George B Bryan

"A Dictionary of Anglo-American Proverbs & Proverbial Phrases Found in Literary Sources of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" is a unique collection of proverbial language found in literary contexts. It includes proverbial materials from a multitude of plays, (auto)biographies of well-known actors like Britain's Laurence Olivier, songs by William S. Gilbert or Lorenz Hart, and American crime stories by Leslie Charteris. Other authors represented in the dictionary are Horatio Alger, Margery Allingham, Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carroll, Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Disraeli, Edward Eggleston, Hamlin Garland, Graham Greene, Thomas C. Haliburton, Bret Harte, Aldous Huxley, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, George Orwell, Eden Phillpotts, John B. Priestley, Carl Sandburg, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jesse Stuart, Oscar Wilde, and more. Many lesser-known dramatists, songwriters, and novelists are included as well, making the contextualized texts to a considerable degree representative of the proverbial language of the past two centuries. While the collection contains a proverbial treasure trove for paremiographers and paremiologists alike, it also presents general readers interested in folkloric, linguistic, cultural, and historical phenomena with an accessible and enjoyable selection of proverbs and proverbial phrases.

Harry S. Truman was not only a major political figure of the twentieth century, he was also a skilled communicator who was proud of his plain speaking. His letters, speeches, news conferences, memoirs, and other books are filled with elements of folk speech. Proverbs, proverbial expressions, and proverbial comparisons play an especially important rhetorical and communicative role, both in his personal relationships with family members and on the visible stage of regional, national, and international politics. This book begins with an introductory essay that discusses and analyzes the importance of proverbial language in Truman's published works. The bulk of the volume is a key-word index to the occurrence of proverbs in his writings, with the proverbs arranged according to the most significant word in the text. The quotation from Truman is accompanied by a citation to the source in his works consulted. Each entry also provides references to standard proverb dictionaries, which readers may consult to learn more about the history of a particular proverbial utterance. An appendix overviews the frequency of proverbs in Truman's writings. The interpretive essay together with the index clearly demonstrate that Harry S. Truman knew how to use proverbs effectively as colorful and accessible folk wisdom to communicate complex political ideas.

Literary critics and folklorists have long been interested in the use and function of proverbial language in literature. "Proverbs in World Literature" enables scholars and students to establish what has been published on proverbs, proverbial expressions, proverbial comparisons, proverbial exaggerations, and wellerisms in the works of many authors throughout the world. This international bibliography contains 2,654 entries, of which the first 284 comprise a section of General Studies. Proverb dictionaries based on texts collected from literary works, books and articles about numerous authors, studies of the interrelationship of proverbs and folk literature (fairy tales, legends, tall tales, folk songs, etc.) and theoretical writings on the integration and function of proverbs in literature in general are listed here. The second part of the bibliography is arranged alphabetically according to the last name of the literary author whose proverbial usage has been investigated. Anonymous works are also listed alphabetically. A name index of the scholars cited appears at the end. Extensive materials from many languages and cultures are collected and organized. The bibliography thus includes not only proverb studies regarding the major authors of world literature, but also those investigations that deal with regional writers.

"This book will be useful to students of Ibsen and therefore belongs in the reference collections of all but the smallest public and academic libraries. . . . In all respects admirable." Reference Books Bulletin