PEARS' CYCLOPAEDIA Hunting around an Op-Shop at some point some many months ago, the boldly printed cover of a Pears' Cyclopaedia caught my eye. The spine was adorned with a list of topics of surprising variety for such a reasonably sized book: ================== | PEARS' | | CYCLOPAEDIA | --.____/\____.-- EVENTS * PROMINENT PEOPLE * OFFICE COMPENDIUM * GAZETTEER * ATLAS * DICTIONARY * SYNONOMS * BUSINESS * GENERAL INFORMATION * CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY * STUDENT'S COMPENDIUM * WIRELESS * TOILET * COOKERY * MEDICAL * BABY'S FIRST YEAR * GARDENING * PHOTOGRAPHY * SPORTS * POULTRY * DOMESTIC PETS * READY RECONER ___ / \ / \ TRADE| PEARS |MARK \ / \___/ After the necessary confirmation that "Toilet" did, in fact, refer to a chapter entitled "Pears' Dictionary of the Toilet", and raising the corresponding eyebrow (this, in the thirties, arrarantly referred to matters of maintaining ones personal appearance), a quick scan through its pages suggested indeed a serious attempt had been made to cover all of these topics within 960 pages. Opposite a colour illustration in the typical style of the Pears soap company, the title page reads: NEW EDITION Revised and corrected throughout PEARS Cyclopaedia Forty-first Edition 3,100,000 Copies Twenty-two Complete Works of Reference in one Handy Volume of nearly 1,000 Pages WITH COLOURED FRONTISPIECE The Flags of the Empire and Flags of other Countries in colours. _This book is not published annually, but as demand requires, usually two or three times per annum. Current matter is revised for each edition._ *=* A. & F. PEARS LTD. ISLEWORTH, Near LONDON FEBURARY 1932. The flags indeed are quite interesting, the Union Jack still apparantly flown in Canada, India still a "Flag of the Empire", and China still under the flag of the nationalist government prior to the Communist take-over after which it would only see light within the island of Taiwan. My bet is on the Spanish flag being the next one to change, with Franco's Nationalists to win the upcoming Spanish Civil War by the end of the decade, but I'm probably wrong. The book was bought probably for a couple of dollars (the ladies at the Op-Shop hadn't priced it yet - I'd mistakenly wondered into their open store cupboard when I found it!), to join my assortment of VHS tapes bought elsewhere during my visit to that small country town (I also bought there the 1996 movie of The Island of Dr. Moreau - not recommended, it had potential but just didn't quite reach it towards the end). This morning, as you can probably guess, I picked it up again and had a proper look though. Besides the historical note of things like the flags, it's also facinating to compare with the modern replacement for pretty much all of its content, which is of course the internet. From cooking recipes to the (excellently presented full-colour) atlas of the world, there is no doubt that one could find a modern equivalent of everything within by giving a few words to ones favourite web search engine. Indeed I'll no doubt do so still, and very often come to the natural modern equivalent that is Wikipedia. However there is some special quality to reading such a book of high quality that attempts the seemingly impossible task of presenting all the general information that might have been wanted by an individual in the 1930s in one convenient volume. To look up a general subject online one is usually presented with troves of information, probably from Wikipedia where the quality of the writing will be varied but usually sufficient to answer one's question within a few paragraphs. Much more detail awaits the reader on that topic, and on occasion the more curious reader might pursue reading it and become, at least for that day, somewhat of an expert. In the book though, a well written description might hopefully answer the immediate question with the few words that could be accomodated within its pages, but after that the curious mind would be free to see other topics of only vague relation. To determine the date of some silverware one might turn to "THE LONDON SILVER MARKS" on page 144, showing symbols dating back to 1697. Satisfied, a casual turn of the page would reveal the topic of "POISONS AND THEIR ANTIDOTES" (where one's disinclination towards the taking of poison sould be even more increased), which is opposite "PERCENTAGE OF ALCOHOL IN WINES, SPIRITS, ETC." among many other things. Following pages would teach you of the world's tallest waterfalls, describe the history and differences between Farenheit, Centegrade, and Reaumur (a new one on me, apparantly preferred by Germans at the time) alongside an illustrated comparison of their measures, and describe the features that compose the Union Jack. This is of course what I was doing this morning, and somehow picking up useful facts that I would never have looked up in the first place on the web, or maybe even bothered for the sake of my general interest to read the greater quantity of text likely used to describe them there. At the same time the descriptions are not dumbed down either - with even the surprising (but very interesting to me particularly) inclusion of a "Dictionary of Wireless" going into serious detail about then-new radio technology. Overall it entices the curious mind to explore new topics and improve general knowledge, whereas the web would suck it down into the depths of a particular rabbit hole. It turns out that the Pears' Cyclopaedia was published all through the 20th century, continuing into the internet era. Remarkably it held on until 2017 when the last edition was published by Penguin (Pears soap no longer being associated except by the name), with sales by then having dwindled from three million by the thirties, to barely three thousand a year: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/01/final-chapter-for-pears-cyclopaedia-after-125-years-in-print Is it a loss? I don't know. Perhaps I am the only one who would sit engrossed with it at the end of his bed one morning, delaying breakfast for want of studying a table of air raids on England during the first world war. I do think that it should inspire better ways of compiling and presenting knowledge on the Web, or I guess on Gopher. To this end I have my own big plans which, among many others, I hope one day to pursue. Somehow though I think that books like this will always have their own special effect on people like me. - The Free Thinker