@FederationHistorian @Tango @Victoria @Sumire
Got another book ID challenge for y'all. What encyclopedia or set of books are these?
Pike's encyclopedias
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
- Start date
@FederationHistorian @Tango @Victoria @Sumire
Got another book ID challenge for y'all. What encyclopedia or set of books are these?
I thought they might have been children's encyclopedias because of the thickness.
For the green texts, there are three varying choices:
- Collection of Charles Dickens
- The Bible
- A series of poetic works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
These aren’t precise matches. While searching online, sometime you’ll get two very different covers for the same books, even though they are the same shade of green!
- Collection of Charles Dickens
- The Bible
- A series of poetic works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
These aren’t precise matches. While searching online, sometime you’ll get two very different covers for the same books, even though they are the same shade of green!
They could also be a "great books" collection sold by mail-order subscription. Novels like The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Billy Budd, and any number of others would be printed in hardcover— all classy-looking and gold-embossed in a matching set. You'd answer a magazine ad and receive one book a month.
The draw was not just the books, but the shelf appeal. The set would show company that you had taste, breeding, and appreciated some intellectual pursuits.
Then when you moved or just needed the space, your books might be disposed of in a yard sale or church rummage sale, where a Hollywood set decorator could pick up the whole set for 75 cents.
The draw was not just the books, but the shelf appeal. The set would show company that you had taste, breeding, and appreciated some intellectual pursuits.
Then when you moved or just needed the space, your books might be disposed of in a yard sale or church rummage sale, where a Hollywood set decorator could pick up the whole set for 75 cents.
Oh my, this is hard. The red books might be some of Stoddard’s Lectures:
![53106315430_07f60b6a9b_z.jpg[img]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53106315430_07f60b6a9b_z.jpg[img])
This pic you posted, the spine printing is nearly an exact match for the first group of Pike's books.
Left to right: 5 dark brown/burgundy ,6 red/burgundy, 7 green interspersed with 2 blue.
The green books have writing top and bottom but the top writing is different for each volume as is the bottom writing. That suggests that the green books are not a "collected works" of an individual author (because the author name on the spine would always match). It also suggests that they aren't all part of an encyclopaedia (because, again, you would expect a title but the second piece of writing would match across the volumes).
The most likely remaining explanation is a collection of something like famous novels or poets - titles and authors will differ or those collections of "knowledge" where individual authors write a book on a particular subject but the whole set is issued in matching covers.
The trouble with looking for matches on the Internet is that, like most things, there are both fashions in bindings and cheaper reprints reuse the same covers over and over again on different books. I could find a match for the green bindings but the picture was no clearer and there was zero information about the books!
As @ZapBrannigan says, these kinds of sets were supposed to indicate taste and intelligence (while really being rather vulgar...) and, tbh, they are being used for exactly the same purpose in Star Trek. The actual content is irrelevant.
The most likely remaining explanation is a collection of something like famous novels or poets - titles and authors will differ or those collections of "knowledge" where individual authors write a book on a particular subject but the whole set is issued in matching covers.
The trouble with looking for matches on the Internet is that, like most things, there are both fashions in bindings and cheaper reprints reuse the same covers over and over again on different books. I could find a match for the green bindings but the picture was no clearer and there was zero information about the books!
As @ZapBrannigan says, these kinds of sets were supposed to indicate taste and intelligence (while really being rather vulgar...) and, tbh, they are being used for exactly the same purpose in Star Trek. The actual content is irrelevant.
Could they be Reader's Digest book club editions?
Stoddard’s Lectures were very pop culture for their time. Travelogues of old Earth. Appropriate nostalgia for an enterprising captain. Maybe hand me downs from great great great great great great uncle Zebulon. 
No. Wrong covers. The Reader's Digest had multiple titles down the spine.
That's what I just got when looking.
Books on law perhaps?
On encyclopedias.
https://www.amazon.com/All-Knowledge-World-Extraordinary-Encyclopedia/dp/0063292270
On encyclopedias.
https://www.amazon.com/All-Knowledge-World-Extraordinary-Encyclopedia/dp/0063292270
