Friday's Bookshelf Travels: Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia and Burnett

We had snow falling off and on all day long. But it did not accumulate. Wild and wooly walking the dog through it, though!
Can you believe this is Week Four of Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times? I sure can't. I was finally able to buy a very small steak for the two of us, our first piece of beef in weeks. It's been hard up here. Because so many people who have vacation homes are now here, the grocery stores have not been able to meet the increased demand at a time that was not expected. Oh yeah, we expect it in July. But not now.
And I certainly don't mind people from NYC or New Jersey or Long Island or Pennsylvania who have fled their homes to come here, but I DO MIND the ones who travel back and forth, back and forth to their homes in the city and then back here again and again! People who live on my road. If you come, please stay put and don't travel for our sakes. We absolutely do not have the hospital resources that NYC has. As one local public health official put it, "You can come, but don't expect the hospital services you would get in the city. If you get sick, you will be straining our very, very limited health services. Amen!
That's quite enough of my rant for a Good Friday.
To the topic:
Another bookcase in my bedroom is seven feet tall and solid oak. While I'm getting dressed in the morning, I gaze at the books, allowing my eyes to focus on those I haven't thought about recently. I also think of those I have yet to read. I exchange the books here much more often than is the case with  my other bookcases.

On one of the middle shelves, the fifth hardcover edition of Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia sits. It's 1,200 pages, is reference-book size, and is "a completely revised and updated edition of the bestselling encyclopedia of classic and contemporary world literature." It was published in 2008 and is the most recent edition.
My older brother gave me the first edition for Christmas when I was 19 or so, although it was not a first printing. I fell in love with it immediately, and I still have it, with his inscription. About ten years ago, I picked up a paperback copy of the third edition at a library book sale for a dollar. And the fifth I bought at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, on a day trip to celebrate my birthday about ten years ago. If you ever, ever find yourself in southern Vermont, do honor your bookish self and make a beeline to this MECCA of bookstores. I assure you, it cannot possibly disappoint!
The individual entries in Benet's discuss authors of all genres of literature, important or classic titles of works, famed literary sites and their significance, important battles and historic events, religions, philosophies and schools of thought, literary movements, etc.
Here are some entries from a typical page:
 Charles Bukowski, a 20th-century American poet and novelist; Mikhail Bulgakov, the Russian playwright and novelist, who became famous after the Russian Revolution; Ed Bullins, American playwright, novelist, and poet; and Silvina Bullrich, one of Argentina's best-known novelists. There is even an entry for Mr. Bumble, the character in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, and an entry for Natty Bumppo, the central figure in James Fenimore Cooper's series of books known as The Leatherstocking Tales.
It seems that the 5th edition is out of print, although used copies are available. I wonder if there will ever be a 6th edition, because reference books of this type are tending to not be published any more. Sigh! Although  it's true that all of this information is available quickly on the internet, it is not possible to browse Wikipedia by the letter B or C or Q.  Much of the pleasure of this book is browsing. And finding new authors, new reading material, etc.

Yesterday, from the same bookshelf, I lovingly took down Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, both illustrated by the New England illustrator Tasha Tudor (1915-2008). These two editions of the older classics, were both published in the early 1960s. But the two I own today are not the ones I owned as a child. Those latter volumes went with me when I started teaching sixth grade, to place on the classroom bookshelves for students to borrow. After ten years, when I left teaching, they were in pretty bad shape.
So about thirteen years ago, I contacted a rare books seller in Saratoga Springs to help me find "Fine" replacements, with dustcovers intact. He had no problem with that, I didn't spend more than $30 per book, and the stories and especially the illustrations that meant so much to me as a 10- to 12-year old came home in all their glory to live with me again.