PHRASE & FABLE

Every library should have one. Every reference section, that is. A copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, sitting alongside a dictionary, encyclopedia, and a good edition of international biographies. For the simple reason that should you ever need to know the meaning or derivation of, for example, 'bell, book and candle,' or 'drink like a fish,' then this volume is the best place to go. By far the best place to go.
Of course, the aforementioned dictionary is one thing. But who was Brewer?
His full name was Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, latterly known as Doctor Brewer, who was born in 1810, the son of a Norwich schoolmaster. Brewer senior was also associated with the Baptists of St Mary's chapel in Norwich, and for a time Ebenezer helped his father at the school. Then, in 1832, he took himself off to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read for a degree in Law.
It was during this period that the young man displayed admirable self-reliance and determination (he financed himself through Cambridge), plus a magpie-like ability to seek out and record facts and details. If he read a book then he made notes of interesting details. And he soon demonstrated an astonishing grasp of the Classics, literature, the Bible, ancient authors and eminent Victorians. Eventually, he put it to very good use.
In about 1840 he wrote A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, which was published by Jarrold, the Norwich printers. Ten years' later he was working in Paris, possibly as a journalist, and in the 1860s became associated with Cassell, the publisher, and may even have been on their staff. In any event, his Popular Educator, launched as a penny-a-week part-issue, quickly became a major factor in the field of adult education.
And this was a key to Brewer's thinking. He wanted to advance the education of the poor and help them, at as low a cost as possible, to reach university standard.
Between the 1840s and 1895 Brewer wrote and compiled about 45 educational titles, many of them published by Jarrold, covering a huge span of knowledge: science, poetry, arithmatic, book-keeping, history, composition, literature, the scriptures, politics, and so on. And he produced a dozen titles in his My First Book of . . . series, which included spelling, geography and astronomy, along with histories of Germany, the Romans, Greece and France.
Even so, his Dictionary of Phrase & Fable reigned supreme -and still does - and by 1886 it had been reprinted 18 times. By 1894/5 the publishers could claim sales of over 100,000 copies.
I love it because it is such a good 'dipping' book, one you can dip into and out of during otherwise idle moments. And it is stuffed with interesting facts.
Dr Ebenezer Brewer of Norwich made a major contribution to the education particularly of the poor, and there is a final glimpse of him, aged about 80, in his bed sitting-room in Nottinghamshire, working far into the night, collecting facts and jotting them down - often on the wallpaper, for he deliberately had the walls of his room papered plain white - and hoarding them. He died in 1897.
(Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Guild Publishing, 1985)