Bartlett, John

Bartlett, John, 1820–1905, American compiler and publisher, b. Plymouth, Mass. While he worked in his university book store in Cambridge, he compiled the invaluable Familiar Quotations (1855), which ran through nine editions in his lifetime and has been revised and enlarged several times since. Bartlett joined the publishing firm of Little, Brown & Company in 1863 and in 1878 became senior partner. His Shakespeare concordance (1894) is still a standard work.

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Bartlett, John

John Bartlett

(credit: Courtesy of Little, Brown and Co.)

(born June 14, 1820, Plymouth, Mass., U.S.—died Dec. 3, 1905, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. bookseller and editor. Bartlett was an employee and then owner of the Harvard University Bookstore. In 1855 he published the work for which he is best known, Familiar Quotations, based largely on a notebook he kept for his customers. It was greatly expanded in later editions; the 17th edition appeared in 2002. He also wrote a complete concordance to Shakespeare's dramatic works and poems (1894), outstanding for the number and fullness of its citations.

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Bartlett, John (1820–1905) lexicographer; born in Plymouth, Mass. The self-educated Bartlett began his publishing career as a bookseller in Cambridge, Mass. His Familiar Quotations, which included American, along with the more traditional British and Biblical selections, was first published in 1855; it continues to this day in revised editions, and "Look it up in Bartlett! " is now as famous as many of its contents. He joined Little, Brown and Co. publishers in 1863. He prepared the second American edition of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler and, in 1894, he and his wife compiled Phrases and Passages in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare.