When I was a wee flod, growing up in Pennsylvania, we had an encyclopedia, as many middle-class families did. It wasn’t one of the big names, though, and I’m trying to remember what it was called. Unfortunately my parents don’t have it any more, so they can’t check.
Salient details: It was probably from the mid-1960s, smaller in format than the encyclopedias at the library, and had white or cream covers with dark green spines. Oh, and here’s the unusual bit: at the back of each volume there were summaries of classic novels.
I used to love those summaries of novels almost as much as I loved reading the encyclopedia itself, and I promised myself I would read several of the books for real when I got old enough to do so. And I did!
If it had mostly single letter volumes, i.e. one volume for “A”, another for “B”, and so on, then it almost certainly was a World Book set. Later editions split some of the “fattest” letters, like “C” and “S” into two volumes, but that didn’t happen until some time after 1970. Because of the printing and types of paper used used in the early 1960s by the World Book , nearly all color photographs had to be limited to sets of thicker paper within the articles, rather than distributed throughout the text. IIRC the only exception was the article on painting.
I still have my 1960 World Book, just for the nostalgia value, as well as reflecting a rather noticeably right wing political stance especially when discussing the governments of countries friendly to the United States and its allies.
ETA: And mine’s considerably more beat up. After all, we used the hell out of that encyclopedia when we were kids!
It does seem a rather unusual feature for an encyclopedia. I wonder if it could have been a special edition of the World Book, although I never heard of one like that.
Wow, this was harder than I thought! I mean, I thought that together us Dopers knew pretty much everything…
Definitely not World Book. It also was not a children’s encyclopedia.
Given the smaller format of the books, and the fact that they just felt cheaper than the ones at school and at the public library, I suspect it was from a lesser-known publisher. I’ve heard of people buying encyclopedias one volume at a time from the supermarket, and that may have been the case with these. However, the only non-children’s encyclopedia that I can find references to being sold like that is Funk and Wagnall’s - which doesn’t seem to have had those summaries of novels.
I had that at home in the early 60’s, I believe it was the 1958 edition (bought used). It was unique in that it did not have alphabetical volumes. Each volume had a section on history, one on science, one on literature, etc. It was kinda cool if you just wanted to read along through a variety of subjects, going wherever it might take you. If you wanted to read about a particular subject, the index was indispensable to find the articles about it (often sprinkled through several different volumes).
Ours had monochrome dark reddish bindings, and no summaries of novels that I recall.
As a kid at school in the mid-70’s to mid-80’s I found it very difficult to write reports when I was at home. It took me a while to figure out why I couldn’t find some countries on maps (like Israel), articles about computers or why my reports that referenced population were marked incorrect.
Exactly right. There was a section on “Stories” that included material as erudite as summaries of Moliere comedies, but not the novel summaries described in the OP. Note - each volume had several of the sections described. Some sections ran out earlier in the series, others appeared right up to the last volume.
What year was this, more or less? We had a World Book at home, but I consulted lots of other encyclopedias in the library, and don’t remember novel summaries, which would have appealed to me.
I learned hyper-linking from the World Book, about 1966, as I did a project (on my own) tracing the first cross reference from a random starting article, and seeing where it took me.
Which IIRC, did have the book summaries. Usually a page or two at the back.
No green spine, but I remember there was another set of books that came with them that had a green wrap around the spine and part of the cover. Cannot remember what they were called.
I do believe they were more topic specific: “Science” “Language” etc, but that’s a long time ago.
There’s a set of what you speak at my parent’s house. They were a grocery store promotion (Kroger, maybe)- save up stamps or something and buy the next letter’s book every couple of weeks. Dad even bought two Science Yearbook supplements and the Family Physician book that went with them.
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