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The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is as impressive, erudite, enjoyable, and educational a tome as you might expect from Oxford. It's the sort of undertaking the press does very well. The first such dictionary, as compiled by Oxford, was published in 1953, and it's been tweaking, modifying, and updating it ever since. This new edition, the fifth, offers well over 20,000 quotations from more than 3,000 authors. Responding to correspondence from their readers, Oxford has restored some material from past editions, such as the proverbs and nursery-rhymes section. There's a much more inclusive attention to sacred texts of world religions, and 2,000 quotations are brand new.
The quotations are arranged alphabetically, by author, so browsing provides insight into the authors quoted, more so than do compendiums that are organize by theme. There is also, however, a full thematic index, starting with Administration, Age, and America, and running the alphabetical gamut through to War, Weather, and Youth. And that is followed by a 283-page comprehensive keyword index. If you needed to fault Oxford with something, it might be the small print, but it certainly wouldn't be the thoroughness or cross-referenceability.
There's Kingsley Amis on hangovers ("His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum") and the sexes ("Women are really much nicer than men. No wonder we like them"). There's Woody Allen on immortality ("I don't want to achieve immortality through my work--I want to achieve it through not dying") and Fred Allen on committees ("A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done"). Spiro T. Agnew is on record as saying, "If you've seen one city slum you've seen them all." And Konrad Adenauer weighs in with "A thick skin is a gift from God."
There are pages of special categories, such as one of advertising slogans ("Let your fingers do the walking," "It's finger-licking good," and "Beanz meanz Heinz") and three pages of last words ("God will pardon me, it is His trade," from Heinrich Heine; "If this is dying, then I don't think much of it," by Lytton Strachey; and "It's been so long since I've had champagne," by Anton Chekhov). And there are pages of film lines, misquotations, epitaphs, telegrams, and toasts, too. Oxford's Dictionary of Quotations is a wonderfully reliable and inclusive quotation reference, and it's a lot of fun, as well. --Stephanie Gold
Oxford last published this work, which is the largest of its many collections of quotations, in 1996. It has added more than 2,000 new entries, bringing the total to 20,000. Approximately 2,500 authors are represented.
The book is arranged alphabetically by author. Page layout is clear, with name ranges in the header, entry names in bold type, and numbered quotations, which makes for easy lookups from the index and cross-references. Birth and death dates and a career brief (e.g., "British Whig politician") are given. Cross-references between entries, including page and quotation number, lead the reader to all related quotations. New authors in the fifth edition include Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, Bill Clinton ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman"), Hillary Rodham Clinton, Helen Fielding ("I will not sulk about having no boyfriend," from Bridget Jones's Diary), Bill Gates, actress Helen Mirren, and Fay Weldon.
Twenty special categories, interfiled among authors and set off in boxes, group selected quotations by type. Examples are advertising slogans, misquotations, newspaper headlines and leaders ("Dewey defeats Truman"), political slogans and songs, film lines ("Here's looking at you, kid"), catchphrases, epitaphs, opening lines, and toasts. The editorial origins of the book are particularly evident here, with many ads for British products and lines from ad campaigns in England and Ireland. Quotes from sources not attributable to an author can be found under headings such as Ballads, The Book of Common Prayer, Nursery rhymes, Proverbs, and The Talmud.
Quotes in foreign languages are followed by English translations, but many from foreign-language speakers are only presented in English, with a note about the source and translator. For instance, of 14 quotes from Flaubert, only one is given first in French. Character names are included for dialogue lines from a play or opera. Information on context is provided if it is needed to appreciate the words. Following the quote from Malvina Reynolds' song "Little Boxes," for example, we learn that it described the tract houses in the hills to the south of San Francisco. Source information for each quotation includes title or type of work (e.g., letter, speech) and date. Apocryphal and attributed statements are so noted.
An eight-page thematic index aids in identifying a dozen or more sayings in each of 44 categories, such as marriage, politics, and television. This section is a nod at the many references (including several from Oxford) that arrange quotations entirely by subject or theme, rather than by author. Such a scheme is particularly useful when a quotation does not contain a keyword directly related to its meaning and thus cannot be identified by means of a keyword index. However, unless the reader is looking for something in one of the few categories on offer here, this index won't be terribly useful. For example, if one wanted to find quotations on mathematics, which is not a category in the thematic index, the only option is to use the volume's keyword index, which means that relevant quotations that do not contain the word mathematics will not be found. A voracious quotation consumer will want to have alternative titles on hand that fully utilize the topical approach.
The thorough source documentation and cross-referencing, coupled with the large number of well-chosen entries, make this a useful purchase for almost every library. It will be especially welcome for its coverage of the last decade, because the last edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Little, Brown), which is of similar breadth and depth, was published in 1992.
