Phrase and Fable
On returning to England in 1856, Brewer started on the work that was to become Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. The dictionary was derived in part from correspondence with readers of his previous book. The first edition was published in 1870, and a revised edition appeared in 1894.
Of his methodology, Brewer wrote in the preface to the Historic Note-Book: "I have been an author for sixty years, have written many books, and of course have been a very miscellaneous reader. In my long experience I have remarked how little the range of "literary" reading has varied, and how doubt still centres on matters which were cruces in my early years. So that a work of this kind is of as much usefulness in 1891 as it would have been in 1830. I have always read with a slip of paper and a pencil at my side, to jot down whatever I think my be useful to me, and these jottings I keep sorted in different lockers. This has been a life-habit with me..."
The Reader's Handbook has had an extended subsequent history. With detailed revisions by editor Henrietta Gerwig it formed the nucleus of Crowell's Handbook for Readers and Writers which in turn provided the nucleus of William Rose Benet's The Reader's Encyclopedia, "veritably a new book", as Benet remarked; in revised form, it is still in print.
Brewer's Reader's Handbook was re-edited by Marion Harland (1830–1922) and published in the United States, with numerous illustrations as Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, 4 vols., New York 1892. Other works by Brewer include A Dictionary of Miracles: Imitative, Realistic and Dogmatic (1884?), and The Historic Notebook, With an Appendix of Battles.
Read more about this topic: E. Cobham Brewer
Famous quotes containing the words phrase and/or fable:
“Preschoolers think and talk in concrete, literal terms. When they hear a phrase such as “losing your temper,” they may wonder where the lost temper can be found. Other expressions they may hear in times of crisis—raising your voice, crying your eyes out, going to pieces, falling apart, picking on each other, you follow in your father’s footsteps—may be perplexing.”
—Ruth Formanek (20th century)
“In spite of the air of fable ... the public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)