Encyclopedia

One of my favorite possessions that I almost never seem to find any real use for is my set of the Encyclopedia Americana from 1912. "A Universal Reference Library" it says, "comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc., of the world." (It actually says etc., too.) They're beautiful books — leather-bound, gilded edges, tissue paper delicately bound against the color plates, and an odd sort of intricate design on the endpapers I can't quite make out. And they're in remarkably good condition, for books that are almost a hundred years old — they don't seem the least bit fragile.

They were on a bookshelf, behind glass doors, in my grandmother's attic when I discovered them almost 20 years ago. I don't think she ever understood why I was so eager to have them.

I love these books because they're a snapshot of the state of the world, and all that we knew about it, so long ago. Some of it we would now know to be inaccurate, of course, but there's a wonderful breadth of detail that has long since been lost, or at least crowded out. There's an entire page on "condensed milk." And three pages — three pages! — on "clay-working machinery," with illustrations.

And had you ever heard of the "Cock Lane Ghost"? That was "a famous hoax by which many people of London were deceived in 1762, arising from certain knockings heard in the house of a Mr. Parsons, in Cock Lane. Dr. Johnson was among those who believed in the supernatural character of the manifestations; but it was found out that the knockings were produced by a girl employed by Parsons."

And, of course, the use of language was so wonderfully different. We would commonly think of a commissary as, say, a sort of restaurant. In 1912, it was "an officer of a bishop who exercises spiritual jurisdiction in remote parts of a diocese, or one entrusted with the performance of duties in the bishop's absence."

And there are pages-long entries on major cities like Baltimore and Cleveland, with beautiful photos and maps of the era.

You can read entries from the 1851 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana on the web — but that will never have to same appeal to me as wandering through the yellowed pages of musty old books.