New York Times Review

From the New York Times, September 24, 1904: 643.

"With the briefest of introductions and the clearest of explanations, Edith Granger, A.B., has edited an "Index to Poetry and Recitations," a thousand-page quarto that includes over 30,000 titles from 369 books. (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, $5.) Teachers, reference librarians, booksellers, elocutionists, and hosts of others will find this book useful. The practical knowledge and library training shown throughout are worthy of praise; the mechanical arrangement, with its system of cross-references, is well done.

There are a title index, an author index, and a first-line index. The title index is the basis to which the references in the other two apply. All three are kept as nearly as possible a-title-a-line, each book indexed being referred to by a two or three letter symbol, when necessary, with the volume number attached. The "key to symbols," which precedes the text, is a list of the books from which the index was compiled, standard and popular collections of poetry and recitation books, including orations, tableaus, &c. These are arranged alphabetically by their titles, each giving the symbol, the author, editor, or compiler, the publisher, and the price--in short, a bibliography according to rule.

There is also a long list of the abbreviations used. The symbols are printed in such a way that the librarian can insert the call numbers of the books in the bibliography. The titles are so arranged that under the main title entry one will also find different abridged, or selected titles referring to the same poem. By means of the cross-indexes a piece can be found, if included at all, under any title known to the searcher or by means of the first line or author.

An appendix that is designed to save time in schools and libraries classifies many titles under the heads: Special days, charades, dialogues, drills, etc. ; noted personages and temperance selections. The book is strongly bound in half leather, with cloth sides, opens wide at every page and is printed with generous margins on good paper. It has also a marginal thumb index."

• This review in the original context is available to New York Times subscribers through TimesMachine.

• This review was also printed in Literary News; A Monthly Eclectic Review of Current Literature Illustrated, Vol. 25, no. 11 (November 1904): 166-7. It can be viewed on Google Books.