Michael Hardwick (1924–1991)

I'd love to hear why some people have given this book one-star; that seems preposterous. Granted, it's kind of silly to rank a book like this in the first place. It does exactly what it says on the tin; nothing more.

The Encyclopedia isn't exactly something you'll read through, or pick up often. But it's a well-written, comprehensive database of information. Every novel, short story, and play is catalogued, with simple but comprehensive plot summaries. Also, every character and place mentioned in the works is catalogued, with very brief summaries (They're usually one to three sentences, but will reveal endings to books in some cases.) followed by a quote or two. Therein follows a lengthy timeline of Dickens' life, and listing of principal players in his own life.

Dickens, like Shakespeare and only a few other authors in history, has an extensive oeuvre of characters who really do populate a world. There are many great storytellers - Conan Doyle, Christie, Wodehouse - who created hundreds of characters but few who remain truly memorable, instead just memorable if you enjoyed that particular work. Many others - Proust, Balzac, Melville - populate their world with fascinating characters, but it was their works, not their characters and milieus that had an effect on Western culture. In this respect, it makes perfect sense to have an encyclopedia with all 2000 of Dickens' characters, in all their grotesque glory. The Hardwicks are wonderful people, lovers of compilations, and it's certainly a useful tool for reference while reading, remembering, quoting, or discussing one of the greatest of all English novelists.… (more)

Who knows? Perhaps my lifelong interest in maritime history is due to the Navy men in my family, which is why I picked up Michael and Mollie Hardwick's The World's Greatest Sea Mysteries.

Originally published in 1967, the Hardwicks cover a wide range of maritime mysteries in twenty-eight chapters. The book's emphasis is slanted to British readers, and-- due to it being over fifty years old-- it does occasionally feel dated, but it still held my interest throughout.

The precariousness of life can be seen in letters returned to senders marked "Sailed for England" or the much more dire "SHIP FOUNDERED". Readers can learn about men who had similar experiences with whales as Jonah. There are pirates, lost treasures, and men disappearing in their attempts to find the Northwest Passage. Perhaps the most unsettling to me were the floating derelict ships, but the most mystifying was the racehorse found on an uninhabited island many miles from the mainland.

If you have an interest in the sea and its centuries-worth of mysteries, you should be able to find several items of interest in this book.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)… (more)

I've always felt that Doyle physically resembled Watson rather than Holmes. He said he based Holmes' physical likeness on his university tutor, Joseph Bell, but the sketch of his grandfather, John Doyle, held at the National Portrait Gallery shows he must surely have been, in part at least, a model for Sherlock.

The book's examples of Doyle's intellectual similarities to Holmes were well known in his day, and his campaigns for justice for the wrongly convicted have been thoroughly explored more recently too. Where Doyle, and his biographers the Hardwick's, fall down is in their apologetics of British imperial atrocities, which somewhat soured the reading experience, and shows exactly why the rectification of "received history" is an essential modern project. That noted, 4⭐… (more)