The Three Set Reference Library

To complement nicklong's excellent 20 volume library, I thought it might be fun to add another thread, but this time with sets of reference books.

For example
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The International Encyclopedia of Stamps
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Et cetera.

Limited to THREE desert island reference sets.

……............................................................

Here is my must have sets...

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 63 volumes.
The Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition. 32 volumes.
The Oxford English Dictionary. 20 volumes.

So, I believe nicklong allowed for 20 volumes and 1 set. With that in mind, I would possibly edit my 20 volume library... Anyway:

1. The Harvard Classics 51 vols
2. The Oxford Dictionary 20 vols
3. Lang's Fairy Books 25 vols

1. The Oxford English Dictionary (20 vols)
2. Pevsner: The Buildings of England, ... Scotland, ... Wales, and ... Ireland. (Dozens of volumes - can't count at the moment - away on holiday)
3. Back numbers of The Dickensian (A selection of copies going back to 1905).

Nowadays, most of my actual reference work is done online, eg complete back numbers of Gramophone (from 1923?) and Dickensian, etc.

Three reference books that I continually refer to, and which would naturally come with me to my desert island are :

The Concise Oxford Dictionary
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
The Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy

1. Oxford English Dictionary (20 vols.)
2. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (63 vols. Unfortunately it looks as though lives ending after 2008 will never make it into print).
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, eighth edition (22 vols., 1860). Yes, it's out of date in some respects, and gets fearsomely technical in others, but I value having recourse to its perspectives now and again. Apparently the edition was produced down to a budget, but the set I have, half-bound in red Morocco with marbled page edges, has stood the test of time pretty well: rather better than my Ninth, some few of whose joints are rotting. If a rebind is allowed I'll probably keep that instead.

Well, if we consider all of your collections as sets, then wouldn't it be most efficient to just list some of your names? The top of the list would probably be "The WCarter Set". I might throw in the full leather platinum edition Encyclopaedia Britannica, too; you know, just in case the internet goes down.

>6 treereader:
Not really, the sets are commercially produced and sold as such.

>5 terebinth:
Paul, regarding the Encyclopaedia Britannica, eighth edition (22 vols., 1860). How many encyclopaedia sets so you own. My wife thinks I'm going nuts, having five full sets at home, including 3 Britannicas I'm considering more, as I believe all public rooms deserve them.

>7 LesMiserables:

Just four, now. Eighth and Ninth Britannicas, a facsimile of the three volume First, and the twelve volume Everyman's Encyclopaedia from, if memory serves, 1930. Not so long ago we gave away a disintegrating edition of the Britannica Fourteenth. My wife particularly likes the Everyman not least for its more manageable volume size.

I've finally started fitting out the library in our new flat - new to us, the building dates back to roughly 1680 - so all the remaining books should be emerging in the next few weeks. Probably the First and Eighth will find homes there and the Ninth will live in one of our old bookcases somewhere else. I've often, if only vaguely, thought about acquiring a much more recent edition, I'm just not confident how much use we would make of it. Maybe if space allows once everything's in order here, including at last a bank of very deep shelves to give ready access to the largest, horizontally stored, Folio solander boxes.

>8 terebinth:
The 15th I can vouch for. Keep an eye out for the Collier sets. Well worth a perusal.

>7 LesMiserables:
Well, it was worth a try.

Regarding encyclopaedias...
I've got one copy of the last Britannica, and a couple digital encyclopaedias on DVD from the 90's. I also found a clever little gizmo, a WikiReader, that stores a copy of all of Wikipedia, minus any pictures, videos, or sound, to an SD chip and lets your search it on an inadequate little touch screen.

>10 treereader:

There is a very cheap DVD Rom available from Britannica which I have. I think it cost me 20 quid. I use it extensively at work.

1) Britannica (my 1996 edition would happily suffice)
2) Pevsner
3) Brewer’s Guide to Phrase and Fable (only one volume, but this essential reference work opened my mind to so many hitherto unknown cultural artifacts, I cannot imagine being without it!)

>12 plasticjock:
I keep my Brewer's 19th ed. beside my bed at all times.

1. Time Life Home Repair and Improvement 36 Volume Complete Set. So when the EMP hits I am able to build shelter and services.

2. Oxford 20 Volume Dictionary. So when the EMP hits I can explain to the marauding gangs why their threats on my person and property are at best spoken at a third grade level and words they may use to improve said threats.

3. The Complete Farmers Almanac. So that when the EMP hits I have a better understanding of the natural climate in my area and how to effectively garden/raise animals in my new agrarian society.

>14 Sorion:
Why not just just read Z for Zachariah? :-)

>15 LesMiserables: Funnily enough I'm pretty sure my 21 year old has this book on my kindle along with about 20 other end of the world scenario books. I'll make sure to print them out onto hard copy in addition to my reference library in order to help survive the coming EMP in the most melodramatic fashion possible.

OT from OP, but I was reading one of my EB sets yesrerday, whilst waiting on Mrs. LM to get ready to go out to dinner, and happened to fall upon the 'B' volume. Some curious entries...
- The carrion/burying beatle was a fascinating read, but I'll take their word for its modus operandi, and resist the temptation to seek visual corroborating evidence.
- A nice article on Burke. A salient point made about representation versus delegation.
15 minutes well spent.

>17 LesMiserables: Here's some visuals for you - Ringo is clearly the burying beatle...

>18 plasticjock:
Have you been sampling Lucy in the Sky like diamonds? :-)

>19 LesMiserables: I think the folks who came up with the “Paul is dead and Ringo is the undertaker” conspiracy theory based on the Abbey Road cover probably were...!

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
2. Shakespeare Letterpress
3. Andrew Lang Fairy books

All of which I have..

Interesting exercise. Although it would personally be very difficult for myself to limit my reading only to three reference books I presume a well trained mind would benefit from some restraint.

I would choose:

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 63 volumes.
The Encyclopedia Britannica 11th edition. 29 volumes.
The specially bound copy of the Oxford University Press Shakespeare - part of the Letterpress Shakespeare. 37 volumes

I'm not sure how you define 'reference set' but:

I have long dreamed of owning a complete Grove Dictionary of Music.

(Folio once offered a set at, if I remember correctly, half-price and I nearly went for it.)

And then, if I am allowed, a complete collection of the scores of J. S. Bach and the back catalogue of The Royal Society's Journals (at the very least, please let me have the Philosophiical Transactions).

I'm getting there: it's only taken me four and a half years from purchase, and a 200 mile relocation, to find shelf space for the Oxford DNB. Three of its volumes have yet to surface: the 2001-2004 supplement was in one of the main dictionary boxes in place of volume 10, which I do believe I extracted, just before moving house, in order to read the entry on Adelaide Champneys' father Basil.



The 20 volume OED is immediately beneath the 60 volumes (as it stands) of the DNB, and beneath it, with my trusty old hammer, are the four volumes that have so far emerged of the Britannica Eighth. I think I know where to find most if not all of the others. Very much a work in progress, of course, but only yesterday afternoon those shelves were all in flatpack. The right hand unit is 50 cm. deep, just enough for Temple of Flora, on the bottom shelf, not to have to protrude.

>24 terebinth:
Mecca. One could stand there and petrify.

>24 terebinth:

Paul, I must say, I could spent an entire weekend at your library browsing those books. I do hope one day I will be able to get a house to have space enough to purchase the DNB.

I hope to spend many rewarding hours with the DNB once the room has taken shape. A fairly random selection of books out so far: I expect I'll fit the shelves for the third wall this week, which will be a little more spacious than these on the whole



and will accommodate most of the standard Folio volumes - there are a few on those shelves now but they'll not be staying. The set in brown buckram occupying the second shelf down on the right is something of a reference holding too, a full run of Cyril Connolly's magazine Horizon (1939-1950). The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea disposed of it from their reference library, but it's very welcome in mine.

>14 Sorion: any useful during the pandemic?

>1 LesMiserables: Can you please point me to that original 20 books thread? I failed at finding it.

>29 Hanno: here you go:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/149193

>28 ironjaw: I respectfully decline to comment secure in the knowledge that if I did I would offend many here. :)

>31 Sorion: I'm sorry to hear that, but please assure yourself, we are all friends here, and those that don't ascribe to these cordial rules, you should to which respectfully disengage any correspondence.