# Something like Cliff Notes back in the 1950s with a different name?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [November 27, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320 "2012-11-27T23:05:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/1 "2012-11-27T23:05:37Z")
Query for those who went to college or university in the 1950s.
Was there something like Cliff Notes but with some other name? I remember the yellow books but I don’t remember the name being Cliff Notes.
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### Author:  [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/2 "2012-11-27T23:10:24Z")
Masterplots have been around for a long time, but I don’t know that they were ever published for individual works like Cliffs.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2012, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/3 "2012-11-27T23:28:05Z")
[Cole’s Notes](http://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Coles-William-Staff-Shakespeare/dp/077403193X), I’d bet.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/4 "2012-11-28T00:48:36Z")
Yeah, [Coles Notes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coles_Notes) are the Canadian original, created by the founders of the Coles bookstores. According to the Wikipedia link, Cliff’s Notes are a licensed version for the US.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/5 "2012-11-28T02:43:58Z")
Monarch Notes were around back then. They had the red covers, while Cliff had the yellow.
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### Author:  [@spoon\_river](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spoon_river)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/6 "2012-11-28T02:50:21Z")
Yeah, I used to collect those I’d find in used bookstores for some reason. Monarch Notes, and I think Cole’s Notes ring a bell – some others too I think. The ones I found seemed to be from the 1960s or perhaps earlier. I think I sold all of them a while ago, but they were fun in general and not as stupid about interpretation as most of the Cliff’s Notes, by and large.
I know people use those as basically cribs for regurgitating Jack Handey style “deep thoughts,” but I found them helpful, as one who prefers to know the whole plot of a novel before reading the novel – it’s distracting to me to get caught up in minor details like who’s who and stuff. Sure, you can draw a family tree of Faulkner’s characters, but easier to just look one up and get to the good stuff.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/7 "2012-11-28T06:43:09Z")
For math/science subjects, there’s always also been Schaum’s Outlines. (They’ve long since been bought out by some major publisher, but are still published under the Schaum brand, and have branched out into many other fields. To the best of my knowledge, they were originally pretty much just math/science stuff.)
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### Author:  [@spoon\_river](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spoon_river)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/8 "2012-11-28T07:16:37Z")
> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> For math/science subjects, there’s always also been Schaum’s Outlines. (They’ve long since been bought out by some major publisher, but are still published under the Schaum brand, and have branched out into many other fields. To the best of my knowledge, they were originally pretty much just math/science stuff.)
I didn’t know they’d been around for so long. I’ve used a bunch in the past to get lots of practice questions for math classes – unfortunately, every single book I’ve seen of theirs has been copy edited by the worst of the worst. Riddled with errors.
I suppose that’s good for the learning experience – find the errors and figure out the right way to solve the problem – but pretty risible for black and white subjects like most math based on working computations (rather than, say, proofs).
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### Author:  [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/9 "2012-11-28T15:55:09Z")
In my youth, I remember the two competing franchises being Cliff’s Notes and Barron’s Book Notes. Barron’s had blue/red covers, I think.
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### Author:  [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-like-cliff-notes-back-in-the-1950s-with-a-different-name/642320/10 "2012-11-28T22:52:48Z")
It could have been Coles Notes that I recall. The images look like what I recall.
I used Schaum’s Outline for something but never used Coles. Cliffs apparently appeared about the time I left to join the USAF.