Enquire Within upon Everything explained

Enquire Within upon Everything is a how-to book, akin to a short encyclopedia for domestic life, first published in 1856 by Houlston and Sons of Paternoster Square in London. The editor was Robert Kemp Philp.[1] It was then continuously reprinted in many new and updated editions as additional information and articles were added (and obsolete material sometimes removed).

Topics

The book was created with the intention of providing encyclopedic information on topics as diverse as etiquette, parlour games, cake recipes, laundry tips, holiday preparation, and first aid:[2] To quote from the editor's introduction:

Though not rich in such material, Enquire Within also provided the basics of an English-usage style guide, and also preserved examples of regional dialect usage (which it tended to mock as faulty). Several editions between the 1880s and 1910s provide one of the only surviving records of the rules of the English version of trucco, a somewhat croquet-like form of ground billiards. Though some attempt was made to group related topics, in general the organization was chaotic, and required looking up topics in an index, then finding their numbered sections in the main text.

History

The early editions of this book contained 3,000 short pithy descriptions and was one of a set of 20 books.The book was a popular addition to the Victorian (and later post-Victorian) home. By 1862, the book was sold 196,000 times;[3] by the 89th edition, some 1,180,000 copies had been published. With the release of the 113th edition, this number had risen to over 1,500,000 and by 1976 was in its 126th edition.[4] Modernised versions were still in print as late as 1994.[5] [6] Unauthorized reproductions of the first and some subsequent editions, without credit to the original editor and publisher, were made in United States by the New York publisher Garret, Dick & Fitzgerald, under the title Inquire Within for Anything You Want to Know. Later official editions (some time after 1894) were published by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton Kent & Co., also of London.

Agatha Christie used Enquire Within upon Everything as an important clue in the Hercule Poirot detective novel, Hallowe'en Party.

In 1980 Tim Berners-Lee named his precursor of the World Wide Web ENQUIRE after this work.[7] [8] A Forbes article quoted Berners-Lee as saying:[9]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Philp, Robert Kemp. 45.
  2. Web site: Article: Enquire Within Upon Everything . Culshaw . Geoff . September 2004 . Shropshire Family History Society Journal . 118–120 . 7 January 2010 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070916151135/http://www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk/articles/enquirewithin.htm . 16 September 2007.
  3. Web site: History of the Web . Oxford Brookes University . 20 November 2010 . 2002 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100925204436/http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/primers/history/origins.htm . 25 September 2010.
  4. Book: Van de Walle . Étienne . Renne . Elisha P. . Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations . University of Chicago Press . 2001 . 128 . 0-226-84744-6 .
  5. News: Picardie . Justine . Etcetera / Home Thoughts . . 30 January 2017.
  6. Web site: Enquire Within upon Everything: The Ultimate Problem-solver (Helicon General Encyclopedias) . AbeBooks.com . 30 January 2017.
  7. Web site: A people's history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today. Simon Jeffery. Chris Fenn. Bobbie Johnson. Elliot Smith. John Coumbe. amp. 23 October 2009. The Guardian. See 1980. 7 January 2010. London.
  8. Web site: Enquire Within upon Everything . Finkelstein . Anthony . 15 August 2003 . ICT Portal . . 7 January 2010 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20030621233742/http://www.open2.net/ictportal/app/comp_life/future1.htm . June 21, 2003.
  9. News: Press . Gil . A Very Short History of the Internet and the Web . . 30 January 2017 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20170203023042/https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2015/01/02/a-very-short-history-of-the-internet-and-the-web-2/5/#1a950bb133e2 . 3 February 2017 .

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