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Title: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (17th Edition) by Justin John/Kaplan Bartlett ISBN: 0-316-08460-3 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.76 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely Brilliant!
Comment: "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's 'Familiar Quotations' is an admirable work, and I studied it intently." Sir Winston Churchill (1930) Sir Winston does a remarkable job of "reviewing" "FQ", and 5 pages of his own words are contained within (the aforementioned quote is on page 619 in this edition). There are over 50 pages of Shakespeare, as well. The index is superb, one can find quotes appropriate for speeches, letters, and personal enjoyment with ease. Bravo John Bartlett!
Rating: 3
Summary: A Venerable Classic that May or Not be what YOU need.
Comment: Bartlett's is, by far, the most well known of all quotations books. But it may or not be the best one for your needs. If you want a book which will help you find our who wrote quotations that you encounter, then it's an excellent choice. If you want a book that takes you on a stroll through the history of ideas, starting with the earliest quotations, and moving through to the most recent, then this is a good book for you, perhaps the best. This can be a great way to discover which authors' ideas you like, so you can identify whole books by those authors. It's a great way to introduce nuggets of brilliance to your kids too.
But if you are preparing a speech, writing a book or article which you want to find good quotes on specific subjects, this is not a good choice. There are some wonderfully better books than this one with more quotations and which are far better organized. They are all organized by subject category. It makes all the difference in the world, compared to going to the index in the back of the book, then searching for each quote referred to in the subject index, as Bartlett's forces you to do.
If you are, like me, a quotation book collector (I have over 400, dating back to 1590 and a computer database of over 50,000 quotatiosn) then you'll want an edition of Bartlett's (I have at least half a dozen different editions, and the contents do change from edition to edition.)
Other good subject categorized quotation books include . H.L. Mencken's A New Dictionary of Quotations Awesome collection Dictionary of Thoughts by Tryon Edwards, over 100 years since first published, but much friendlier Burton Stevenson's Home Book of quotations, with over 40,000 quotes also titled as MacMillan Dictionary of Quotations, Big, solidly done. Wolfgang Mieder's Encyclopedia of World Proverbs (not quotes, but a great collection by one of the world's experts) International Thesaurus of Quotations-- very comprehensive, large list,and, a new addition-- Quotationary. I've also put together an amazon list of quotation books.
I have to say though, that over the 10+ years I have been working on my own quotation book, with its 600+ subject categories, I have always used Bartletts as one of the measures of quality.
Have fun.
Rating: 5
Summary: Invaluable, authoritative, probably the "best"
Comment: Comparing this, the 17th edition of the best known and arguably the most authoritative collection of quotations ("familiar," memorable, or just plain quotable--you choose the terminology), to its predecessor the 16th edition, the question arises, should you upgrade? I own both books and have examined them in some detail. I have used the 16th for many years.
The 17th is set in a new typeface which is both slightly narrower and less bold than that of the 16th. The result is a cleaner look to the pages and more white space. The difference in the number of pages--1431 for the new, 1405 for the old--is slight, and a little misleading. In fact the new addition has more entries--"around one hundred" authors are quoted for the first time, and some authors have additional entries. But the text in the 17th actually takes up less room. Its Index, for example, although it has more entries, has only 564 pages to 608 for the 16th. This is accomplished mainly because the narrower type is also shorter, allowing more entries per column.
The question then is, is the smaller type harder to read? Surprisingly, I would say no. The new type is sharper, crisper and, because the pages have a cleaner appearance, is easier on the eyes. I have a strong suspicion that the publishers--whose investment in this most famous and most important reference work is considerable--tested the readability of their new type before adopting it!
Some additional space, according to editor Justin Kaplan, has been gained by the elimination of "several hundred purely mechanical and nonsubstantive cross-references." For example in the 16th on page 247 is given this quotation from Fredrich von Logau: "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." A footnote at the bottom of the column refers us to Euripides and George Herbert who wrote something similar. In the 17th that footnote is gone and we have no handy reference to the two earlier instances of von Logau's expression. I think this is a clear loss and not something simply "mechanical and nonsubstantive" as editor Justin Kaplan has it in his Preface to the Seventeenth Edition. (p. viii)
Okay, what about the new authors being quoted and the additional quotations by authors already present in the 16th addition? Do they constitute a significant upgrade?
This is a question difficult to answer partly because only time will tell if the new additions--many of them are so new--will really remain worth remembering. Bill Clinton's rather infamous "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" surely will be around for a while, but film director Cameron Crowe's "Show me the money!" from his film Jerry Maguire (1997) may not seem so memorable or familiar a generation or two down the road. (Or maybe I have that backwards!) A quick way to address the question of whether the new quotations are worthwhile is to look at the last pages of entries just before the Anonymous section. Because Bartlett's presents its quotations chronologically, from the earliest (the first quote is from the Egyptian The Song of the Harper 2650 B.C.) to the latest (Sesame Street's Kermit the Frog's "It ain't easy bein' green") most of the new entries are near the back. By the way, technically speaking, Kermit the Frog's dictum is older than Cameron Crowe's movie. But that is a quibble.
Of course there are additions that are not from new authors. French mathematician, Pierre de Fermat, who does not appear in the 16th, appears here in the 17th, noting that his "truly marvellous" proof for his famous Last Theorem, will not fit into "this margin." Fermat was rediscovered by Bartlett's no doubt because in 1994 Andrew Wiles finally proved the theorem--taking considerably more than a margin to do it, by the way.
Some other authors appearing for the first time are Mother Teresa, Richard Feynman, Margaret Atwood, Princes Diana, etc. Vladimir Nabokov, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein and W. Somerset Maugham are among about two dozen who have had their space extended. Kaplan doesn't mention it, but there are also some deletions from the previous edition. I was particularly disappointed to find that one of the central tenets of the Vedas, from the Chandogya Upanishad, "Thou art that" was eliminated.
Also eliminated (and I think this is to the good) are the Ibid's that sometimes ran all the way down the page in the 16th. Now the title of the work is repeated.
If you don't have this reference, you really should get it or the comparable Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. See my review of that very excellent book for a comparison. Suffice it to say here, if you are an American who prefers a slight emphasis on American authors to an emphasis on English authors, you'll want to get this book.
Bottom line: no serious writer (especially of literature, culture and history) should be without this invaluable and authoritative book. Next to a dictionary it is my most consulted work of reference.
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Title: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Elizabeth Knowles ISBN: 0198601735 Publisher: Getty Ctr for Education in the Arts Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Roget International Thesaurus Indexed Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer ISBN: 0060185759 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 15 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes by A. Clifton/Bernard Fadiman ISBN: 0316082678 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Oxford Paperback Reference) by Ned Sherrin ISBN: 0192800450 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less), The by John M. Shanahan ISBN: 0060194111 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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