A HANDBOOK TO Literature

• Main Authors: Holman, C. Hugh (Author), Harmon, William (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: New York Macmillan Publising Company 1986
• Edition: FIFTH EDITION
• Subjects: Literature > Dictionaries; English literature > Outlines, syllabi, etc.; American literature > Outlines, syllabi, etc.
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.

 Fifteen hundred chances to put in my two cents' worth have amounted to a good deal more than thirty dollars' worth of enjoyment. In preparing the newest edition of this Handbook, I have experienced two pleasures to which many are tempted but few are treated: amending a classic and improving a friend. It has been my privilege, first, to tamper with the Handbook in the hope of making it handier. The first edition came out in 1936, and both William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard died during the 1940s, long before I could have a chance to meet them. They share the distinction of having inaugurated a Handbook that for fifty years has served many thousands of readers as an aid in the understanding and enjoyment of reading and as a stimulus to further reading; and the Thrall-Hibbard Handbook has achieved for many the stature and familiarity of a classic in its own right. It has been my privilege, second, to try to make improvements in a friend. We seldom do such a thing with our friends, because we like them as they are, as we like ourselves, warts and all. But a reference work, which is obliged to remain a satellite orbiting an ever-changing body of material, can become a friend that is nothing but warts or-to shift the figure from the Cromwellian to the Johnsonian mode-a horse that is nothing but pasterns; and we have to supplement and revise.