Bartlett's Familiar Quotations : A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (Hardcover)

by John Bartlett (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This canonical reference work, originally published in 1855, soldiers on, seeking out memorable quotations in the midst of these dark ages of rhetoric. Since the last edition in 1992, the pickings have been slim; recent selections are weighted toward bon mots from pop cultural phenomena (Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Clark, J. K. Rowling), irritating catchphrases ("Show me the money!") and laughable attempts to evade rather than achieve clear expression ("It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"). Fortunately there is still Bartlett's great trove of five millennia of timeless poetry, prose, oratory and epigrams, arranged chronologically and indexed by author and thematic keywords. Kingsley Amis, Mother Teresa and Katharine Graham all make their first appearance in this edition, while the entries for Edith Wharton, Bob Dylan and Vladimir Nabokov have been expanded. This volume should serve as both admonishment and inspiration to writers and toastmasters alike.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
According to his entry in American National Biography, "ask John Bartlett" was once a common answer to questions in the environs of Harvard College. Bartlett went to work in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookstore when he was 16, and "his copious memory and love of books soon had university faculty and students using him as a ready reference tool." His notebook of common phrases and quotations eventually became A Collection of Familiar Quotations, which he had privately printed in 1855. By the time he died in 1905, the collection had gone through nine editions. Almost 100 years and eight editions later, people still ask John Bartlett when they are seeking the source of a common phrase or hoping to dress up a speech with a pithy saying.

The seventeenth edition of Bartlett's has 25,000 quotations from 2,500 authors. It follows in the path of its predecessors by adhering to certain traditions yet also strives to remain relevant and up-to-date. Bartlett's original collection relied heavily on literary sources, such as the Bible and Shakespeare, and these, as current editor Kaplan tells us in his preface, "are still major components." Structurally, arrangement is still chronological and access is abetted by an index of authors and a very detailed keyword index. But for this edition, hundreds of "purely mechanical, nonsubstantive cross-reference and footnotes" have been eliminated, and full citations are used in place of the often-confusing Ibid. And Bartlett's continues to widen its net beyond canonical sources, casting about for material from culture both high and low. New among the quoted are Maya Angelou, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Princess Diana, Rudy Giuliani, Frank McCourt, Robert McNamara, and Jerry Seinfeld. Selections from Charles Darwin, Bob Dylan, and Virginia Woolf, among others, have been expanded. Some authors, such as popular eighteenth-century English writer Anna Laetitia Barbauld, have been excised, although cutting has not been as deep for this edition as it was for the sixteenth, also edited by Kaplan.

There are hundreds of other quotation books from which to choose. Among those that are comparable in size to Bartlett's, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (5th ed., 1999) is arranged alphabetically by author, and Random House Webster's Quotationary (1999) is arranged by subject. In addition to these general anthologies, there are books of quotations by women and by African Americans; books of humorous or religions quotations; and books for quotations about movies or sports (for a rundown of some recent examples, see "Other People's Words: Recent Quotation Books," in our July 2002 issue). Strictly speaking, the new Bartlett's may not be a necessary purchase for libraries that have the sixteenth edition and a good array of other fairly current titles. But because it is one of the handful of reference staples that patrons are likely to ask for by name, no self-respecting library should be without it. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1472 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 16th edition (November 4, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316082775
• ISBN-13: 978-0316082778
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #388,919 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

178 of 182 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Venerable Classic that May or Not be what YOU need., October 16, 2000

By	Robert Kall "Rob Kall of Opednews.com" (Newtown, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

66 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy this downloadable version at any price., November 12, 2002

By	W E Thompson "tparadigm" (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon.com does not tell you on the description page that you cannot receive a refund for this terrible product. The interface (Adobe eBook Reader) is acceptable for a volume that will be read page-by-page. It is TOTALLY wrong for this 1,000+ page reference book. It is a nightmare to find anything in this product. Buy the hardcover or paper back but don't throw away $30 on this version. Tecnically speaking it, it's a bow-wow.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Do They Know That?, January 12, 2002

By	James Gallen (St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I always wondered how speakers knew all those quotations. Now I know. They check "Barltett's Quotations."

This book consists of an extensive collection of thousands of familiar quotations from hundreds of sources spanning the history of the world. Biblical books, literary works, historical figures, authors, politicians, religious figures and even the anonymous all contribute to this vast collection.

The collection is assembled by source, listed, more or less, chronologically. The book contains two indices. In the front, the reader finds the Index by Authors. After the quotations, we find a general index of topics. For each listing in the general index, we find the lead word as a heading with the citation for each lead word with the words which follow it in the quotation.

I have found this book to be a valuable resource on many occasions. Just reading through it educates the reader to the source of many sayings with which we are familiar. When I have been searching my brain for the particular phrase, I have often found it in "Bartlett's". When looking for a witty phrase with which to liven a speech, "Bartlett's" often comes in handy.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who needs a source for quotations for speeches, writings, or just to satisfy your own curiosity.