement to their 
aging encyclopedia. Supplements have been 
available to World BookpxtrchasQTS since 1 92 1 . 
From 1922 until 1940 W.F. Quarrie & Co. 
(later the Quarrie Corp.), published a Loose- 
Leaf Annual. In 1941 this was abandoned for 
the softcover World Book Encyclopedia An- 
nual Supplement, In 1 962, in turn, this evolved 
into the hardbound World Book Year Book. 
Interestingly, World Book publishers have 
long recognized that annual supplements are 
not used as a reference work the way their base 
sets are. Murray writes that Roy Fisher, who 
oversaw the first World Book Year Book, 
knew that the supplement "was almost always 
opened and read as a magazine. Therefore, he 
designed the book to be leafed through and to 
catch the casual browser's attention, exactly 
as a good magazine does. Visually and textu- 
ally, the approach was based on good reporto- 
rial techniques. 'We knew that once the book 
went up on the shelf, its active life was gener- 
ally over,' [Fisher] observed." 43 

Editor Harmet does not fear for the active 
life of World Book Encyclopedia. He is confi- 



dent there will continue to be a role for printed 
general reference works. The advent of televi- 
sion did not change World Book's, readership, 
he claims, because people still need to be able 
to learn the "who, what, where, when, and 
why" of topics of their own choosing, rather 
than of topics that come to them on the evening 
news. In the 1990 edition of World Book, 
Harmet' s "Encyclopedia" article contains a 
section on "How to judge an encyclopedia" 
which does not take into account any format 
other than paper. In the event that CD-ROM 
readers or broadband network connections 
become commonplace in American homes, 
however, World Bookintendsto be ready. The 
new Information Finder, "A CD-ROM Refer- 
ence Based on the World Book Encyclope- 
dia" hit the market in December 1989. The 
CD contains the text of 17,800 articles. It 
likewise includes tables, cross-references, 
reading lists, and an index. According to the 
Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board re- 
view, "Information Finder is especially im- 
pressive in the way it facilely incorporates 
1 39 ,000 definitions from the World BookDic- 
tionary, allowing the user to make quick look- 
ups at any point in a search session." 44 Infor- 
mation Finder does not include any of the 
superb, and hitherto essential, World Book 
illustrations, although some illustrations may 
be included in an update. 

While formats may change, the editorial 
strategies that have ensured the accessibility 
of World Book's information to generations of 
families will assuredly not waver. Editor 
Harmet intends for World Book to remain the 
"best of its type." 



PUBLICATION HISTORY 

From the beginning, World Bookhas been 
published under a system of "continuous revi- 
sion." The following are editions which re- 
sulted from extraordinary revision efforts. 

World Book: Organized Knowledge in Story and 
Picture. Michael Vincent O'Shea, editor in 



chief. Chicago: Hanson-Roach-Fowler Co., 
1917. 8 vols. 
World Book Encyclopedia: Modern, Pictorial, Com- 
prehensive. Michael Vincent O'Shea, editor in 
chief. Chicago: W.F. Quarrie & Co., 1929- 
1930. 13 vols. 




332 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



The World Book Encyclopedia, J. Morris Jones, 
managing editor. Chicago: Quarrie Corpora- 
tion, 1947. 19 vols. 

The World Book Encyclopedia. J, Morris Jones, 
editor in chief. Chicago: Field Enterprises Educa- 
tional Corporation, I960. 20 vols. 

The World Book Encyclopedia. Robert O. Zeleny, 
editor in chief. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 
1988. 22 vols. 

It should be noted that World Book has 
also been published in several special edi- 
tions: 



The World Book Encyclopedia. (Braille ed.) Louis- 
ville, KY: American Printing House for the 
Blind.1961. 

The World Book Encyclopedia. (Large print ed.) 
Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corpo- 
ration, 1964. 

The World Book Encyclopedia. (Recorded ed.) Lou- 
isville, KY: American Printing House for the 
Blind, 1980. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Literature about The World Book Ency- 
clopedia falls into four categories: book re- 
views, corporate histories and memoirs, news 
stories, and inhouse publications, Reviews of 
World Book Encyclopedia are myriad. The 
few listed below are selected for their depth, 
and for the edition of World Book they treat. 
Only reviews of milestone editions (anniver- 
sary editions or largely revised editions) have 
beenincluded. Of histories, William Murray 's 
Adventures in the People Business, commis- 
sioned on the occasion of World Book's 50th 
anniversary, is the most significant. Murray 
himself is indebted to "a brief history of the 
Company's early years" by William V. Miller 
(1953), but this history was evidently never 
published, and could not be located in the 
company archives. Of inestimable value to 
this chapter were the various inhouse publica- 
tions (anonymous and undated) furnished by 
Executive Editor A. Richard Harmet. 

Baurnbach, Donna, Ann Barron, and Mary Bird. 
"Electronic Encyclopedia: Searching for the 
Right One," CD-ROM End User 2 (August, 
1990): 58-60. 

Corrigan, Adeline. "Reference." Review of World 
Book. Library Journal 85 (November 15, 1960); 
4235-36. 

Dale, Edgar, and Joseph O'Rourice. The Living Word 
Vocabulary: A National Vocabulary Inventory. 
Chicago : World Book-Childcraft International, 
1981. Second edition of The Living Word Vo- 
cabulary; The Words We Know: A National 
Vocabulary Inventory. Chicago: Field Enter- 
prises Educational Corporation, 1976. 

"Door-to-Door Conglomerate." Forbes 122 (August 
21, 1978): 112. 



"Door-to-Door Selling: Scott & Fetzer Finds It a 
Lucrative Line of Business." Barron 's6\ (July 
6, 1981): 29, 31. 

Fargo, Lucile F. "The World Book Twenty-fifth 
Anniversary Edition." Review of World Book. 
Horn Book 19 (July, 1943): 246-50. 

Fisher, Dorothy Canfield. "Books That Edify." Re- 
view of World Book. Atlantic Monthly 180 
(August, 1947): 122-25. 

"General Reference Work to Be Published inBraille." 
ALA Bulletin 53 (June, 1959): 528. 

Harmet, A. Richard. "Encyclopedia." World Book 
Encyclopedia. 1989 ed. 

. "Finding Devices and Visual Aids in a 

Major American Encyclopedia." In "The Mak- 
ing of a General Encyclopedia." Booklist 73 
(September 15, 1976): 206-07. 

Hill, Elsie Isabel. "Salute to the New Campion's and 
World Book." Horn Book23 (September, 1947): 
348-53. 

Kister, Kenneth F. Best Encyclopedias: A Guide to 
General and Specialized Encyclopedias. Phoe- 
nix: Oryx Press, 1986. 

. Encyclopedia Buying Guide: A Consumer 

Guide to General Encyclopedias in Print. 3rd 
ed. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1981. 

Murray, William, Adventures in the People Busi- 
ness: The Story of World Book. Chicago: Field 
Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1966. 

Nault, William H., Hollis L. Caswell, and George B. 
Brain. Analysis of Content of Courses of Study. 
Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corpo- 
ration, 1972. Supplement, 1978. Supplement, 
1987. 

"Plagiarism Charged in Encyclopaedia Suit: 
Britannica Concern Asks Writ and $250,000 
Damages from Chicago Publisher." New York 
Times, 16 November 1930, sec. 1, p. 3, col. 3. 

Rasmussen, Carol. Review of World Book Encyclo- 
pedia. IxiAmerican Reference Books Annual 15 
(1984): 23-26. 

Review of World Book Booklist 85 (October 15, 
1988): 386. 



WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 333 



Review of the Information Finder. Booklist 86 (June 

1,1990): 1918-21. 
Reviewing Aid for "The World BookEncyclopedia ": 

22 volumes: 1990 Edition. Chicago: World Book, 

Inc., 1990. 
Rudolph, Barbara. "'It Comes with the Territory/" 

Forbes 130 (September 13, 1982): 84-85, 
Saporito, Bill. "A Door-to-Door Bell Ringer." For- 
tune 110 (December 10, 1984): 83-88. 
Scheib, Charlene M. Review of the Information 

Finder . CD-ROM End User 2 (August, 1990): 

62-64. 
Simmonds, Martha F. "Styling the New World Book 

Articles." Spotlight (June 7, 1947): 2a-2b. 



Walsh, S. Padraig. Anglo-American General Ency- 
clopedias: A Historical Bibliography, 1703- 
1967. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 
1968. 

"World Book Editors, Artists to Create, Revise En- 
cyclopedia Pages on Terminals.' 1 Publishers 
Weekly 208 (September 1, 1975): 46-48. 

"World Book Encyclopedia to Publish Special Edi- 
tion for Partially Blind." Library Journal 88 
(May 1, 1963): 1850. 



NOTES 



1 Review of World Book, Booklist 15 (October 19 1 8): 5. 

2 Quoted from William Murray, Adventures in the People 

Business: The Story of World .ffou/c (Chicago: Field 
Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1966), p. 8. 

3 Ibid., 22. 

4 World Book Encyclopedia , 1989 ed., see "Encyclope- 

dia." 
'DorothyCanfieldFisher, "Books That Edify, "review of 
World Book, Atlantic Monthly 180 (August 1947): 
122. 

6 A. Richard Harmet, Executive Editor of World Book, 

interview with the author, 24 April 1990. 

7 Murray, 15. 

8 Ibid., 31. 

9 Harmet, interview with the author, 24 April 1990. 
i0 Murray, 109. 

11 Ibid., 136. 

12 Ibid., 190. 

13 S. Padraig Walsh, Anglo-American General Encyclo- 

pedias: A Historical Bibliography, 1703—1967, 
(New York: R. R. Bowker, 1968), 185. 

14 "The World Book Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition," 

Horn Book 19 (July 1943): 249. 

15 Murray, 108. 
" Ibid., 64. 

17 Harmet, interview with the author, 24 April 1990. 

18 "The Research Behind World Book," photocopied 

(Chicago: World Book, Inc.), 3. 

19 Edgar Dale and Joseph O'Rourke, "Appendix," The 

Living Word Vocabulary: The Words We Know: A 
National Vocabulary Inventory (Chicago: Field 
Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1976). 

20 Harmet, interview with the author, 24 April 1990. 

21 Harmet, letter to the author, 20 June 1990. 

22 "Easy Reading is Hard Writing," photocopied, (Chi- 

cago: World Book, Inc.), 45. 



23 Harmet, interview with the author, 24 April 1990. 
"Murray, 17-18. 

25 "Styling the New World Book Article," Spotlight (June 

7, 1947): 2a-2b. 

26 Kenneth Kister, Best Encyclopedias: A Guide to Gen- 

eral and Specialized Encyclopedias (Phoenix: Oryx 
Press, 1986), 205. 
"Harmet, "Finding Devices," 207. 

28 Harmet, interview with the author, 24 April 1990. 

29 Reviewing Aid for The World BookEncyclopedia: 22 

Volumes: 1990 Edition, (Chicago: World Book, 
Inc.), 11. 

30 Lucile Fargo, "The World BookT^enty-TifWi Anniver- 

sary Edition," 248-49. 

31 James Rettig, review of World Book Encyclopedia, 

Wilson Library Bulletin 62 (March 1988), 103. 
33 Reviewing Aid for The World Book Encyclopedia: 22 
Volumes: 1990 Edition, (Chicago: World Book, 
Inc.), 13. 

33 "Research Behind World Book," 5. 

34 "Subject: Editorial Objectives," photocopied, (Chi- 

cago: World Book, Inc.), 37-38. 
33 New York Times, Nov. 16, 1930, sec. I, p. 3, col. 3. 
36 Murray, 87. 
"Ibid. 
u "Reviewing Aid for The World Book Encyclopedia ," 

10. 
" Murray, 138. 

40 "World Book Editors, Artists to Create, Revise Ency- 

clopedia Pages on Terminals," Publishers Weekly 
208 (1 September 1975), 46. 

41 Kister, Best Encyclopedias, 201. 

42 "Reviewing Aid for The World Book Encyclopedia," 

16. 

43 Murray, 231. 

44 Booklist 86, (1 June 1990), 1918. 



Contributor Profiles 



Mary Biggs is director of libraries at 
Mercy College, a multi-campus institution in 
Westchester County and the Bronx, New York. 
She is also a lecturer at the Columbia Univer- 
sity School of Library Service where she 
teaches courses in information services. She 
was formerly on the full-time faculty at Co- 
lumbia and at the University of Chicago Gradu- 
ate Library School. She has published widely 
on reference, bibliographic instruction, edu- 
cation for librarianship, library and informa- 
tion science research, and publishing, with an 
emphasis on literary publishing. 

Pamela S. Bradigan is assistant profes- 
sor and assistant director at The Ohio State 
University Health Sciences Library. She re- 
ceived her law degree in 1981 from Capital 
University and she has written several articles 
on legal dictionaries, bibliographic instruc- 
tion, and end-use database searching. Bradigan 
is currently a consulting editor for the Bulletin 
of the Medical Library Association. 

William S. Brockman is English librar- 
ian at the University of Illinois at Urbana- 
Champaign. He is the author of Music: A 
Guide to the Reference Literature (Libraries 
Unlimited, 1987) and serves as bibliographer 
of the James Joyce Quarterly, He was for- 
merly reference librarian at Drew University. 

Charles Bunge is professor in the School 
of Library and Information Studies at the 
University of Wisconsin-Madison where his 
primary teaching area is reference materials 
and services. He has given talks and work- 



shops in various parts of the country on the 
selection and use of reference sources. He is 
the author of numerous articles on this subject 
in professional journals including "The Pub- 
lishing of Heavily Illustrated Reference 
Books," Reference Services Review (Spring 
1983). Hehas served aspresidentof the Ameri- 
can Library Association' s Reference and Adult 
Services Division and in 1983 received its 
Isadore Gilbert Mudge Citation for "signifi- 
cant contributions to reference librarianship." 

Jo A. Cates served as chief librarian of 
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St, 
Petersburg, Florida, from 1985 to 1991, and 
continues to act as an associate of the Institute. 
She is currently director of the Transportation 
Library at Northwestern University in 
Evanston, Illinois. She has served as head of 
reference at the Lamont Library at Harvard 
College. Cates is author of Journalism: A 
Guide to the Reference Literature (Libraries 
Unlimited, 1990) and numerous articles, and 
reviews books for Library Journal and Choice. 

Kerry L. Cochrane is currently acting 
head of the Reference Department of the Main 
Library at the University of Illinois at Chi- 
cago . She has been at the University of Illinois 
since 1 984 and has written on hypertext appli- 
cations in academic libraries 

Milton H. Crouch has held library posi- 
tions at the University of Florida, The Penn- 
sylvania State University, and, since 1969, the 
University of Vermont. He served as presi- 
dent of the Vermont Library Association in 







k 



336 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



1988 and as the VLA's American Library 
Association councilor from 1983 to 1987. 

Richard D. DeBacher is editorial direc- 
tor of Southern Illinois University Press. He 
began his publishing career at the University 
of Chicago Press in 1 970 where he worked for 
1 1 years. Subsequently, he held various mar- 
keting, editorial, and general management 
positions with the American Library Associa- 
tion and the Oryx Press. 

Marie C. Ellis is English and American 
literature bibliographer at the University of 
Georgia Libraries where she previously served 
as head of the Reference Department and as 
interlibrary loan librarian. She has been a 
reviewer for American Reference Booh An- 
nual since 1982 and served on the American 
Library Association 's Reference Books Bulle- 
tin Editorial Board from 1987 to 1991. 

Mary W. George is head of the General 
and Humanities Reference Division of the 
Firestone Library at Princeton University. She 
was coauthor of Learning the Library (Bowker, 
1982) and wrote the chapter "Instructional 
Services" in Academic Libraries: Research 
Perspectives (American Library Association, 
1990). From 1983 to 1990 she was coeditorof 
the library instruction journal Research Strat- 
egies. 

Richard W. Grcfrath is reference librar- 
ian at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is 
author of "Eating Clams with Your Fingers: A 
Survey of Contemporary Etiquette Books" in 
Collection Building (Winter 1985). 

Marta Lange is head of reference at 
North Carolina State University Libraries. In 
1990-91 she was chair of the Law and Political 
Science Section of the Association of College 
and Research Libraries, American Library 
Association. She has chaired the Standards 
and Guidelines Committee of ALA' s Refer- 
ence and Adult Services Division. She is the 
former secretary and a current member of the 
NCSU Faculty Senate. 

Mary L. Larsgaard is assistant head of 
the Map and Imagery Laboratory Library, 
University of California, Santa Barbara. She 



is the author of Map Librarianship: An Intro- 
duction (2nd ed., Libraries Unlimited, 1987) 
and serves as editor of the Western Associa- 
tion of Map Libraries Information Bulletin. 
She has served as chair of the Special Librar- 
ies Association Geography and Map Division, 
the American Library Association Map and 
Geography Round Table, the Western Asso- 
ciation of Map Libraries, and the Map Online 
Users Group. 

John R.M. Lawrence is reference/ 
interlibrary loan librarian at the College of 
William and Mary. He has worked previously 
as a reference librarian in the University Re- 
search Library at UCLA, the Carolina Popula- 
tion Center at the University of North Caro- 
lina, andthe Documents Department of Perkins 
Library at Duke University. 

William A. McHugh is a reference li- 
brarian at Northwestern University and has 
worked for more than ten years in reference 
departments in public and academic libraries. 
He is currently at work on a book on the origin 
of the Union List of Serials. 

Robert W. Melton is bibliographer for 
English and American literature and assistant 
special collections librarian at the University 
of Kansas Libraries. 

Stuart W. Miller is sales support man- 
ager for NOTIS Systems, Inc. He has served 
as chair of the American Library Association' s 
Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board and 
is author of the Concise Dictionary of Acro- 
nyms and Initialisms (Facts On File, 1988). 

Margaret Morrison is coordinator of 
public services at the University of Central 
Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas. She has par- 
ticipated in the Intern Program at the Library 
of Congress where she worked for six years as 
a specialist in automated reference services in 
the General Reading Rooms. During 1990-91 
she served as a Council of Library Resources 
academic management intern at the Univer- 
sity of Chicago Library. 

Harold M. Otness is professor of library 
science and collection development librarian 
at Southern Oregon State College. He is au- 



CONTRIBUTOR PROFILES 337 



thor of The Shakespeare Folio Handbook and 
Census (Greenwood Press, 1990) and numer- 
ous articles in such journals as Libraries & 
Culture, Library Journal, Reference Services 
Review, Asian Culture Quarterly, Public Li- 
brary Quarterly, and the Western Association 
of Map Librarians Information Bulletin. Two 
of his papers have been selected for Library 
Lit — The Best of. . . (Scarecrow Press). 

David M. Pilachowski is director of li- 
braries at Denison University in Granville, 
Ohio. Previously he served as associate uni- 
versity librarian at Colgate University. He has 
reviewed and written in the fields of political 
science, Asian area studies, and library auto- 
mation. He was also a member of the Asian 
Studies faculty at Colgate and has been an 
active member of the American Library 
Association's Machine- Assisted Reference 
Section. 

James Rettig is assistant university li- 
brarian for reference and information services 
at the College of William and Mary. Since 
1981 he has been editor/author of the "Current 
Reference Books" column in the Wilson Li- 
brary Bulletin. He has written numerous ar- 
ticles on reference services and the role of 
reference sources. He has served in various 
editorial and advisory positions tot Reference 
Services Review and developed that journal's 
popular "Desert Island" feature. In 1987 the 
American Library Association's Reference 
and Adult Services Division awarded him its 
Isadore Gilbert Mudge Citation for "signifi- 
cant contributions to reference librarianship." 
He is currently vice president/president-elect 
of the Reference and Adult Services Division. 

Holly D. Rogerson, a librarian and former 
teacher, is the author of anumber of English as 
a Second Language textbooks in vocabulary 
and grammar. 

Charles Scribner, Jr., was head of 
Charles Scribner's Sons from 1952 to 1986. 
His memoir of his career in publishing, In the 
Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing 
(Scribners, 1990), includes a chapter on 
Scribner reference books. He served as presi- 



dent of the American Book Publishers Coun- 
cil from 1966 to 1968, as a trustee of Princeton 
University from 1969 to 1979, and as a trustee 
of the Princeton University Press from 1949 to 
1981. 

Johan nah Sherrer is head of reference at 
Perkins Library at Duke University. She has 
served as editor of Colorado Libraries and has 
published articles on automation and refer- 
ence services. 

Linda K. Simons is coordinator of infor- 
mation services at Roesch Library at the Uni- 
versity of Dayton. She has written for Refer- 
ence Services Review and American Refer- 
ence Books Annual. She is currently at work 
on a book-length guide to reference sources 
for the performing arts. 

Edward D. Starkey is university librar- 
ianand associate professor atthe University of 
SanDiego. He is author of Judaism and Chris- 
tianity: A Guide to the Reference Literature 
(Libraries Unlimited, 1991). He is an active 
leader in the San Diego ecumenical move- 
ment. He has served as a librarian at Indiana 
University, the University of Dayton, and 
Urbana College; prior to a career in 
librarianship, he taught high school and col- 
lege for eight years. 

Carol M. Tobin is head of reference at 
the Thomas Cooper Library at the University 
of South Carolina. She has served on the 
Reference and Adult Services Division's Ref- 
erence Sources Committee. She is author of 
"Online Computer Bibliographic Searching 
as an Instructional Tool" in Reference Ser- 
vices Review (Winter 1984), andhas reviewed 
books and databases for RQ, College and 
Research Libraries, Online, and Database. 

David A. Tyckoson is head of the Refer- 
ence Department of the University Libraries, 
State University of New York at Albany. He 
has also served as a reference librarian at Iowa 
State University and as a science librarian at 
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He has a 
B.S. in physics and an M.L.S. in library sci- 
ence, both from the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign. He has been a reviewer 




I 



33 8 DISTrNGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



for several sources and has written exten- 
sively in the area of reference services, He is 
also the compiler of annual bibliographies on 
AIDS published by the Oryx Press. 

Sarah B. Watstein is head of the Refer- 
ence Division at the Library at Hunter College 
of the City University of New York. She is 
coeditor of End-User Searching in Libraries 
(American Library Association, 1988) and 
On Account of Sex: Annotated Bibliography 
on the Status of Women in Librarianship, 
1982-1987 (American Library Association, 
1990), and coauthor of AIDS & Women, A 
Sourcebook (Oryx Press, 1990). She has also 
written numerous articles on artificial intelli- 
gence, burnout, online and instructional ser- 
vices, reference services, and "women's stud- 
ies. 

E. Paige Weston is systems librarian and 
assistant professor at the University of Illinois 
at Chicago. She has served as an assistant 
reference librarian at U1C. As a systems li- 
brarian, she has wished for systems documen- 
tation to be written as comprehensively and 
comprehensibly as the World Book Encyclo- 
pedia. 

Sandy Whiteley is editor of Reference 
Booh Bulletin, the reference reviewing sec- 
tion of Booklist. She has worked for the Ameri- 
can Library Association's Association of Col- 
lege and Research Libraries and for North- 
western and Yale University libraries, She is 
the editor of Purchasing an Encyclopedia (3rd 



ed., American Library Association, 1989) and 
has contributed articles on book publishing, 
bibliographies, and indexes to the ALA Year- 
book (American Library Association). 

Christine C. Whirtington has been arts 
and architecture librarian and head of the Arts 
Library at the Pennsylvania State University 
since 1989. She was a reference librarian at 
Penn State's General Reference Section from 
1983 to 1989. She is author of "General Social 
Sciences" in The Social Sciences: A Cross- 
Disciplinary Guide to Selected Sources (Li- 
braries Unlimited, 1989) and "John Muir" in 
Read More About It: An Encyclopedia of 
Information Sources on Historical Figures 
and Events (Pierian Press, 1989). She was a 
member of the American Library Association' s 
Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board from 
1985 to 1989 andchaired the board from 1987 
to 1989. 

Elizabeth J. Wood is business librarian 
and associate professor at Bowling Green 
State University Library in Ohio . She is author 
of Strategic Marketing for Libraries (Green- 
wood Press, 1988), has contributed to Busi- 
ness Serials of the U.S. Government (2nd ed., 
American Library Association, 1988), has 
written articles about business reference works 
and library marketing, and has given work- 
shops on marketing academic libraries. With 
Floris Wood she has coauthored She Said, He 
Said (Visible Ink Press, 1991), a compendium 
of public opinion information. 



Index 



by Linda Webster 



Aarsleff, Hans, 182, 195 

Abbot, Edwin, 56 

Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 274, 276 

Abingdon Press, 274, 276 

Abridged Readers' Guide, 205, 207 

Academic American Encyclopedia, 328 

ACLS. See American Council of Learned Societies 

Adams, W. Davenport, 26 

Adams (J.S. & C), 288 

Addison, Henry Robert, 306, 307 

Adler, Mortimer, 83, 84 

A.L.A. See American Library Association 

A.LA. Booklist, 130 

A.L.A. Index to General Literature, 201 

Alamancs. See also World Almanac 

history of, 313-14 

in North America, 314-15 
Alexander, Mary D., 36 
Algeo, John, 195 

All the World's Fighting Ships (Jane), 263 
Allen, Douglas A,, 267 
Allen, F. Sturges, 292 
Allen, Harold, 297 
Allibone, Samuel Austin, 227 
Almanack de Gotha, 306 
Altick, Richard, 29 
American Almanac, 315 
American Antiquarian Society, 253 
American Bibliography (Evans), 248 
American Book Company, 291, 292 
American Council of Learned Societies, ix, x 
American Dictionary of the English Language, An 

(Webster), 181, 286, 287-89, 291, 300 
American Doctoral Dissertations, 71 
American Educator, 323 
American Heritage Publishing Company, 298 
American Imprints Inventory, 164 
American Language (Mencken), 47 
American Library Association 

cataloging code of 1949, 169 

Committee on Wilson Indexes, 204-5, 207 

and Guide to Reference Books, 129-34 



interest in printed catalog cards, 161 

and National Union Catalog, 165, 166, 
166-67 

and Poole 's Index to Periodical Literature, 
200 
American Spelling Book, The (Webster), 287 
Analyses Publishing Company, 151 
Analytical Concordance to the Bible (Young), 271 
Anderson, Margaret, 231 
Andrews, Charles R., 204-5 
Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 169 
Animal and Vegetable Physiology Considered 
with Reference to Natural Theology (Roget), 
221-22 
Annals of English Printing (Pollard), 247 
Annan, Noel, 60-61,63 
Annual Register, 264 
Apel, Willi, 123 
Appleton (D.) & Company, 214 
Arber, Edward, 243 
Arnold, Matthew, 55 
Arts and Humanities Citation Index, 234 
Ashmore, Harry, 83 

Association of Research Libraries, 164, 165 
Association Periodicals, 94 
Associations. See Encyclopedia of Associations 
Atherton, Gertrude, 103, 111 
Atlas of Ancient Geography, Biblical and 

Classical, An (Smith), 118 
Atlas sive Cosmographicae meditationes de 

fabrica mundi et favricati figure (Mercator), 
278-79 
Atlases. See also Times Atlas of the World 

definition of, 278 

early works, 278-79 
Avenel Books, 28 

Babbage, Charles, 222 

Babson, Roger W., 150 

Baby and Child Care (Spock), 140 

Baedeker, Eva, 2 

Baedeker, Karl, 1, 2 

Baedeker, Karl (grandson), 4 




s gre^ri^ta: , .mmZ8aM8B£Sgg&&3^ Si j^ ii! ^te ! £ 



340 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Baedeker guidebooks 

beginnings of, 1-2 

bibliography on, 7-8 

comments on, 3 

development and history of, 1-6 

as family enterprise, 2-3 

format of, 5 

maps in, 5 

modern guidebooks, 5-7 

Murray's contribution to, 2 

publication history of, 6-7 

quality of, 2-3 

value of, 4-6 

and World Wars, 3-4 
"Baedekeriana," 7 
Baedeker's Autoguides, 5-6 
Baier, Andrew, 116 
Bailey, Nathan, 180 
Baily, Alfred Head, 306 
Baily Brothers, 306-7 
Baker, John, 95, 96 
Baker, Orlando M., 291 
Baker, Theodore, 121 
Balay, Robert, 129, 134 
Balding and Mansell, 1 67 
Balfour, A. J., 307 
Ballou, Robert O., 35 
Banks, Margaret A., 21 8 
Banneker, Benjamin, 3 14 
Bannister, Roger, 139 
Bannon, Barbara A., 21 1, 2 14 
Bantam Books, 140 
Barnes <fc Noble Book of Modern Parliamentary 

Procedure (Jones), 212 
Barnhart, Clarence L., 297 
Barnum, S. W., 288 
Bartholomew, George, 279 
Bartholomew, Ian, 279 
Bartholomew, John, 279 
Bartholomew, John George, 262, 265, 279 
Bartlett, John, 9-10, 11,12 
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 

bibliography on, 16 

development and history of, 9-15 

early editions of, 9, 10 

features of, 10-1 1 

future of, 14-15 

newer editions and new editors, 1 1-14 

publication history of, 15-16 
Baruch, Bernard, 82 
Barwick, G. F., 245, 256n6 
Barzun, Jacques, 50 
Bateson, Mary, 59 
Baynes, Thomas, 79 
Bean, Donald P„ 34-35 
Beatty, Jerome, 109 
leaver, Sir Hugh, 138, 139 
leek, Emily Morison, 1344, 16 
leddoes, Thomas, 220 



Beethoven (Sadie), 123 
Bell, Andrew, 77-78 
Bell, Vanessa, 55 
Bell & Howell, 67, 175 
Bell Syndicate, 104 
Bemrose Publishing Company, 167 
Bender, Harold H., 292 
Benet, William Rose, 25 
Bentham, Jeremy, 221, 227 
Benton, William, 83, 84 
Berger, Meyer, 174 

Bible, 269-70, 277n3. See also Strong's Exhaus- 
tive Concordance of the Bible 
Bibliographical Society, 243, 244, 250 
Bibliographical Society of America, 248 
Biographia Britannica, 54 
Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (Baker), 

121 
Biographical sources. See also Dictionary of 
National Biography; Who 's Who 

early works, 54-55, 306 

examples of, 310 
Biographie universelle (Fetis), 54, 121 
Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon 

der Musiker and Musikgelehrten (Eitner), 120 
Bishop, William W., 165, 246-47 
Black, Adam, 79, 307 
Black, Adam Rimmer, 308, 309 
Black, Caroline Campbell, 19 
Black, Henry Campbell, 19-20 
Black, Rev. John Henry, 19 
Black (A &C), 79, 80,307-8 
Black on Judgments (Black), 19 
Black's Law Dictionary 

bibliography on, 22-23 

criticism of, 20-21 

current edition of, 21-22 

development and history of, 18-22 

early editions of, 19-20 

early English-language antecedents of, 18- 
19 

publication history of, 22 
Blakemore, Maurice N., 152 
Blom, Eric, 121, 122-23, 126 
Blount, Thomas, 18 
Blue Guides, 4 
Blume, Friedrich, 123 
Boehm, David, 140, 144 
Bolander, Janis, 263 
Bolander, Louis H., 267 
Bonk, Wallace, 26 
Book of Days (Chambers), 25 
Book of Knowledge, The, 80 
Books on Demand, 67 
Bookshelf, 38-39 
Boorstin, Daniel, ix 
Borroff, Marie, 41, 50 
Botstein, Leon, 124 
Boulter, Rev. W. C, 60 



•jJ/M 



INDEX 341 



Bouvier, John, 18-19, 20 

Bowker, R. R„ 95, 206-7 

Boyle, L. Lawrence, 7 

Bradley, Henry, 185-86 

Bradley, Philip, 96 

Brake, Laurel, 63 

Brett, William Howard, 199, 200 

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham, 24-25, 26, 27, 29 

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 

antecedents of, 24-25 

bibliography on, 29 

critical reception for, 25-26 

current edition of, 28 

development and history of, 24-29 

evolution and editions of, 26-28 

publication history of, 29 

value of, 28-29 
Brewton, John, 115 
Brewton, Sara, 115 
Bridgen, Lilian E., 33 
Bridgman, Percy, xi 

Britannica. See Encyclopaedia Britannica 
Britannica Book of the Year/Britannica World 

Data Annual, 83,85 
Britannica Learning Centers, 83 
Britannica Software, 83, 299 
Britannica 3, 84-86, 87 
Britannica Year Book, 81 
British Museum's General Catalogue of Printed 

Books, 167 
British Poets, 1914-1945 (Stanford), 114 
Bronte, Charlotte, 55 
Brown, R. LI., 280 
Browning, Robert, 186 
BRS DISS, 72 
Bruncken, Herbert, 115 
Bryan, Jane G., 320, 321 
Buchanan-Brown, John, 25, 27, 29 
Buckman, Peter, 142 
Bullen, George, 243 
Bunge, Charles, 110, 130 
Burchfield, R. W., 49-50, 297 
Burchfield, Robert, 180, 189-90, 191, 194 
Burgess, Anthony, 50 
Burke, John, 306 
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 81 
By Motor to the Golden Gate (Post), 106 
Byron, Lord, 2 

Calcareous Cements: Their Nature and Uses 

(Redgrave), 244 
Cambridge University, 82 
Cambridge University Press, 81 
Campbell, Loomis J., 292 
Cardinale, Susan, 250 
Carhart, Paul W., 292 
Carlyle, Thomas, 260 
Carr, Mrs. Walter, 120 
Carroll, Mark, 31 



Cartland, Barbara, 310 
Cassell, John, 24, 25, 29 
Cassell (publishing company), 25, 27-28, 29 
Castle, Irene, 82 
Caswell, Hollis L., 324, 326 
Catalog of Books Represented by Library of 
Congress Printed Cards Issued to July 31, 
1942, 165 
Catalogue of Books in the Library of the British 

Museum, 243 
Catalogue of Books Printed in theXVth Century 

Now in the British Museum, A, 243 
Cawdrey, Robert, 180 
CBI. See Cumulative Book Index 
CBS News Almanac, 320 
CD-ROM 

Compton 's Encyclopedia, 86 

Dissertation Abstracts International, 72 

Gale Global Access: Associations, 94 

Granger's Index to Poetry, 1 15 

Guinness Disc of Records, 144 

Information Finder, 331 

Magazine Article Summaries, 206 

Moody's manuals, 156, 157 

Oxford English Dictionary, 192-93, 194 

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, 
202 

Roget'8 II: The New Thesaurus, 230 

Science Citation Index, 239 

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 
194, 299 

Wilsondiso, 206 
CDI. See Comprehensive Dissertation Index 
Century Atlas and Gazetteer of the World, The, 

279 
Chalmers, Alexander, 54 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 308 
Chambers, Ephraim, 77 
Chambers, Robert, 25 
Chambers (W. & R.), 262 
Chambers's Encyclopedia, 77, 262, 264 
Chapman, R. W., 43 
Chapman, Robert, 230 
Chapman, Robert L., 230 
Chataway, Christopher, 138 
Checklist of Works of British Authors Printed 
Abroad, in Languages Other Than English 
(Shaaber), 247 
Cheney, Frances Neel, 91, 130 
Chernofsky, Jacob L., 255 
Chicago Guide to Preparing Electonic Manu- 
scripts, The, 38, 39 
Chicago Manual of Style 

bibliography on, 39-40 

challenges for editors, 37-38 

commercial viability of, 34 

early history of, 32-33 

eighth and ninth editions of, 34-36 

first edition of, 33 



342 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Chicago Manual of Style (continued) 

history and development of, 31-39 

later editions of, 33 

modern manual, 36-37 

present and future of, 38-39 

publication history of, 39 

tenth and eleventh editions of, 36 

thirteenth edition, 38 
Chisholm, Hugh, 80 
Choice, 134 

Churchill, Winston, 41, 308 
Citizen 's Atlas of the World, The, 279 
Claxton, Rerasen and Heffelfinger, 28 
Cleary, James W., 216 
Clemente, Nancy N., 3 1 
Coleridge, Herbert, 181, 182-83 
College & Research Libraries, 130 
Colles, Henry Cope, 121-22 
Collier's Encyclopedia, 86, 328 
Colling, Patricia M., 73-74 
Collison, Robert, 87 
Columbia Granger's Guide to Poetry Anthologies, 

The (Katz and Katz), 115 
Columbia Granger 's Index to Poetry, 114 
Columbia University, 129, 131-32, 133, 134 
Columbia University Press, 113, 115 
Commander, John, 167, 170, 171 
Commonwealth Political Facts (Paxton), 265 
Companion to the French Revolution (Paxton), 

265 
Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, 

A (Webster), 287 
Complete Concordance to Shakespeare 's Dra- 
matic Works and Plays (Bartlett), 9-10 
Complete Concordance to the Old and New 

Testament, A (Cniden), 270-71 
Composer Biography Series, 125 
Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 72, 74 
Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory 
Dictionary of the English Language (Worces- 
ter), 289-90 
Compton 's Encyclopedia, 83, 86 
Compton 's MuliiMedia Encyclopedia, 300 
Compustat, 155 
Conant, James B.,ix 
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English 

(Fowler and Fowler), 42-43, 194 
Concordance of the New Testamant, The (Gibson), 

270 
Concordances. See also Strong's Exhaustive 

Concordance of the Bible 

definition of, 269 

early works, 270-71 
Connolly, M. J., 21 
Constable, Archibald, 78-79 
Constitutional Law Review, The, 19 
look (C), 265 

Cooperative Index to Periodicals (Fletcher), 200 
Copyright, 80 



Cornhill Magazine, 55-56 

Cotton, Clement, 270 

Coulton, G. G., 50 

Coussents, P. W., 113 

Cowell, John, 18 

Cox, William, 82 

Crabb, George, 224 

Craigie, William Alexander, 186-87, 188 

Craik, George, 1 19 

Creighton, J. E., 59 

Crist, Timothy J., 253 

Crockford's Clerical Directory, 306 

Cronin, John, 167, 168, 170, 171 

Crowell's Handbook for Readers and Writers, 25 

Cruden, Alexander, 270-71, 273, 274 

Crystal Palace, 118 

Cummings, Alexander, 315 

Cumulative Book Index, 199-200, 205, 206 

Cumulative Catalog of Library of Congress 

Printed Cards, 166 
Cumulative Index to Periodicals (Brett), 199, 200 
Cuppy, Will, 103 
Cushing, Luther Stearns, 212 
Cutter, Charles A., 161 
Cuvier, Georges, 224 
Cveljo, Katherine, 255 
Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and 

Ecclesiastical Literature (Strong), 273 
Cyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts and 

Sciences (Chambers), 77 

DAB. See Dictionary of American Biography 

DAL See Dissertation Abstracts International 

Daiches, David, 50 

Dale, Edward, 326-27 

Dana, James D., 288 

Daniells, Lorna M., 159 

Danilov, General, 81 

Dannreuther, Edward, 120 

Datastream, 157 

DATRIX, 72, 73 

Daub, Peggy, 126 

David, Charles, 171 

David Cox and Peter De Wint (Redgrave), 244 

Davis, Mary Ellen Kyger, 96 

Davy, Humphrey, 220 

Davy Crockett 's Almanack of Wild Sports of the 

West, and Life in the Backwoods, 315 
Dawson, Lawrence H., 27 
De Quincey, Thomas, 79 
Debrett's, 306 
Debrett 's Handbook, 3 1 
DeBruhl, Marshall, x 
Delury, George, 318 
Demeter's Manual of Parliamentary Law and 

Procedure, 212 
Democrat 's Almanac, 315 
Dempsey, David, 267 
Dentt, Edward, 121 



INDEX 343 



Deterioration of Structures of Timber, Metal, and 
Concrete Exposed to the Action of Sea-Water 
(Redgrave), 244 
Deutsches Wdrterbuck (Grimm and Grimm), 182 
Dewey, John, 82 

Dewton, Johannes L., 167, 168, 169, 170, 171 
DIALOG, 72, 94, 157 
DIALOG Ondisc Standard & Poor's Corporation 

Records, 157 
Dickens, Charles, 24, 27, 100 
Dictionaries, early works, 286-88. See also 
Merriam-Webster family of dictionaries; 
Oxford English Dictionary 
Dictionary (Johnson), 181 
Dictionary of American Biography, ix, x 
Dictionary of American English on Historical 

Principles, A, 187 
Dictionary of American Library Biography, 136 
Dictionary of American Regional English, 190 
Dictionary of American-English Usage, A 

(Nicholson), 48-49 
Dictionary of British History, 27 
Dictionary of English Literature (Adams), 26 
Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Fowler) 
advent of, 43 
author's imprint on, 44-45 
bibliography of, 50-51 
contribution and influence of, 47-48 
critical reception of, 43-44 
deference to Latin in, 45-47 
development and history of, 41-50 
Gowers' revision of, 49 
index to, 49 

prescriptive nature of, 45 
publication history of, 50 
relevance of, 49-50 
revision of, 48-49 
style of, 47 
Dictionary of Musical Terms (Baker), 121 
Dictionary of National Biography 
bibliography on, 63-64 
critical reception for, 60-62 
development and history of, 54-62 
editorial standards for, 58-59 
extension and revision of, 62 
men responsible for, 55-60 
precursors of, 54-55 
publication history of, 63 
purpose of, 57-58 
Who's Who compared with, 310 
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ix-xii 
Dictionary of the Bible (Smith), 118 
Dictionary of the English Language, A (Johnson), 

287 
Dictionary of the English Language, A (Worces- 
ter), 290 
Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, The, 187 
Diderot, Denis, 77 
Diehl,Digby, 141 



Dissertation Abstracts International 

bibliography on, 73-74 

charges for dissertations, 68, 69, 75- 
76nnl7-18 

development and history of, 66-72 

early volumes titled Microfilm Abstracts, 
68-70 

indexing of, 71-72,73 

nonprint forms of, 72 

origins of, 67-68 

publication history of, 73 

scope changes in, 70-71 

subscription costs for, 70, 76n26 
Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc, 72, 73 
Dissertation Abstracts Online, 72, 73 
Dissertations, availability of, 66-67 
DNB, See Dictionary of National Biography 
Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American 

Universities, 71 
Dole, Nathan Haskell, 10, 11, 12 
Donnelley Company, 34, 35 
Donnelly, T. E. s 34 
Donnelly Corporation, 108 
Dougan, Alice, 203 
Dreiser, Theodore, 3 

DSB. See Dictionary of Scientific Biography 
DuBois, W, E. B., 82 
Duff, E. Gordon, 243, 245 
Duffy, Richard, 99 
Dun & Bradstreef, 153, 154 
Dun & Bradstreet Financial Services of North 

America, 157 
Dutch, Robert A., 228, 231 
Dwyer, William O,, 154 
Dykema, Karl W., 297 

EA. See Encyclopedia of Associations 

EAA. See Encyclopedia of American Associations 
Early English Text Society, 183 
Early Modem English Dictionary, 187 

EB. See Encyclopaedia Briiannica 
Ebbitt, Wilma, 297 

Edge of Objectivity, The (Gillispie), ix 

Edinburgh Geographical Institute, 279 

Editor, 39 

Edwards Brothers, Inc., 68, 165 

Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue, 253- 54 

Einbinder, Harvey, 83-84 

Einstein, Albert, 82 

Einstein, Alfred, 121 

Eitner, Robert, 120 

Elements of Style, The (Strunk and White), 31 

Eliot, T. S„ 41 

Emblen.D.L.,230,231 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 9, 291 

Emily Post Cookbook, 101 

Emily Post Institute, 107 

Emily Post 's Etiquette (Post), 1 1 

Encore, 126 



344 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Encyclopaedia Britannica 

article for also submitted to Dictionary of 
National Biography, 57 

bibliography on, 87-88 

Britannica 3, 84-85, 87 

development and history of, 77-87 

early editions of, 77-78 

eleventh edition of, 81 

fourteenth edition and continuous revision, 
82-84 

future of, 86-87 

Macropaedia, 84-85, 327 

Micropaedia, 84-85 

ninth edition of, ix, 79-80 

organization of, 77 

origins of, 77 

plagiarism charges against World Book, 
329- 30 

Propaedia, 84-85 

publication history of, 87 

publishers of, 307 

refinements in procedures and content, 78- 
79 

revision of Britannica 3, 85-86 

sale and resale of, 81-82 

supplements of, 221 

in twentieth century, 80-81 

University of Chicago and, 82, 83-84 

yearbooks for, 81, 83, 85 
Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, 83 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 86, 298 
Encyclopedia Americana, 80, 82, 86 
Encyclopedia of American Associations, 89-90 
Encyclopedia of Associations 

bibliography on, 96 

compilation of, 89-90 

computerized production of, 94-95 

critical reception of, 90-91 

development and history of, 89-95 

expanding scope of, 92-94 

origins of, 89 

publication history of, 96 

second edition and beyond, 91-92 

supplement to, 92 
Encyclopedias. See Encyclopaedia Britannica; 

World Book Encyclopedia 
Encyclopedic (Diderot), 77 
English Association, 50 
English Dialect Dictionary, 1 90 
English Historical Review, The, 59 
English Synonymes Discriminated (Taylor), 224 
English Synonymes Explained, in Alphabetical 

Order (Crabb), 224 
Enoch Pratt Free Library, 92 
Entick, John, 287 
Epstein, Joseph, 43, 50 
Epstein, Mortimer, 263-64 
Erhard Ratdoh and His Work at Venice 
(Redgrave), 244 



Essay and General Literature Index, 201 
Essay on the Constitutional Prohibitions Against 
Legislation Impairing the Obligation of 
Contracts and Against Retroactive and Ex 
Post Facto Laws (Black), 19 
Essays of an Information Scientist (Garfield), 240 
Essentials of Parliamentary Procedure (Auer), 

212 
ESTC. See Eighteenth-Century Short- Title 

Catalogue 
Etiquette (Post) 

bibliography on, 1 1 1-12 
critical and popular reception to, 103-4 
development and history of, 98-1 10 
early revised editions of, 104-7 
first edition of, 99-103 
origins of, 98-99 
publication history of, 1 10-1 1 
reprint facsimile of first edition, 109 
revisions by Elizabeth L. Post, 108-10 
tenth edition of, 107-8 
European Political Facts (Paxton), 265 
Evans, Bergen, 296 
Evans, Ivor H., 27, 29 
Evans, N. Carol, 253, 255 
Evans, William J., 216 
Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, 83 
Everett, LouellaD., 11-12 
Everyman's Dictionary of Music (Blom), 122 
Expositiones terminorum legum Anglorum 

(Rastell), 18 
Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, An 
(Vine, Unger and White), 275 

Facts On File (company), 143-44 

Facts On File, 143 

Familiar Quotations (Bartlett), See Bartlett's 

Familiar Quotations 
Fargo, Lucile, 325, 328 
Federal Yellow Book, 93 
Fellowes, E. H., 121 
Ferguson, F. S., 250 
Field Enterprises, 325, 329, 330 
Fifteenth Century Books, 243 
Fifty Year Review of Moody's Investors Service, A 

(Moody), 148 
Find It in Fowler, 49 
Firth, C. H., 59 

Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 322-23 
Fisher, Roy, 331 
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 103 

Five Hundred Years of Printing (Steinberg), 264 
Fletcher, Ewen, 195 
Fletcher, W. I., 200 
Florio, John, 180 
Flower, Desmond, 27 
Follett, Wilson, 295-96 
Force, Peter, 315 
Forster, E. M., 3 



INDEX 345 



Forster, Walter E„ 89 

Fortnightly Review, 119 

Fowler, Frank G., 42-43 

Fowler, Henry W., 41-47 

Francis, F. C, 250, 255 

Franklin, Anne, 314 

Franklin, Benjamin, 314 

Franklin, James, Jr., 314 

Franklin, James, Sr., 3 14 

Fraser's Magazine, 55 

Frazer, James G., 79 

Frey, Alexander Hamilton, 20 

Friend, Joseph, 288 

Fritze, R. H., 63 

Fritze, Ronald, 195 

Fuller, Henry, 45 

Fuller Maitland, J. A., 120, 121 

Funk& Wagnalls, 99, 103, 105, 108, 109 

Furnivall, F. J„ 56, 181, 182, 183, 184 

Gale Global Access: Associations, 94 

Gale Research, 89, 93, 95 

Gallery of Ghosts, A (Wing), 252 

Ganly, John V„ 158,159 

Gardiner, Leslie, 284 

Garfield, Eugene, 234-35, 238, 240 

Garrison, Fielding H., 20 

Garvin, James, 82 

Gaskell, Mrs., 55 

Geiringer, Karl, 122 

Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the 

Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 

(Burke), 306 
Genealogical and Heraldic History of the 

Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage (Burke), 

306 
General Science Index, 235 
Geographia (Ptolemy), 278 
George Bell & Sons, 291 
Gephart, Joseph C, 174 
Gerwig, Henrietta, 25 
Gibson, John C. L., 274 
Gibson, Thomas, 270 
Gilbert, W. S., 308 
Gillispie, Charles, ix-x 
Gladstone, W. E., 260 
Glaisher, James, 67 
Glynn, Jennifer, 63 
Goddard, Mary K., 314 
Goering, Hermann, 4 
Goetz, Philip, 84, 86 
Gold, David, 297 
Goodrich, Chauncey, 288, 291 
Goodrick, Edward W., 275 
Gordon, Alexander, 117 
Gorell, Lord, 330 
Gould, Jay, 315 
Gould and Lincoln, 229 
Gove, Philip, 294-95 
Gowers, Sir Ernest, 45, 49, 50 



Graham, Bessie, 26 

Grammatical Institute of the English Language, A 

(Webster), 286-87 
Granger, Edith, 113,114, 115 
Granger 's Index to Poetry 

bibliography on, 116 

critical reception of, 1 14-15 

development and history of, 1 13-15 

expansion of, 114 

indexes to, 113-14 

publication history of, 115-16 
Gray, J. C, 195 
Gray, William Scott, 324 
Great Books of the Western World, 83 
Greek-English Lexicon Based on the German 
Work of Francis Passow (Liddell and Scott), 
182 
Greene, Graham, 3 
Greenwood Press, 5 
Greg, W. W., 243, 244, 254, 256nl 1 
Griggs (S.C.), 214 
Grimm, Jacob, 182 
Grimm, Wilhelm, 182 
Grofman, Bernard N., 21 1, 213 
Grolier Society, 80 
Grosart, Alexander Balloch, 57 
Grossman, John, 37, 39 
Grotzinger, Laurel, 136 
Grove, George, 117-21, 125 
Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, 125 
Grove's Dictionary of Music, 123 
Grove 's Dictionary of Music and Musicians 

American Supplement of , 121, 122 

bibliography on, 126-27 

Blom's editorship of, 122-23 

Colles's editorship of, 121-22 

critical reception of The New Grove, 124-25 

development and history of, 117-25 

first edition of, 119-21 

Fuller Maitland's editorship of, 121 

Grove's editorship of, 117-21 

origins of, 118-19 

publication history of, 125-26 

Sadie's editorship of, 123-24 
Guide to Reference Books 

bibliography on, 136 

and Columbia University, 131-32 

critical reception of, 133 

development and history of, 129-34 

future of, 133-34 

genesis and characteristics of, 129-30 

publication history of, 135-36 

sales figures for, 130, 137n20 

as textbook, 133-34 

updating of, 130-31, 136-37n7 
Guide to Science (Brewer), 24, 25 
Guinness, Benjamin, 140-41 
Guinness Book of Almost Everything You Didn 't 
Need to Know About the Movies, The, 141 



346 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Guinness Book of Everything You Didn 't Need to 

Know About Dogs, The, 141 
Guinness Book of Olympic Records, The, 141 
Guinness Book of Records 

American publisher and American title for, 
143-44 

bibliography on, 144-45 

critical reception of, 141 

development and history of, 138-44 

first American edition of, 140 

first edition of, 139-40 

format and organization of, 142-43 

McWhirter Brothers and, 138-39 

popularity of, 140-41 

publication history of, 144 

types of records in, 141-42 

ways to use, 143 
Guinness Book of Superlatives, The, 140 
Guinness Book of World Championship Boxing, 

The, 141 
Guinness Disc of Records, 144 
Guinness, Ltd., 143 
Guinness Oddfax Series, 141 
Guinness Sports Record Book, 141 
Guinness Superlatives, Inc., 139 
Gustafson, David, 36 
Gutenberg, Johann, 313 
Guthrie, Anna Lorraine, 202-3 
Guthrie, Donald, 271 

Hadley, A. T„ 292 

Hammond Almanac of a Million Facts, Records, 

Forecasts, 320 
Handbooks in Music Series, 125 
Handel (Sadie), 123 
Handy Atlas, The, 279 

Handy Reference Atlas of the World, The, 279 
Hansen, Harry, 318 
Hanson, James H., 322 
Hanson, Lars, 251 
Hanson, Robert, 154 
Hanson-Bellows Company, 322, 323 
Hardy, Thomas, 186 
Harmet, A. Richard, 323, 325-26, 327, 328, 331, 

332 
Harper, William Rainey, 32 
Harper and Brothers, 184 
Harper & Row, 28, 108, 110 
Harris, William T., 292 
Hart, H. G., 42 

Harvard Dictionary of Music, 123 
Harvard University, 7 1 
Hatsell, John, 212 
Hayes, Bill, 325 
Hayman, P. M. C, 24-25, 29 
Haynes, Henry W., 9 
Hazlitt, William, 79 
Hellman, Geoffrey, 107 
Hemingway, Ernest, 309 
Hench, Atcheson L., 297 



Henry Altemus, 28 

Herald Almanac, 315 

Herbert, A. P., 1 

Herschel, J. F. W„ 67 

Highet, Gilbert, 50 

Hill, David, 22 

Hinrichsen, Alex, 5, 6, 7 

Hipkins,A. 1,120 

Hiscock, W. G., 250 

Historic Notebook (Brewer), 24 

Historical Records Survey, 164 

Historical Research, 60 

History of Opera (Sadie), 125 

History of the Railroads and Canals of the Unite, 

States, A (Poor), 147 
History of Water-Colour Painting in England, A 

(Redgrave), 244 
Hitchcock, H. Wiley, 125, 126 
Hodder & Stoughton, 274 
Hoffman, Herbert, 115 
Hoffman, Mark S., 318, 319, 320 
Holmes, Harvey L., 175, 176, 177, 178 
Holmes, Harvey L., Jr., 178 
Holschuh, Louis, 150 
Hone's Every-Day Book, 25 
Hooper, Franklin, 80, 82 
Hooper, Horace Everett, 80-82 
Hoover, J. Edgar, 324 
Hopkins, Edward, 120 
Hoskins, George, 150 
Houghton Mifflin, 281 

How to Analyze Railroad Reports (Moody), 1 5 1 
How to Give Buffet Suppers (Post), 102 
Howard, Roy W„ 317 
Howell, John, 31 
Hugh of Saint-Cher, 270 
Hughes, Anselm, 121 
Hunter, Brian, 266 
Hurlbert, William Henry, 315-16 
Husk, W. H., 120 
Hutcmns, Robert Maynard, 83, 84 
Huxley, Aldous, 3 
Huxley, Julian, 82, 309, 311 
Huxley, Leonard, 63 
Huxley, T. H„ 79 
Huxley, Thomas, 81 

IBM United Kingdom, Ltd., 191 

ICC. See International Computaprint Corporation 

(ICC) 
Index Society, 247-48 

Index to American Doctoral Dissertations, 71 
Index to Children 's Poetry (Brewton and 

Brewton), 115 
Index to Early Twentieth Century City Plans 

Appearing in Guidebooks, 5 
Index to Nineteenth Century City Plans Appearing 

in Guidebooks, 5 
Index to Subjects Treated in the Reviews and 

Other Periodicals to Which No Indexes Have 

Been Published (Poole), 200 



■ <stu, t ja-nsffttoedfii^fl-^^jarf. 



US 



INDEX 347 



Indexing. See also names of specific indexes 
Dictionary of Modern English Usage 

(Fowler), 49 
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, xi 
Dissertation Abstracts International, 71-72 
Encyclopedia of Associations, 93 
Granger 's Index to Poetry, 113-14 
New York Times Index 174-78 
Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature, 

202-4 
Science Citation Index, 23 6 
Times Atlas of the World 28 1 
Washington Post, 175 
World Book, 327-28 

Information Bank, 176 

Information Bank Abstracts, 178 

Information Finder, 331 

Information Please Almanac, 319, 320 

Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of 
Common Sense (Reid), 226 

Institute for Scientific Information, 234-35 

Institute of Historical Research, University of 
London, 60 

Interactive Data, 157 

International Catalog of Scientific Literature, 161 

International Computaprint Corporation (ICC), 
191 

International Copyright Law, 80 

International Index to Periodicals, 205 

International Inventory of Musical Sources, 123 

International Thomson, 95 

Interpreter, The (Cowell), 18 

Irvine, E. Eastman, 318 

Italian Touring Club, 4 

Iveagh, Rupert Guinness, Earl of, 139, 142 

Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 291 

Jackson, Walter Montgomery, 80-81 

Jackson, William A., 250 

Jacob, Giles, 18 

Jane, John Frederick Thomas, 263 

Jay, John, 288 

Jefferson, Thomas, 212 

Jesperson, Otto, 46, 48, 50 

Jewett, Charles Coffin, 161 

Jobs, Steven P., 299 

John Bartholomew & Son, Ltd., 279 

Johnson, Samuel, 180-81, 190, 227, 287 

Jones, Breckinridge, Jr., 178 

Jones, George W. ( 28 

Judkins, C. J., 89 

Kalendarium novum, 313 

Kalonymus, Rabbi Isaac Nathan ben, 270 

Kaplan, Justin, 14-15, 109, 111 

Karl Baedeker GmbH, 6 

Karl Baedeker Verlag, 6 

Katz, Bill, 115, 132, 136, 198 

Katz, Linda, 115 

Keesey, Ray E., 212 



Kellough, Jean, 157, 159 

Kelvin, Lord, 79 

Kenyon, John Samuel, 294 

Kern, Richard, 95 

Kemfeld, Barry, 125 

Kiedaisch, Howard, 154 

King, A. Hyatt, 122, 123 

King's English, The (Fowler and Fowler), 42, 43, 

46, 47, 48 
Kingsforth, C. L., 59 
Kirby, J. L., 63 
Kircher, Conrad, 270 
Kirkpatrick, Betty, 229 
Kirshenbaura, J., 141 
Kister, Kenneth, 87, 298, 327-28, 330-31 
Kittredge, George Lyman, 292 
Klein, Johann August, 1 
Kletsch, Ernest, 163, 170 
Knight, Floyd, 186 
Knott, Thomas A., 292-93, 294 
Know: A Magazine for Britannica People 

Everywhere, 88 
Knowledge Access International, 94 
Kodansha publishing firm, 125 
Kogan, Herman, 87 
Kohlenberger, John R., Ill, 275 
Krapp, George, 44, 288 
Kraus Periodicals, 205 
Krause, Roy A., 154 
Kroeger, Alice B., 26, 129 
Kropotkin, Prince, 79 
Kruisinga, E., 46, 50 
Krummel, D. W,, 125 
Kuhn, Thomas, x 

Lacey, Robert, 142 

Lafreri, Antonio, 278 

Laing, Gordon, 34-36 

Lambert, Sheila S., 154, 155 

Lane, Hana Umlauf, 318, 319 

Lang, Paul Henry, 123 

Langenscheidt publishing group, 6 

Langton, Stephen, 270 

Laqueur, Maria, 169 

Large and Complete Concordance to the Bible in 

English, A (Cotton), 270 
Larsen, John C, 26 

Laski, Marghanita, 187-88, 191, 192, 193 
Laughlin, Rosemary M., 297 
Law dictionaries, early works, 18-19. See also 

Black's Law Dictionary 
Lav! Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and 

Laws of the United States of America and 

Several States of the American Union 

(Bouvier), 18-19 
Lawler, John, 203, 208 
Lawrence, T. E., 3 
Leavitt, Robert, 292 
Lee, Sidney, 55, 56-61, 62 
Lewicky, George, 200, 202, 205, 206 



348 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Lewis, Sinclair, 103 
Leyland, John, 263 
Leypoldt, Frederick, 199 
Library Journal, 130 
Library of Congress 

and cataloging of dissertations, 69 

editorial processes for the National Union 
Catalog, 168-69 

Interlibrary Loan Service of, 165 

National Union Catalog Publication Project, 
167-68 

and new technology, 169-70 

plans for book catalog, 165-67 

printed catalog cards and, 162 

Project "B," 163, 164 

Union Catalog Division of, 163-66 
Library of Congress Author Catalog, 166 
Library of Congress Catalog— Books: Authors, 

166 
Library of Congress Subject Headings, 202, 203 
Library Research Service, 82-83 
Liddell, George, 182 
Liebert, Herman, 255 
Lightner, Lennie, 38 
Linowitz, Sol, 319 
Lippincott, 28 
List of American Doctoral Dissertations Printed in 

1912-1938, 71 
Little, Brown & Co., 9, 12-13, 80 
Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 194 
Living Word Vocabulary (Dale and O'Rourke), 

327 
Lizars (W. & D.)> 279 
Llewellyn, William A., 299-300 
Lloyd, Susan M., 228-29, 230, 23 1 
Loewenberg, Alfred, 122 
Long, Luman H., 318 
Longman, 227, 230 

Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 226 
Longmans, Green and Co., 228, 229 
Lonsdale, Dame Kathleen, x~xi 
Lowell, James Russell, 186 
Lowes, John Livingston, 292 
Lurie, Charles R, 177 
Lyman, Robert Hunt, 316-18, 319, 320-21 

Macauley, Thomas Babington, 79, 82 

Mc Arthur, Tom, 231 

McCall's magazine, 104 

McClintock, John, 273 

McChirg and Company, 113 

McDavid, Raven I., 291, 297 

Macdonald, Dwight, 296 

McFarlan, Donald, 144 

McFarland, A. C, 35 

Macfarquhar, Colin, 77-78 

McHenry, Robert, 86 

McKenzie, D. F., 253 

McLuhan, Marshall, 48, 50 

Macmillan, Alexander, 118, 259, 260, 261 



Macmillan, Daniel, 259, 260 

Macmillan, Frederick, 263 

Macmillan, Harold, 266 

Macmillan and Company, 118, 119, 122, 123, 184, 
259,260,261,262,266 

Macmillan 's Magazine, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 121 

McMurtie, Douglas C, 164 

Macropaedia. See Encyclopaedia Britannica 

McVaugh, Julia, xi 

McWhirter,Norris, 138-39, 140, 142-43, 144 

McWhirter, Ross, 138-39, 141, 142-43, 144 

McWhirter Twins, Ltd., 138-39 

McWhorter, Diane, 16 

Maczewski, A., 120 

Madan, Falconer, 248 

Magazine Article Summaries, 206 

Magazine Index, 206 

Mann, C. A. F„ 291 

Mairs publishing group, 5-6 

Maitland, Frederic William, 59, 63 

Majority Rules: A Manual of Procedure for Most 
Groups, The (Farwell), 212 

Malone, Kemp, 47, 293 

Malthus, Thomas, 79 

Manners and Social Usages (Sherwood), 103 

Manns, August, 118 

Mansell Information/Publishing Ltd., 167, 169 

Manual of Design (Redgrave), 244 

Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Corpora- 
tion Securities, The, 147, 148-50 

Manual of Parliamentary Practice (Jefferson), 212 

Manual of Parliamentary Practice Rules of 
Proceedings and Debate (Cushing), 212 

Manual of the of Railroads of the United States, 
The (Poor), 148 

Marbeck, John, 270 

Marble, Manton, 315 

Marquis, Albert Nelson, 3 10 

Marra, Jean, 204, 205 

Marshall, John David, 16 

Marshall, Mrs. Julian, 120 

Marshall Field, 324 

Martin, Frederick, 260-61 

Martineau, Harriett, 55 

Masaryk, Thomas, 81 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 71 

Masters Abstracts, 69 

Mather, Cotton, 314 

Mather, Nathaniel, 314 

Maugham, W. Somerset, 47, 48, 61 

Mawson, C. O. Sylvester, 229 

Maxtone Graham, J. A., 138 

Mead Data Central, 178 

Meckler, Alan Marshall, 74 

Medical and Chirurgical Society, 221 

Medical Directory, 306 

Mellon, Andrew, 82 

Men and Women of the Times, 307 

Mencken, H. L., 47, 82, 293 

Mendelldoff, Nathan N., 167 



^ 



4ii M^g 



Mercator, 278 

Meredith, Robert, 186 

AferoV Students Encyclopedia, 328 

Merriam, Charles, 286, 288-91 

Merriam, George, 286, 288-91 

Merriam (G. & C.) Company, 286, 290, 291, 297- 

98 
Merriam-Webster family of dictionaries 
bibliography on, 302 
competition for, 289-91 
continuous revision and expansion of, 291- 

92 
current status of, 299-301 
development and history of, 286-301 
and George and Charles Merriam, 288-89 
other Merriam-Webster dictionaries, 298-99 
publication history of, 301 
specialized dictionaries, 294 
and Webster, 286-88 

Webster's International Dictionary, 291-92 
Webster 's New International Dictionary, 

292 
Webster 's New International Dictionary 

second edition, 292-94 
Webster's Third New International 
Dictionary, 294-98 
Merriam-Webster Inc., 83, 286, 298-301 
Messner, Robert H., 154 
Methodist Book Concern, 274, 276 
MEU. See Dictionary of Modern English Usage 

(Fowler) 
Meynell, Lawrence, 309 
MGG, See Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 

Die 
Michaelson, Robert, 129, 131 
Michelins, A 
Michelle, Stacy, 39-40 
Microfilm, 67-68 
Microfilm Abstracts, 68-70, 71 
Microfilming Corporation of America, 177 
Micromedia, Ltd., 70 
Micropaedia. See Encyclopaedia Britannica 
Microsoft, 38 
Microsoft Bookshelf 230 
Middle English Dictionary, The, 187 
Middleton, Miss, 120 
Millar, James, 78 
Miller, Julia E. } 320, 321 
Miller, Newman, 32-34 
Miller, William V., 332 
Mish, Frederick C, 299, 300 
MLA. See Modern Language Association 
MIA International Bibliography, 71 
Modern Language Association, 39, 253 
Moir, Ian A., 274 
Moncreiffe, Sir Iain, 310 
Monograph Abstracts, 69 
Moody, Anna, 147 
Moody, John, 147-54 



INDEX 349 



Moody Manual Company, 150 

Moody 's Analysis of Mai Iroad Investments, 1 5 1 

Moody's Bank & Finance Manual, 153, 154, 155 

Moody's 5000 Plus, 156, 157 

Moody 's Industrial Manual, 1 54 

Moody 's International Manual, 155 

Moody 's International Plus, 1 56 

Moody's Investors Service, 150, 153, 154, 157 

Moody's manuals 

bibliography on, 158-59 
continuing expansion of, 155 
critical reception of, 156-57 
development and history of, 147-57 
first manual of, 148-50 
modern manuals of, 150-52 
Moody's influence on, 147-53 
and Poor's manuals, 147-48 
Porter's tenure with, 152-54 
publication history of, 158 
purchase by Dun & Bradstreet, 154 
reorganization for electronic services, 157 
technological advances of, 155-56 
Moody's Municipal & Government Manual, 154, 

155,156 
Moody 's OTC Industrial Manual, 1 54 
Moody's OTC Plus A56 
Moody's OTC Unlisted Manual, 154, 155 
Moody's Public Utility Investments, 152 
Moody's Public Utility Manual, 154, 155 
Moody's Transportation Manual, 154 
Moon, Eric, 92 
More, Sir Thomas, 18 
Morgan, Charles, 267 
Morgan, Paul, 251 
Morley, Christopher, 11-13 
Morrison, John J., 253 
Morrison, Paul G., 247, 250 
Mortensen, Charles M., 89 
Mozart (Sadie), 123 
Mudge, Isadore Gilbert, 132 
Mueller, Johann, 313 
Muirhead, Francis, 2 
Munby, A. N. L., 255 
Murphy, Cullen, 195 
Murray, Elisabeth K. M„ 195 
Murray, James A. H, 182, 184-85, 187, 188, 189, 

191,193,194,287-88 
Murray, John, 2, 54-55 
Murray, William, 325, 33 1, 332 
Murray publishing house, 62 
Music. See Grove 's Dictionary of Music and 

Musicians 
Music Printing and Publishing (Sadie and 

Krummel), 125 
Musical Association, 119 
Musical Times, 119 

Musik in Geschichte und Gegmwart, Die, 123 
Musik-Lexikon (Riemann), 120 
Myth of the Britannica, The (Einbinder), 83-84 



350 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Nangle, Benjamin, 245, 249 

Napier, Macvey, 79 

National Associations of the United States, 89,90, 
91 

National Calendar, 315 

National Library of Canada, 70 

National Science Foundation, x 

National Union Catalog 

antecedents of, 161-62 

bibliography on, 171-72 

development and history of, 161-70 

editorial flexibility in, 169 

editorial processes of, 168-69 

Edwards Brothers as publisher of, 68 

expansion of union catalog on cards, 162-63 

new technology and, 169-70 

plans for a book catalog, 165-67 

plans for a retrospective union catalog, 167- 

68 
publication history of, 171 
regional union catalogs, 164-65 
union catalog on cards, 162 

National Union Catalog, Pre- J 956 Imprints, 161, 
170, 171 

National Union Catalog Publication Project, 167- 
68 

Nault, William H., 326 

Near East National Union List, 170 

Neilson, William A., 291-92, 292, 293 

Nelson, Thomas, 279 

New American Roget's College Thesaurus in 
Dictionary Form, 230 

New and General Biographical Dictionary, The, 
54 

New Associations, 92 

New Associations and Projects, 94 

New Baronetage of England, The, 306 

New Book of Knowledge, 80 

New Dictionary of the English Language, A 
(Richardson), 181 

New Emily Post Etiquette, The (Post), 110 

New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians, The, 
121 

New English Dictionary, 27 

New Era Publishing Company, 330 

New General Biographical Dictionary (Rose), 54 

New Grove Dictionary of American Music, The, 
124-25 

New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, The, 125 

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 
The, 123-25 

New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 125 

New Grove Mozart, The, 125 

New International Atlas, The, 283 

New Law Dictionary (Jacob), 18 

New Law List, 306 

New Peerage, The, 306 

New Practical Reference Library, The, 322, 323 

New Primer in Parliamentary Procedure, the 
(Suthers), 212 

New Spelling Dictionary (Entick), 287 



New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the 
Bible, The, 274-75 

New York Times Book Review Index, 176 

New York Times Encyclopedic Almanac, 3 19, 320 

New York Times Index 

bibliography on, 178-79 
computerized production of, 177-78 
development and history of, 174-78 
early days of, 174-75 
publication history of, 178 
reform and renaissance, 176-77 
stability and growth, 175-76 
training indexers for, 177 

New York Times Information Bank, 178 

New York Times Obituaries Index, 176 

New York Times On Microfilm, 177 

New York Tribune, 175 

Newspaper Index Project, 175 

Newspapers in Microform, 163 

Newton, Sir Isaac, x 

NEXIS, 178 

NeXT computer academic workstation, 299-300 

Nicholls, C. S., 62 

Nicholson, Margaret, 48-49, 50 

9,000 Words, 298 

Nineteenth Century Readers ' Guide, The, 205 

NTV Exhaustive Concordance (Goodrick and 
Kohlenberger), 275 

Nolan, Joseph R., 21 

Nomo-Lexikon (Blount), 18 

North American Imprints Project, 253 

Northcliffe, Lord, 279 

Northwestern University, 133 

Norton, Mary, 329 

Norton (W. W.), 125 

Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, 
The, 125 

Nostradamus, Michel de, 313-14 

Not Generally Known (Timbs), 25 

Notebook II Plus, 39 

Noted Names in Fiction (Wheeler), 25 

Notes and Queries, 60 

Nowell-Smith, Simon, 29 

NUC. See National Union Catalog 

NUCPP. See National Union Catalog Publication 
Project 

Oakes,Uriah,314 

Oberson Resources, 39 

Ochs, Adolph S., 174 

OCLC, 169-70 

O'Connell, Brian, 218 

OED. See Oxford English Dictionary 

Official Associated Press Almanac, 320 

Old Farmer's Alamanc, 314 

Omnigraphics, 95 

Ong, Walter J., 297 

Onions, Charles Talbut, 47, 186, 186 

Orgren, Carl, 71,74 

O'Rourke, Joseph, 327 

Orszagh, Ladislas, 297 



INDEX 351 



Ortelius, Abraham, 278 

Osborn, James M., 252, 253 

O'Shea, Michael Vincent, 322, 323 

Oxford American Dictionary, 194 

Oxford Children's Dictionary, 194 

Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 194 

Oxford English Dictionary 

antecedents of, 25, 180-81 
bibliography on, 195-96 
and Bradley, 185-86 
Burchfield's editorship of, 189-90 
Coleridge's editorship of, 182-83 
critical reception of, 186-87 
definition of concordance, 269 
development and history of, 180-94 
and Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 

42, 43-44 
first supplement to, 188-89 
flaws in, 187-88 
FurnivaU's editorship of, 183 
future directions for, 192-94 
as incomplete record of English language, 

190-91 
Murray's editorship of, 1 84-86 
and Philological Society, 181-82 
publication history of, 195 
second edition of, 191-92 
supplement to, 50 
and Who's Who, 310 
Oxford Minidictionary, 194 
Oxford Universal Dictionary, 194 
Oxford University, 62 

Oxford University Press, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 50, 
60, 180, 184, 185, 188, 189, I9l t 193, 196n2 

Paine, Gregory, 36 

Pall Mall Gazette, 55 

Panassie, Hugues, 122 

Panizzi, Anthony, 246 

Pantzer, Katharine F., 247, 250-51, 252 

Pargellis, Stanley, 249 

Parliamentary Law (Robert), 214 

Parliamentary Practice (Robert), 214 

Parliamentary procedure. See Robert 's Rules of 

Order 
Parry, Hubert, 120, 122 
Parson, George H., 154 
Parton, James, 298 
Partridge, Eric, 45, 50 
Pascal, Naomi, 3 1 
Passow, Francis, 182 
Patnode, Darwin, 215, 217-18 
Pausanias, 1 

Paxton, John, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265-66 
Peel, Sir Robert, 259-60 
Peet, Creighton, 199 
Penguin, 230 
Peninsula Publishers, 123 
Pergamon Compact Solution, 144 
Periodicals Clearing House, 205 



Perry, William, 224 

Personality of a House: The Blue Book of Home 

Design and Decoration (Post), 102 
Peterson, Frank, 163 
Phelps, William Lyon, 293 
Philipson, Morris, 37 
Philological Society, 181-82, 183, 184, 185, 188, 

190, 194 
Physician 's Almanac, 3 14 
Pius XII, Pope, 328 
Plain Words (Gowers), 49 
Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language 

(Johnson), 180 
Planclc, Max, xi 
Plantin, Christopher, 278 
Plotnik, Arthur, 208 
Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 42, 

43 
Pocket Oxford English Dictionary of Current 

English, 194 
Poetry. See Granger's Index to Poetry 
Poetry Index Annual, 115 
Poetry Index Press, 1 15 
Pohl, Carl Ferdinand, 120 
Pokomey, Pamely, 38 
Pollard, A. F., 59, 60, 61 
Pollard, Alfred William, 243-45, 247, 250, 251, 

256n6, 256nl 1 
Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue. See 
Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard and Redgrave) 
Poole, William Frederick, 200, 202 
Poole 's Index to Periodical Literature, 1 6 1 , 200 
Poor, Henry Varnum, 147-48 
Poor, Henry William, 148 
Poor Richard's Almanac (Franklin), 3 14 
Poor's Manual, 147-48, 153 
Poor's manuals, 150 

Poor's Publishing Company, 150, 153, 155 
Popular Magazine Review, 206 
Porter, John Sherman, 152-54 
Porter, Noah, 288, 291, 292 
Porter, Roy, 150 
Post, Bruce Price, 98 
Post, Edwin Main, 98 
Post, Edwin Main, Jr., 98, 107, 1 1 1 
Post, Elizabeth L. 5 } 08-10 
Post, Emily 

as contributor to World Book, 324 
critical and popular reception to Etiquette, 

103-4 
death of, 107 

early revised editions of Etiquette, 104-7 
family of, 98 

and first edition of Etiquette, 99-103 
marriage and divorce, 98-99 
McCall's magazine column of, 104 
as novel writer, 98-99 
"Social Problems" newspaper column of, 

104 
tenth edition of Etiquette, 107-8 



352 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Potter, Marion E., 199, 202-3, 204, 206, 208 

Poulter, Cameron, 37 

Pound, Roscoe, 82 

Powell, John A., 33 

Power, Eugene, 67-68, 72, 75nl3 

Pratt, Waldo Selden, 121 

Preble, Robert, 329 

Preece, Warren, 84 

Prentice-Hall, 6 

Press Publishing Co., 317 

Price, Bruce, 98 

Proctor, R. G. C, 243 

Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, A, 

294 
Propaedia. See Encyclopaedia Britannica 
Proposal for the Publication of a New English 

Dictionary by the Philological Society, 183, 

190 
Psychological Abstracts, 71 
Ptolemy, 278 

Public Administration Clearing House, 91 
Public Administration Organizations, 91 
Publishers' Weekly, 199, 206-7 
Pulitzer, Joseph, 315-16, 317 
Putnam, Henry, 165, 170 
Putnam, Herbert, 162 
Pyle, Ernie, 106 
Pynson, Richard, 313 

Quaritch, Bernard, 243 

Quarrie, William F., 328 

Quarrie Corp., 331 

Quarrie (W.F.) & Co., 329, 330 

Quirk, Randolph, 46-47, 48, 50, 296 

Quotations. See Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 

Rackliffe, Jack, 13 

Rail Guide to Europe, 1 

Rakestraw, Beatrice B., 208 

Ran d McNally 's International Atlas, 283 

Rastell, John, 18 

Rayleigh, Lord, 79 

Raymond, Henry Jarvis, 178 

Reader's Digest, 108, 109,274 

Reader's Digest Almanac, 319, 320 

Reader's Digest Family Guide to the Bible 
(Gibson and Moir), 274 

Reader's Encyclopedia (Benet), 25 

Readers' Guide Abstracts, 200, 206 

Readers' Guide Supplement, 205 

Readers ' Guide to Periodical Literature 
bibliography on, 208-9 
change and continuity in, 201-2 
development and history of, 198-207 
and existing periodical indexes, 200 
first issue of, 200-1 
indexing practices in, 202-4 
other products related to, 205-6 
publication history of, 208 
related Wilson indexes, 205 



selection of sources indexed, 204-5 

service basis pricing of, 207 

success of, 206-7 

and Wilson, 198-200 
Reader's Handbook of Famous Names in Fiction 

(Brewer), 24 
Reavis, George H., 324 
Redgrave, Gilbert Richard, 243, 244-45 
Redgrave, Richard, 244 
Redlich, Hans, 122 
Reference books guides. See Guide to Reference 

Books 
Reference Sources for Small and Medium-sized 

Libraries, 133 
Regional union catalogs, 164-65 
Reid, Thomas, 225-26 
"Reiseleben," 7 
Research Abstracts, 69 

Retrospective Index to Dissertation Abstracts, 72 
Reynolds, Horace, 16 
Rhode Island Almanac, The, 314 
Rhodes, Cecil, 309 
Ricardo, David, 79 
Richards, Pamela Spence, 136 
Richardson, Charles, 181 
Richardson, Ernest Cushing, 163, 170 
Riddick's Rules of Procedures (Riddick and 

Butcher), 212 
Rider, Philip R., 247, 252 
Riemann, Hugo, 120 
Ripley's Believe It or Not, 142 
RISM (Repertoire international des sources 

musicales), 123 
RUN, 170 
Roach, Arno, 323 
Robert, Henry M., Ill, 214, 216 
Robert, Henry M., Jr., 214 
Robert, Henry Martyn, 213-15 
Robert, Isabel H., 216 
Robert, Sarah Corbin, 216, 218 
Robert 's Rules of Order 

bibliography on, 218-19 

critical reception of the 1970 edition, 217 

development and history of, 21 1-18 

editions under other editors, 214-18 

first edition of, 214 

1970 edition, 216-17 

1989 edition, 217-18 

and other guides to parliamentary proce- 
dure, 212 

publication history of, 21 8 

reputation and influence of, 21 1-12 

and Robert, 213-14 

and value of procedure, 212-13 
Robinson, Sarita, 203, 204, 208 
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 163, 170 
Rockstro, William S., 120, 122 
Rogers, Pat, 63 
Roget, John, 229 
Roget, John Lewis, 227-28 



INDEX 353 




*nfe* 



Roget, Peter Mark, 220-27 
Roget, Samuel Romilly, 228 
Roget 's International Thesaurus, 229-30 
Roget 's Pocket Thesaurus, 230 
Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases 
American editions, 229-30 
antecedents of, 224 
bibliography on, 231-32 
classification scheme of, 224-26 
development and history of, 220-30 
editions by others, 228-29 
first edition of, 226-27 
future of, 230 
later editions edited by Roget and his 

descendents, 227-28 
as multi-purpose tool, 223-24 
publication history of, 230-31 
and Roget, 220-23 
Roget's Treasury of Words, 230 
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, 230 
Rollins, Richard, 288 
Room with a View (Forster), 3 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 262, 263 
Rosenwald, Julius, 81, 82 
Ross, Harold, 41 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 79 
Rothman, John, 175-76, 177, 178 
Routledge (G.) and Sons Ltd., 307 
Royal Musical Association, 1 19 
Royal Society, 221, 222 
Ruffher, Frederick G„ 89-90, 92, 94, 95 
Ruffher, Mary, 89 
Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalogue (Cutter), 

161 
Ruskin, John, 55 
Russell, Bertrand, 3, 81 
Rutland, Duke of, 307 
Saalfleld Co., 300 
Sader, Marion, 87 
Sadie, Stanley, 123-24, 125, 126 
St. Clair, Frank, 154 
St. Martin's Press, 122, 230, 259 
Salisbury, Lord, 308 
Sayle, Charles, 243 
SchSfer, Jiirgen, 187, 190, 193 
Schlessinger, Bernard, 157, 159 
Schubert, Franz, 118 
Schumann, Robert, 118 
Schwegmann, George, 164-65 
Schwegmann, George, Jr., 170, 171 
SCI. See Science Citation Index 
Science and Common Sense (Conant), ix 
Science Citation Index 

backward and forward process of citation 

searching in, 237-38 
bibliography on, 240-41 
citation access to, 236 
development and history of, 234-39 
as multi-faceted tool, 236-37 
problematic issues in, 238-39 



publication history of, 239-40 
selective coverage of, 235-36 
significance of, 234-35 
subject access to, 236 
Scott, Andrew G., 279 
Scott, Ralph, 72 
Scott, Robert, 182 
Scott, Thomas A., 315 
Scott, Sir Walter, 79, 307 
Scott & Fet2er, 325 
Scott, Foresman and Company, 214 
Scott-Keltie, John, 261-63 
Scribner's, ix~x, 80 
Scripps-Howard, 317-18 
Sears, Rev. Bamas, 229 
Sears & Roebuck, 81,82, 83 
Selection of English Synonyms, A (Whately), 224 
Service basis pricing, 207 
Seybold, Catharine, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37-38, 39 
Shaaber, M. A., 247 
Shakespeare Folios and Quartos (Pollard), 244, 

256nll 
Shakespeare 's Fight with the Pirates and the 
Problem of the Transmission of his Text 
(Pollard), 244 
Shaw, George Bernard, 309 
Sheeny, Eugene P., 10, 92, 129, 130, 131, 133, 
134, 136n4, 137n8, I37nl3, 158,255, 310 
Sheen, Fulton J., 324 
Shelton, Harold, 330 
Shenker, Israel, 72, 74, 195 
Shepard's Citations, 234 
Shepheard's Kalendar, The (Pynson), 313 
Sherwood, Elizabeth J., 113, 201 
Sherwood, Mrs., 103 
Shores, Louis, 91 

Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard and Redgrave) 
bibliography on, 254-55 
creation of, 245-46 
development and history of, 242-47 
future editions of, 253-54 
impact of, 246-47 
justification for, 242-43 
origins of, 243-44 
and Pollard and Redgrave, 244-45 
publication history of, 254 
revision of, 250*52 
Short-Title Catalogue (Wing) 
bibliography on, 254-55 
future editions of, 253-54 
history and development of, 247-54 
publication history of, 254 
revision of, 250, 252-53 
and Wing, 247-50 
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, The, 189, 194 
Shugg, Roger, 36-37 
Sikkink,Don,218 
SilverPIatter, 94 

Simkin, Hamilton, Kent, and Company, 307 
Simmonds, Martha, 327 



jMniTrm* 



354 DISTINGUISHED CLASSICS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Simson, Maria, 145 

Sinai and Palestine (Stanley), 118 

Singing Class Circular, 119 

6,000 Words, 298 

Sladen, Douglas, 307-8, 309, 3 1 1 

Slavens, Thomas P., 158 

Sledd, James, 297 

Sloane, Richard, 21, 22 

Slonimsky, Nicolas, 121 

Smcaton, B. Hunter, 26 

Smellie, William, 77, 78 

Smith, David A., 169, 170, 171 

Smith, George M., 55-56, 57, 59, 60, 62 

Smith, Gilbert C.E., 330 

Smith, Hilda L., 250 

Smith, Mrs. George, 62 

Smith, W. Robertson, 79-80 

Smith, William, 118 

Smith, William James, 114 

Smith, Elder and Company, 55, 62 

Snyder, Henry L., 253, 254 

Social Sciences and Humanities Index, 205 

Social Sciences Citation Index, 234 

Society for Pure English, 46 

Sonneck, Oscar, 121 

Sorkin, Sophie, 3 1 

Spaulding, C. Sumner, 166 

Spock, Benjamin, 140 

Squire, William Barclay, 120 

Stagg, Amos Alonzo, 82 

Stamboul Train (Greene), 3 

Standard & Poor's Corporation, 150, 155, 156, 

157 
Standard & Poor's Corporation Records, 157, 158 
Standard Reference Library, Inc., 108 
Standard Statistics, 155 
Stanford, Donald E., 114 
Stanley, A. P., 118 
Statesman 's Year-Book 

bibliography on, 266-67 

changes in organization and contents, 262- 
63 

coverage of the United States, 263 

development and history of, 259-66 

Epstein's editorship of, 263-64 

future of, 266 

maps in, 262 

Martin's editorship of, 260-61 

origins of, 259-60 

Paxton's editorship of, 265-66 

publication history of, 266 

Scott-Keltie's editorship of, 262 

Steinberg's editorship of, 264-65 
Statesman 's Year-Book Historical Companion, 

266 
Statesman 's Year-Book World Gazetteer, 266 
STC. See Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard and 

Redgrave) 
Steinberg, Sigrid Henry, 27, 264-65, 266 



Stephanus, Robert, 270 

Stephen, Leslie, 54, 55-61, 62 

Stephens, Earl, 154 

Sterling Books, 140, 143 

Stevens, David H., 34-35 

Stevens, Denis, 123 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 81 

Stewart, Zeph, 13 

Stiles, Kenneth, 47 

Stokes, Roy B., 242 

Strong, James, 269, 272-73 

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible 

antecedents of, 270-71 

approach of, 272 

bibliography on, 276 

critical response to, 273-74 

development and history of, 269-76 

publication history of, 276 

significance of, 275-76 

and Strong, 272-73 
Strunk, William, Jr., 31 
Student's Atlas, The, 279 
Slurgis Standard Code of Parliamentary Proce- 
dure, 212 
Style manuals. See Chicago Manual of Style 
Subject Index to Poetry (Bruncken), 1 15 
Sullivan, Arthur, 118 
Sutcliffe, Peter, 50 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 79 
Synonymous, Etymological, and Pronouncing 

English Dictionary (Perry), 224 
Syracuse University, 133 

Table Alphabetical!, A (Cawdrey), 180 
Taylor, William, 224 
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 186 
Terms de la ley, 1 8 
Thackeray, William, 55 
Theatrum orbis terrarum (Ortelius), 278 
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. See 
RogeVsThesaurus of English Words and 
Phrases 
Thomas, Dylan, 227 
Thomas, Michael Tilson, 124 
Thomas, Robert B., 314 
Thomas Nelson Publishers, 271, 274-75, 276 
Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 108, 229-30 
Thoreau, Henry David, 9 
Timbs, John, 25 
Times Atlas of the World 

and Bartholomew family, 279 

bibliography on, 284 

Comprehensive Edition, 282-83 

development and history of, 278-83 

early editions of, 279-80 

Mid-Century Edition, 280-81 

preeminence of, 283 

publication history of, 284 
Times Index-Gazetteer of the World, 281 



tfjiii 



Tocqueville, Alexis de, 94 

Topping, Seymour, 178 

Tout, T. F., 59 

Traill, Thomas Stewart, 79 

Travel guidebooks. See Baedeker guidebooks 

Trench, Richard Chenevix, 181-82, 183, 186, 192, 

194 
Tribune Almanac, 315 
Triggs, Jeffery, 193 
Trotsky, Leon, 82 
Truelson, Judith, 157, 159 
Truth About the Trusts, The (Moody), 149 
Tally, William, 288 
Tunney, Gene, 82 
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 81 
Twain, Mark, 3 
12,000 Words, 298 
Tytler, James, 78 

UML See University Microfilms International 

Unger, Merrill F., 275 

Union List of Serials, 163 

Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English 

Language (Worcester), 290 
Universal Etymological English Dictionary, An 

(Bailey), 180 
University Microfilms International, 67, 68, 75n9, 

177 
University of Chicago, 71, 82, 83-84, 86, 328 
University of Chicago Press, 32, 37, 39 
University of London, 60 
University of Washington Press, 31 
University Publications of America, 5 
Untermeyer, Louis, 82 
Urdang, Laurence, 31,38 
US Government Manual, 93 

Van Doren, Carl, 82 
Victoria, Queen, 60 
Vine, William Edwin, 275 
Von Palkenhorst, General, 4 

Waddell, John N., 136 

Wagman, Frederick H„ 166, 170 

Walford, Albert John, 92, 158 

Wall Street Journal, 175 

Walsh, S. Padraig, 87, 324 

Walsh (A.E.), 265 

Warming, Louis, 32, 33 

Washington Post, 175 

Wasserman, Paul, 91 

Waugh, Evelyn, 3,41 

Webster, Noah, 181, 286-88, 289, 290, 300 

Webster, William G., 288 

Webster 's Biographical Dictionary, 294 

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 291, 292, 294 

Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, 298 

Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 299 

Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms, 294 

Webster 's Elementary Dictionary, 299 



INDEX 355 



Webster's Geographical Dictionary, 294 
Webster's Intermediate Dictionary, 299, 300 
Webster's International Dictionary, 291-92 
Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary, 299 
Webster's New Biographical Dictionary, 298 
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 298 
Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms, 298 
Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, 298 
Webster's New International Dictionary, 229, 292 
Webster 's New International Dictionary, second 

edition, 292-94 
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 194, 

298-300 
Webster's School Dictionary, 299 
Webster 's Secretarial Handbook, 298 
Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, 298 
Webster's Standard American Style Manual, 299 
Webster 's Third New International Dictionary, 

189,294-98 
Webster's Word Histories, 299 
Weekley, Ernest, 186 
Welland, Jennie, 1 77 
Wellesz, Egon, 122 
Welsh, William J., 171 
West Publishing Company, 19, 21 
Western Association of Map Libraries, 5 
WESTLAW, 21 
Whately, Elizabeth Jane, 224 
Wheeler, William Adolphus, 25 
Whig Almanac and Political Register, 3 1 5 
Whipple, E. P., 227 
Whitaker, George, 307 
Whitaker (J.) and Sons, 307 
Whitaker 's Almanack, 3 07, 3 1 
White, E. B., 31 
White, William, Jr., 275 
Whitehead, Alfred North, 8 1 
Whittern, Jessie D., 35 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 291 
Who Was Who, lib 
Who's Who 

antecedents of, 306 
bibliography on, 311 
the Blacks and, 307-8 
development and history of, 306-10 
format and process of, 308-9 
imitators of, 310 
publication history of, 3 1 1 
Sladen's departure from, 308 
Who 's Who Among American High School 

Students, 310 
Who's Who in America, 310 
Who's Who in Finance and Industry, 310 
Wild, Michael, 7 
Wilhelm, Kaiser, 1 
Willard, Hannah Staniford, 9 
William Benton Foundation, 86 
Williams, Gordon R., 171 
Willoughby, Edwin E., 249 



/s3v / "idLi,': 



EX'JEE^^czssrasxi '■» ii»i » »■ 



356 r>TRTTMrjnsHF.n PT.AKSTCS OF REFERENCE PUBLISHING 



Wilson, Edmund, 103 

Wilson, Halsey William, 166, 198-200, 206-07 

Wilson, J. Dover, 244, 245, 254, 256nll 

Wilson, Justina, 199 

Wilson, Woodrow, 81 

Wilson (H.W.) Company, 198, 199-200, 204-5, 

207 
Wilson Library Bulletin, 130,208 
Wilsondisc, 206 
Wflsonline, 206 

Winchell, Constance, 92, 131, 132, 133 
Wind, Herbert Warren, 7 
Wing, Donald G., 247-49, 252-53 
Wing's Short-Title Catalogue. See Short-Title 

Catalogue (Wing) 
Winkler, Max, 152 
Winsor, Justin, 26 
WLN, 170 

Wodehouse, Mrs. Edmond, 120 
Wolf, Edwin, 250 
Women and the Literature of the Seventeenth 

Century (Smith and Cardinale), 250 
Woolf, Virginia, 55 

Worcester, Joseph Emerson, 288, 289-91 
Works Projects Administration, 164 
World Almanac 

bibliography on, 320-21 

critical reception of, 3 19-20 

development and history of, 3 13-20 

first World Atamanc, 315-16 

and Lyman, 316-18 

new editors of, 318 

publication history of, 320 

and Pulitzer, 316 

structure of, 318-19 
World Bible Publishers, 274, 276 



World Book Encyclopedia 

accuracy of, 329-30 

bibliography on, 332-33 

critical and popular reception of, 325-26 

development and history of, 322-31 

executive staff of, 83 

foreign sales and marketing, 330-31 

graphics in, 328-29 

high standards of, 326-28 

O'Shea and, 323 

plagiarism charges against, 329-30 

publication history of, 331-32 

readability of, 326-27 

revisions of, 82, 323-25 

yearbooks for, 331 
World Book, Inc., 326, 327 
World Publishing Company, 300 
World War 1, 43, 81 
World War II, 4, 106-7,165 
Worlde ofWordes, A (Florio), 180 
Woy, James, 158 

Wyatt, Euphemia Van Rensselaer, 106, 1 1 1 
Wyckoff, Ralphj x-xi 
Wynar, Bohdan, 92, 319-20 

Xerox Corporation, 67 

Yale University Library, 247-48, 252 

Young, Bruce, 31, 37-38 

Young, Mark, 143-44 

Young, Percy, 118, 126 

Young, Robert, 271 

Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible, 275 

Youth Serving Organizations Directory, 94 

Yust, Walter, 82, 83 

Ziolkowski, Theodore, 66