SOLD - Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature -
John Bartlett
1937 - Little, Boston - Eleventh Edition, Revised and Enlarged
A handsomely bound edition of Bartlett's Quotations, the longest-lived and most widely distributed collection of quotations which was first published in 1855. With over 1100 pages of quotations in double-column format followed by a 550 page thorough keyword index.
‘Between 1914 and 1937 the extraordinary post-World War I age had flowered, and the changes in the text of the eleventh edition are more striking than in any other. Besides such contemporary authors as Auden, Eliot, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Willa Gather, Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, Will Rogers, and Ezra Pound, authors of earlier eras were added: Blake, Hawthorne, Melville, the Jameses at last, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson, Sara Orne Jewett, Hesiod, Aesop, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and Omar Khayyám’ – The Long, Happy Life Of ‘Bartlett’s Quotations’, American Heritage Magazine, 1984. ‘By the eleventh edition, published in 1937, Elijah’s mantle had passed to the writer, poet, and editor Christopher Morley and the associate editor Louella D. Everett, a noted quotation-finder for The New York Times who had also published anthologies and was especially knowledgeable in popular light verse. Of their joint editorship, Morley wrote in his preface: “One of the pleasures of re-editing has been 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. They have striven for a happy compromise.”
For the first time the editors removed quotations no longer relevant or familiar, a delicate task that since then has been performed for every edition. The editors added not only to twentieth-century quotations but also to every period from ancient times on, reflecting the erudition of Morley in particular and possibly a broadening cultural outlook of the nation as well.
In 1937 one editor explained: “We have tried to make literary power the criterion, rather than the width and vulgarity of fame.”
Morley’s 1937 preface asks at the outset the question every Bartlett editor must try to answer: “What makes words memorable?” His theory of selection was broader than John Bartlett’s. “Previous editions adhered, almost with pedantry, to the touchstones of familiarity,” he wrote. “This edition is not so stringent: we have tried to make literary power the criterion rather than the width and vulgarity of fame.” “Literary power” is so much more a matter of personal opinion than “familiarity” that this new approach tempted future editors to exploit their literary passions. Restraint has been necessary to keep the volume from either becoming idiosyncratic or growing into an anthology.
Morley thought that his eleventh edition would last until 1960, but World War II and the atomic age necessitated an updating. “Man … was saying words that had to be recorded,” Morley realized. So in 1948 the twelfth edition appeared, to which Morley and Everett added new quotations from (among many others) Churchill, Hitler, Einstein, Truman, the Charter of the United Nations, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Lippmann. “The duty of stoical old Bartlett,” Morley wrote, “is to hand on, without fear or favor, what looks to be most memorable of men’s joy, suspicion and dismay,” a policy that has been followed ever since.’ - The Long, Happy Life Of ‘bartlett’s Quotations’, American Heritage Magazine, 1984.
Thick octavo (binding size 23x16cm), pp. [4] xlviii 1578 [4]. Finely bound by Inman in full red morocco, spine with raised bands, gilt decorated compartments and gilt lettering, twin sets of triple gilt filet borders, with gilt corner decorations, edges ruled in gilt, gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Condition: Light spotting to endpapers else fine in fine binding. Ref: 110025 Price: HK$ 5,500
‘Between 1914 and 1937 the extraordinary post-World War I age had flowered, and the changes in the text of the eleventh edition are more striking than in any other. Besides such contemporary authors as Auden, Eliot, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Willa Gather, Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, Will Rogers, and Ezra Pound, authors of earlier eras were added: Blake, Hawthorne, Melville, the Jameses at last, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson, Sara Orne Jewett, Hesiod, Aesop, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and Omar Khayyám’ – The Long, Happy Life Of ‘Bartlett’s Quotations’, American Heritage Magazine, 1984. ‘By the eleventh edition, published in 1937, Elijah’s mantle had passed to the writer, poet, and editor Christopher Morley and the associate editor Louella D. Everett, a noted quotation-finder for The New York Times who had also published anthologies and was especially knowledgeable in popular light verse. Of their joint editorship, Morley wrote in his preface: “One of the pleasures of re-editing has been 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. They have striven for a happy compromise.”
For the first time the editors removed quotations no longer relevant or familiar, a delicate task that since then has been performed for every edition. The editors added not only to twentieth-century quotations but also to every period from ancient times on, reflecting the erudition of Morley in particular and possibly a broadening cultural outlook of the nation as well.
In 1937 one editor explained: “We have tried to make literary power the criterion, rather than the width and vulgarity of fame.”
Morley’s 1937 preface asks at the outset the question every Bartlett editor must try to answer: “What makes words memorable?” His theory of selection was broader than John Bartlett’s. “Previous editions adhered, almost with pedantry, to the touchstones of familiarity,” he wrote. “This edition is not so stringent: we have tried to make literary power the criterion rather than the width and vulgarity of fame.” “Literary power” is so much more a matter of personal opinion than “familiarity” that this new approach tempted future editors to exploit their literary passions. Restraint has been necessary to keep the volume from either becoming idiosyncratic or growing into an anthology.
Morley thought that his eleventh edition would last until 1960, but World War II and the atomic age necessitated an updating. “Man … was saying words that had to be recorded,” Morley realized. So in 1948 the twelfth edition appeared, to which Morley and Everett added new quotations from (among many others) Churchill, Hitler, Einstein, Truman, the Charter of the United Nations, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Lippmann. “The duty of stoical old Bartlett,” Morley wrote, “is to hand on, without fear or favor, what looks to be most memorable of men’s joy, suspicion and dismay,” a policy that has been followed ever since.’ - The Long, Happy Life Of ‘bartlett’s Quotations’, American Heritage Magazine, 1984.
Thick octavo (binding size 23x16cm), pp. [4] xlviii 1578 [4]. Finely bound by Inman in full red morocco, spine with raised bands, gilt decorated compartments and gilt lettering, twin sets of triple gilt filet borders, with gilt corner decorations, edges ruled in gilt, gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Condition: Light spotting to endpapers else fine in fine binding. Ref: 110025 Price: HK$ 5,500