Benham's Book of Quotations; Proverbs and Household Words [Hardcover] Benham, G

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AMONG the reference books which are widely regarded as indispensable
BENHAM's BooK OF OUOTATIONS has for many years held a high place.
To all who write or speak it is a tool which can never be replaced.
The history of the book is a romance in itself. Sir William Gurney
Benham began to collect quotations as a young journalist in Colchester
some sixty years ago, and until his deathin r944 the BooK OF QUOTATIONS
was a primary interest of his life. That the selection and arrangement
of fifty thousand quotations and proverbs could have been the work
of one mind is so remarkable that doubt has often been expressed as
to whether it was indeed the fact.
Gurney Benham's first collection was declined by the publisher to
whom it was submitted, and for a few years the project was abandoned.
The old interest, however, soon reasserted itselft, and the first edition
came from the press in 1907. World-wide popularity followed with
little delay. Edition after edition appeared, until Sir Gurney himself
had almost lost count of the number, and finally the monumental
proportions of the familiar volume were attained. In 1924 the book was
thoroughly revised and entirely reset, about' ten thousand additional
quotations and proverbs being introduced. A second revised editian
was issued in 1936, when again many thousand additional quotations
were introduced.
The achievement was the more striking because what to many
would have beena life's work could never be more than a spare-time
occupation with Sir Gurney Benham, who remained throughout half
a century the leading igure in the public life of the Colchester district.
the acknowledged authority on the history of Essex, earning a Fellow-
ship of the Society of Antiquaries and membership of the Royal
Historical Society, the busy editor of a county newspaper, and the
director of a nunber of Essex companies.
After the publication of the edition of rg36, and to within a short
time of his death, Sir Gurney Benham was still collecting quotations
and correcting the small errors inevitable in a reference book planned
on this scale. In preparing the present edition full use has been made
that he left, and they are the basis upon