Hi Katie,

I've been "out of action" on Library Thing for a bit because of some big things going on in real life. But I did want to get back to you about the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana.

First of all, it's a big book. The size is approximately 8.5 x 11 x 2. However, it isn't nearly as heavy as it might have been, which is nice. There is no dust jacket, but the cover is illustrated as you've probably seen, and it looks great.

The contents have a couple of big drawbacks. First, there is no index!!! That's an amazing omission. I suppose it doesn't have one because it was considered an "encyclopedia" and the entries are already in alphabetical order. One doesn't normally expect to find any index in an encyclopedia. The problem is that one often would want information on something and not have any idea what entry to look it up under. The second drawback is that many of the entries you'd think would be there, are not. The information may be in the book, but there is no separate entry. The entries are pretty much all in the form of expository articles. Some are shorter and some are longer, but typically they are about as long as two pages of a "normal" book, i.e. about a half-page or three-quarters page of this large book with fairly small print. There are very very few, if any, "stub" entries that give minimal information and refer you to other longer topics. Surprisingly, there are numerous authors mentioned in some entry or other, but who do not have a separate entry of their own. I ran across that immediately when I started looking into the contents carefully. What this means is, if you want to find out about an author's work, the information may well be in the book but you not be able to find the information! That really amazed me and it really seems like a big problem. On the plus side, I understand the author has posted an index on the Internet. I haven't looked at it, but obviously there were plenty of people who brought the problem up, and I'd bet both related problems are mostly fixed through this index. One can only hope! I've unfortunately had to put the book away in a box due to lack of book space, so I can't really get it out and give specific examples.

So I gave the drawbacks first, but that really doesn't represent the book. I was completely blown away by the idea that one person could have put this encyclopedia together. How could anybody know so much, have such intimate familiarity with a large area of literature that few people know at all? It's just incredible. Hundreds and hundreds AND HUNDREDS of pages of detailed information. Similar authors, information on plots and characters, trends in the literature. It's just absolutely unbelievable. I thought it would be a lot of fun to try to start buying some of these books as a collection, but there are thousands and thousands of books discussed or mentioned, so I decided not to embark on that. :-) I looked at prices of a few of the specific books on AbeBooks.com and found that they aren't that cheap, even though the author of the encyclopedia suggested they were. I wondered if the availability of the encyclopedia had generated a lot of interest in these authors' works and pushed the prices up. There are, of course, cheap enough copies available if you don't care about the condition, which would be just fine for reading and enjoying.

Anyway, the book on its own, with no index, has seriously impaired usefulness, but with the Internet index and assuming it's a good index, I think it's an absolutely wonderful book to have. I think it was $50, but I'm really glad I came across it at Barnes & Noble and shelled out the bucks. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been reprinted. I hope you have an opportunity to buy a copy, if you're interested in that kind of stuff. I see there isn't even one single copy listed on AbeBooks.com!!! It sure seems like it's popular, then, and they *should* reprint it. But maybe you can list it as a "want" on AbeBooks, and they would send you an e-mail as soon as one gets listed. I did that for a rare book once, and it worked for me. I'm sure it would be listed once in a while.

Hope you got something out of the description. Talk to you later!

Jim

posted by bibliojim at 2:05 pm (EST) on May 4, 2008