Synopses & Reviews
Review
The Dictionary's "editors are two of our foremost investigators of the proverb...They have scouted through some 200 American books of their period to give us this first dictionary of American proverbs on historical principles...[It is] an attempt to separate what is native in our culture from what is imported...Here the reader will find illuminated the relation of proverb to fable and song...The book also gives us a new view on what our ancestors were thinking and feeling a century ago...Finally, this superbly edited dictionary is, of course, a book for every student of American language and literature, its comparative references in, before, and after its period being particularly extensive and useful. The New York Times Book Review
Review
An authoritative and scholarly collection showing a wide knowledge of proverbs in other literatures. The Year's Work in English Studies
Review
[This work] goes far beyond limitations of title, and is in effect a distillation of the wit and wisdom of the American people at a most important period. Antiquarian Bookman
Review
Though the selection is itself limited to American print between 1820 and 188o the compilers have not hesitated to add further references from many sources, not only American...This latitude greatly enhances the value and entertainment of the book. A learned preface discussing the nature of the proverb and the history of collections of proverbs is followed by a full bibliography of books drawn on and of the works of reference consulted. Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
This book is a collection of English proverbs, sentences, and proverbial phrases from the Middle Ages. The material is drawn from an exhaustive examination of the surviving texts, mainly printed ones but some still in manuscript.