referencebooks (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} referencebooks) wrote,@ 2005-10-12 10:30:00 |
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| Entry tags: | ephemera, history, library science |
The Encyclopedia of Ephemera
The Encyclopedia of Ephemera: A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian
By Maurice Rickards; edited and completed by Michael Twyman.
Published by Routledge, 2000. Text copyright The Centre for Ephemera Studies.
This is an 8.5" by 11.5" clothbound book running to 402 pages including the bibliography and index, plus an introduction by the editor. It is illustrated with numerous color plates and smaller black and white photos of actual ephemera.
It's an encyclopedic work on what the author defined as the "minor transient documents of everyday life," especially as they are of interest to historians and collectors. Maurice Rickards spent decades working on the Encyclopedia; it was his main activity up until his death in 1998, after which the book had to be finished by others.
Most of the entries are for types of ephemera, and there are surprisingly many. The full sequence of entries in the M's are:
- Magazine sample sheet
- Manual alphabet card
- Marriage certificate
- Marrowbone announcement
- Match-tax stamp
- Medicine-show papers
- Menu
- Milk-bottle closure
- Miniature newspaper
- Miniature text
- Mock money
- Moral-lesson picture
- Motto, shop window
- Mulready caricature
- Mulready envelope
- Myriorama
These entriie take up a total of eight of the large pages in the book.
It's mainly British and American ephemera that are covered, and the terminology tends to be British.
The entries for these ephemera types go into the historical background of each and describes them at length, often giving examples showing what their text was like. Photographs of ephemera provide visual examples on most pages, supplemented by a nice section of full color plates.
The book is a fine publication, on nicely-bound, high-quality paper.
Finding the correct entry for some existing piece of ephemera that you want to understand better could be a challenge if you don't know the correct words to use to look it up, but the index could be helpful in those cases.
All told, it's an indispensable resource for someone who needs a good information about types of ephemera.
