Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, often
simply called
Bartlett's, is an American
reference work that is the
longest-lived and most widely distributed collection of
quotations. The book was first issued in 1855 and
is currently in its seventeenth edition, published in 2003.
The book arranges its entries by author, rather than by subject, as
many other quotation collections, and enters the authors
chronologically by date of birth rather than alphabetically. Within
years, authors are arranged alphabetically and quotations are
arranged chronologically within each author's entry, followed by
"attributed" remarks whose source in the author's writings has not
been confirmed. The book contains a thorough keyword index and
details the source of each quotation.
History
John Bartlett, who ran the
University Book Store in Cambridge
, Massachusetts
, was frequently asked for information on quotations
and he began a commonplace book of
them for reference. In 1855, he privately printed his
compilation as
A Collection of Familiar Quotations. This
first edition contained 258 pages of quotations by 169 authors,
chiefly the
Bible,
William Shakespeare, and the great
English poets. Bartlett wrote in the
fourth edition that "it is not easy to determine in all cases the
degree of familiarity that may belong to phrases and sentences
which present themselves for admission; for what is familiar to one
class of readers may be quite new to another."
The book
was a great success, and Bartlett issued three more editions before
joining the Boston
publishing
firm of Little, Brown, and
Company. Bartlett rose to be the senior partner of the
firm and supervised nine editions of the work before his death in
1905, the work selling over 300,000 copies. The seventh edition had
appeared in 1875, the eighth edition in 1882, and the ninth in
1891. The tenth edition, however, would not appear for more than
twenty years.
Edited by
Nathan Haskell Dole,
the tenth edition (1914) was much like its predecessors. The book
began with quotations originally in English, arranging them
chronologically by author (
Geoffrey
Chaucer was the first entry,
Mary
Frances Butts the last). These quotes were chiefly from
literary sources. A "miscellaneous" section follows of quotations
in English from politicians and scientists (such as "
fifty-four forty or fight!"). A
section of "
translations" follows,
consisting mainly of lines from the
ancient Greeks and
Romans. The last section was devoted to the
Bible and the
Book of Common
Prayer. Quotations were arranged in a single column.
The eleventh edition (1937), edited by
Christopher Morley (1890–1957) and
Louella D. Everett, expanded the page size and
created a two-column format, making it the first edition that is
recognizable to users of the modern work. A twelfth edition (1948)
was also edited by Morley and Everett.
The thirteenth edition (1955) was billed by the publisher as the
"Centennial Edition." While the work was credited to the editors of
Little, Brown, the preface gives special thanks to Morley and
Everett as well as
Emily Morison
Beck (1915–2004). The volume continued to add more recent
material, the two youngest authors being cartoonist
Bill Mauldin and
Queen Elizabeth II. Beck
also edited the fourteenth edition (1968) and the fifteenth (1980).
Aram Bakshian said Beck's work on the
fifteenth edition was the start of the work's downfall: "Donning
the intellectual bell-bottoms and platform shoes of its era,
Bartlett's began sprouting third-rate
Third World, youth-culture, and feminist
quotes," part of "a middle-aged obsession with staying
trendy."
Following Beck's retirement, Little, Brown entrusted the editorship
to
Justin Kaplan, whose life of
Mark Twain Mr. Clemens and Mark
Twain had won the
Pulitzer Prize
in 1967. Kaplan brought out the sixteenth edition in 1993 to a
firestorm of controversy, thanks to his public comments that "I'm
not going to disguise the fact that I despise
Ronald Reagan" and had deliberately
shortchanged him. Reagan's entry contained only three quotations,
all intended to make Mr. Reagan look ridiculous, according to
critics.
Kaplan also failed to include the most famous Reagan line ("Mr.
Gorbachev,
tear down this wall").
Democratic presidents fared
much better under Kaplan than
Republicans,
Franklin D. Roosevelt having 35 entries and
John F. Kennedy having 28. Jonathan
Siegel, who edited the
Macmillian Book of Political
Quotations, said Kaplan was "an insult to the memory of John
Bartlett and the ideologically inclusive spirit of the first
fifteen editions."
Kaplan was also criticized for including material that some
considered neither "familiar" nor quotable, including
pop culture quotes that some thought were not
worthy of inclusion. The same criticisms would be leveled against
the seventeenth edition (2003), which included entries for the
first time from
J.K. Rowling,
Jerry
Seinfeld, and
Larry David. The
seventeenth edition did include more Reagan material, and Kaplan
told
USA Today after its
publication "I admit I was carried away by prejudice. Mischievously
I did him dirty."
References
In addition to the prefaces of various editions of
Bartlett's,
the following sources were useful:
- Aram Bakshian, Jr. "Bartlett's familiar quotas". National Review. v. 45, n. 22. November
15, 1993. 60–61.
- "Bartlett's selective memory". Alberta Report. v. 21,
n. 3. January 3, 1994. 15.
- Caroline Benham. "Cuts from 'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'.
USA Today. October 17, 2002.
- James Gleick. " Bartlett
Updated". New York Times Book
Review. August 8, 1993. 3.
- Roger Kimball. "You Can Look It Up". Wall Street Journal. October 18,
2002.
- Douglas Martin. "Emily Morison Beck, 88, Dies, Edited
Bartlett's Quotations". New York
Times. March 31, 2004. C13.
- Adam Meyerson. "Editing History". Reader's Digest. v. 144, issue 863.
March 1994. 104.
- Adam Meyerson. "Mr. Kaplan, Tear Down This Wall". Policy
Review. Fall 1993. Issue 66. 4+.
- Robin Roger. "Up to the minute". Commentary. v. 95, n.
5. May 1993. 56–58.
See also
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