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Encyclopedias used to be a big deal
When I was a kid, there were traveling salesmen who went from house to house selling encyclopedias. I am sure that many of those offers were for vastly overpriced editions that involved long-term payment options that the buyer would soon regret. But back in the fifties, America wanted to believe that the knowledge contained in an encyclopedia would lift every child into academic and societal success. I saw commentary on the internet today that said that Elon Musk read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica when he was nine years old. My reaction to that was puzzled. Didn’t everyone read an encyclopedia as soon as they could read? My encyclopedia was the World Book Encyclopedia, probably sold by a traveling salesman. I read every volume of those books repeatedly because there was nothing else in the house to read and I wanted to figure out what life was all about.
You know what else I studied? The dictionary. We had an ancient leather-bound dictionary that was at least twelve inches thick. It had tiny ornate drawings for each entry, and I was mesmerized by the sheer amount of knowledge that was displayed.
Have I ever mentioned that I am a killer Scrabble player? I have forgotten far too many of the bittersweet memories of my childhood but I remember most of those obscure words that begin with Y or Q.
I regret that when my wife and I had children, we forgot to buy an encyclopedia.
Published in General
Pessimist, you are ok!
(You already seemed ok (you are even on the List although that isn’t a big deal, since even BDB is on there and he got banned) but the more you tell us about yourself the more ok you seem.)
In 1965 I sold Encyclopedia Americana door to door. Don’t remember what it cost, but as I recollect there was something like 25 volumes: And, there was an annual update that was significant.
World book was physically smaller but I don’t know doodly sqat about it.
I grew up with Compton’s . Also had yearbooks.
My grandparents had the World Book Encyclopedias and I enjoyed them.
Britannica was marketing to the military in the early 90s. A young couple I knew was expecting their first child and they bought a complete set, which included not only the encyclopedias, but ~50 volumes of Great Books. The books had collected works of Aristotle, Homer, Galileo, Darwin, Freud, and so on.
This young couple, who were anxious to provide all the advantages to their impending heir, promptly sold all the Great Books, seeing no value in those writings at all. One of my co-workers snatched up the whole lot for $75. I was envious, and when he later needed money for a hot date, I became the new owner of the Great Books.
I am embarrassed to say I have not read a one of them. There was a time when I would have dug into them, but I now have other things that demand my attention. Most of the volumes are in their original plastic wrap.
We had a set of the World Books. I’d read through them by the time I left elementary school.
Complete sets are still available, on ebay etc. Probably even amazon. They may not be perfectly up-to-date, but Jeff Bezos et al can’t change what’s in them.
Is this to Mortimer Adler set of Great Books? Do you need money for a hot date? I’d buy that set
I have my old world book set. I wish I also had my children’s encyclopedia set too. I loved the section on ants. Read that over and over.
Meanwhile, on the lighter side…
My first lesson in plagiarism was a report I had to write in fourth grade. I painstakingly copied every word out of our World Book encyclopedia on the leaning tower of Pisa.
I thought it was brilliant.
Mrs. Lytle kindly made me rewrite it in my own words.
Here I am in 1959 with my grandfather (his WWI picture is my avatar). In the background is a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica’s in a dedicated bookcase for which dad must have paid dearly. Why he thought his first born needed a complete set of encyclopedias in 1959 is a mystery. When I started second grade we became a World Book family. When I left home in 1978 we still had the Britannicas and two complete sets of World Books.
Hello! PM me if you’re willing to deal.
Our family had the World Book and got the yearly updates. I think it was the 1965 book that had an update on dinosaurs that I went back to again and again.
My parents bought an Americana, and my grandparents had a Britannica. I didn’t read the Americana “from A to Z,” but I was constantly looking things up. And often, after looking something up, the next article would catch my attention, and the next one, and . . . Sometimes I would also refer to the grandparents’ Britannica. There was always a World Book in my elementary classrooms.
There was no lack of books in my house growing up – my mother had taught high school English, and I read a lot. Still, I think the same salesman sold my parents a set of “Book House” books. They were wonderful – a series , starting with stories to read to your preschoolers through some great short stories suitable for older kids. Those I read through many times. Especially the books in that series dedicated to poetry.
Coincidentally, there’s a related post & discussion at Neo’s blog: The Mighty Encyclopedia.
Our encyclopedia set, I don’t remember what brand it was, also had some optional “story” books that my parents got, but I don’t remember any of them being meant for kids. I remember reading the “book” version of “Fate Is The Hunter” in one of the volumes before seeing the movie, but all I remember now is the movie, which was – and is – amazing.
We’re soulmates! I love reading dictionaries, especially all the neat stuff in the appendices. There is a Websters on a stand in our dining room, handy for the family Scrabble jousts that would take place there regularly. All through my childhood and into Brian’s and Valerie’s teen years we would play Scrabble. My sainted aunt Marion, who was an English teacher, was the driving force, and I’m convinced it helped her fend off dementia. Mere days before her passing, she beat me in a two-man round of Scrabble…and we do NOT let anyone else win on sympathy in this family. Brian still brags about using all his letters on the first turn and hitting a triple word score, which put him out of reach of the rest of us. Valerie’s claim to faim is the word “gink,” which she tried to play even though we all insisted that it wasn’t a real word. We consulted the Webster’s. She was right.
Still have a set we purchased when we were first married. It had an amazing Atlas with it. The Atlas was so big it sat sideways in the bookshelf and a Labrador chewed off the corner so badly we got rid of it. Still sitting here.
Mother got a Webster’s unabridged dictionary early in my life, with S&H Green Stamps. I didn’t get into it the way I did the encyclopedia (encyclopaedia), but we all went to it a lot. I have it now. It hasn’t come out yet since our move because we don’t know where to keep it in our much – smaller house. But it will come out. For now we use the dictionary my wife got when she went away to college. It’s pretty ragged.
The “encyclopaedia” dig just came to mind. For years I wondered why Jiminy Cricket misspelled it in his song.
Ours was a set from the local supermarket. I can’t remember the name brand, but you got a new volume each week (or month?). Our parents displayed them on the living room mantlepiece, and I remember using them a lot for school reports. I don’t think I plagiarized (@richardoshea), but it was probably close many times.
@quietpi
Same here. We lived in the country, and I can remember the local library’s “bookmobile” that stopped across from our house once every couple weeks.
We were a WorldBook family. My parents bought a set when my brother and I were in elementary school (1965-ish). My wife and I bought a new set (in our case from a vendor in the Commerce building of the very large county fair) when our children started elementary school (1992-ish). My wife’s family could not afford such a thing when she was growing up, so she relied on the copy at the town library, which was within walking distance of their house.
Neither I nor our children read them much for entertainment, but in a pre-internet world they were useful tools for beginning school research projects. My parents, and we with our children, insisted and policed additional research for any reports being prepared, which involved trips to the town library. Reports being submitted at school had to include information that was not in the encyclopedia.
In hindsight, I think there was a fair amount of cultural currency to displaying the set in your living room. A set of 25 – 30 nicely bound matching books showed the homeowner valued information and education. Although we had the bottom-tier “library binding” sets, I recall there being a strong sales push to pay extra for a more luxurious binding material that would look more elegant in a bookcase, just like the fancy libraries of rich people’s houses.
I have a 1967 set of World Book Encyclopedia stacked on the floor 5 feet from the desk I’m sitting at right now, that I rescued from my moms house when she died three years ago.
I have no idea what to do with it. I can’t bear the thought of just tossing it in a dumpster. But the used bookstores in the area are actively hostile to idea of taking it in.
We had three encyclopedia sets in my house growing up. I believe two were World Book and Britannica, while the third was some kind of science and technical series. I spent countless hours looking through them, but only at the things that interested me . . .
I have the same problem with several meticulously boxed (in date order) sets of National Geographic in the attic. Yes, they are gorgeous. No, no one wants them.
Did you ever live in Refugio?
After I tried to sell a set of Americanas to one person, he said to me “Come here a minute. ” So I went to the kitchen closet and he had there three sets (World Book, Brittanica and another set I don’t remember.)
“Do you really think I need another one?”
The town where I grew up in the 60s was too small for either a library or a “bookmobile.” But at school we could order books from Scholastic Book Service, which then came to the school later for distribution. The first ones I got were sci-fi, naturally. Some years ago I picked up a copy of one of them that I remembered the most. It’s in a box here somewhere, one of the many boxes that I still haven’t gotten into more than 4 years after moving.
One story in the book, whose title I remember, was Asimov’s “It’s Such A Beautiful Day.”
Last time I checked, it’s possible to find brand new sets of Brittanica, among others, up to at least 2012 or perhaps later.
Maybe they aren’t totally current, but if it became necessary to rebuild civilization from the ground up, they would be invaluable.
Ah yes. The library. But first:
I get the current idea of the era of encyclop(a)edias having passed. The original goal of capturing all of Man’s knowledge in one set of books was impossible even at the beginning. And now, with knowledge expanding at a rate inconceivable even for us today, what’s the point? I think there’s a very good one.
Long ago somebody explained to me the difference between conservatives (classical liberals) and “progressives” (liberals / socialists) is not that conservatives are against change. That would be silly. The difference is that before change is tried, we should know how things came to be the way they were in the first place? And what’s the most reliable way to do that? Actual printed books. Old books. Ink on paper.
The modern ways – online research, online dictionaries, etc. are easily (and eagerly) corrupted. @kedavis hit the nail on the head at #5. A few keystrokes on some appointed person’s keyboard can change the meaning of a word, even “recorded” history.
Re: the library – I was pretty young when I had read all the books of interest to me in the children’s library. Miss Sims, the children’s librarian, started sending me upstairs to the adult library. At first I think my folks checked out books for me. Eventually I started checking out books up there. Then Paul Thompson, the head librarian, took me aside one day and said, you know, you aren’t supposed to be checking out books up here with a children’s library card, and I was quite a bit too young for an adult card. Problem. But he issued me an adult card anyway, and I was off and running.
You might want to save your kids the hassle and throw them out now.
Or send them to me, I’ll keep them safe. I have 4,500 sq ft now.
I may take you up on that.