Indexers and Indexes in Fact & Fiction

Contents: Foreword / A. S. Byatt -- 'Life: not an index' -- I. Indexes in Fact -- Pre-19th century -- 1. The first printed index: St. Augustine, De arte praedicandi (1427) -- 2. Quaintness is all: Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) -- 3. Severest penalties incurred: William Prynne, Histrio-Mastix (1633) -- 4. Questionable: Athenian Gazette (1691-97) -- 5. One-man onslaught: Charles Boyle (1698) -- 6. Tory history -- Whig indexer: Laurence Echard, History of England (1718) -- 7. Can it be so? William Hawkins, A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown (1724) -- 8. All in the family: Roger North, The Lives of the Norths (1742-44) -- 9. For the fair sex: Lady's Magazine (1742/1776) -- 10. Nature notes with footnote: Gilbert White, History of Selborne (1789) 19th century -- 11. Blackmail: Harriette Wilson, Memoirs (1831) -- 12. Thinking it over: Sir Thomas Browne, The Works of (1835) -- 13. Awful fates of authors: Isaac D'Israeli, Calamities of Authors (1840) -- 14. Robust pamphleteering: Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850) -- 15. Some have greatness thrust upon them: Lawbook -- 16. Enhancing the text: John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (1871-72) -- 17. Prominence of inessentials: The Times index (1868) -- 18. Erotic pedanty -- or pedantic eroticism? Henry Ashbee, Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877) -- 19. Racy and racist: James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers (1886) -- 20. Domestic plus moral guidance: Enquire Within Upon Everything (1888) -- 21. Index of an opium-eater: Thomas de Quincey, Collected Writings (1896-97) 20th century -- 22. Vainglorious introduction: James Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1900) -- 23. Blanket pulping: Hilaire Belloc, Caliban's Guide to Letters (1903) -- 24. Mythical indexing: Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1922) -- 25. You are old, Father William ... A. Lapthorn Smith, How to be Useful and Happy from Sixty to Ninety (1922) -- 26. Holiday exuberance: Norman Douglas, Together (1923) -- 27. The index belligerent: Lloyd George, War Memoirs (1938) -- 28. Shavian provocativeness: George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces (1934) -- 29. What indexes! Independent indexing principles: A. P. Herbert, What a Word (1935); Independent Member (1952); The Thames (1966); Sundials -- Old and New (1967) -- 30. A discordant index: Donald Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis (1935-39) -- 31. Indexmanship: Stephen Potter, Gamesmanship (1947) -- 32. Tale-telling: James Boswell, London Journal (1950) -- 33. With tongue in (both) cheeks: G. V. Carey, Making an Index (1951) -- 34. Droit de fille: Textbook of Pediatrics (1959) -- 35. Let me help: W. E. Tate, The English Village Community and the Enclosure Movements (1967) -- 36. Sequential subheadings: Desmond Ryan, The Fenian Chief: A Biography of James Stephens (1967) -- 37. The hit direct: Bernard Levin, The Pendulum Years (1970) -- 38. Indigestible index: Magnus Pyke, Man and Food (1970) -- 39. The Frank Muir index: The Frank Muir Book: An Irreverent Companion to Social History (1976) -- 40. Prejudicial introduction: Peter Schickele, The Definitive Biography of P. D. Q. Bach (1976) -- 41. Forbearance: Hugh Vickers, Great Operatic Disasters (1979) -- 42. Literally food for thought? Equality by Keith Joseph and Jonathan Sumption (1979) -- 43. Egoism rampant: Joseph Bonnano, A Man of Honour (1983) -- 44. Kiss and have it told: Pepys's Diary (1983 edition) -- 45. It didn't work out that way ... Cerf and Navasky, The Experts Speak (1984) -- 46. Monstrous entry: Guide to Britain's Nature Reserves (1984) -- 47. Conductor's contempt: Hunter Davies, The Good Guide to the Lakes (1986) -- 48. The terminology of the shrew: Dale Spender, Scribbling Sisters (1986) -- 49. Cramming it onto a page: Patrick Barlow, All the World's a Globe, or from Lemur to Cosmonaut: Desmond Olivier Dingle's Concise History of the Human Race (1987) -- 50. Guess who? A. Summers and S. Dorril, Honeytrap: The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward (1987) -- 51. Political affiliation no secret: Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor: The Reagan Years (1989) -- 52. Nudge, nudge: Julian Barnes, Letters from London 1990-1995 (1995) -- 53. No fury like it: Margaret Cook, A Slight and Delicate Creature (1999) -- 54. Inveighing against the computer: Clifford Stoll, High Tech Heretic (1999) 21st century -- 55. Invecticon: Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective (2000) -- 56. Indexer manque: Bangkok Post Week in Review (2000) -- 57. Look, you: Frewin Poffley, Greek Island Hopping (2001) II. Fiction and Verse with Indexes -- 1. 18th-century vindictive: Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728) -- 2. 'The bliss of excessive fondness': Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1755) -- 3. Hymnal half-lines (1873) -- 4. Victorian whimsicality: Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno (1889/1893) -- 5. Transindexuality: Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) -- 6. Verse, bad -- index, good: D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee, The Stuffed Owl (1930) -- 7. Misleading indexes: A. P. Herbert, More Misleading Cases et alia (1927-35) -- 8. A clerihindex?: The Complete Cleribews of E. Cleribew Bentley (1951/1983) -- 9. Editorial usurpation: Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962) -- 10. Surreal complexity: Georges Perec, Life: a User's Manual: Fictions (1970) -- 11. First and last lines: Ogden Nash, Selected Poems (1975) -- 12. The subject elusive: anti-index: Malcolm Bradbury, My Strange Quest for Mensonge (1987) -- 13. Para-index: Lucy Ellmann, Sweet Desserts (1988) -- 14. Narrative by index: J. G. Ballard, War Fever (1990) -- III. Indexes in Fiction -- 1. Official strictures: Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington (1862) -- 2. Indexer brought down by alcoholism: Anthony Trollope, 'The Spotted Dog' (1870) -- 3. Indexing in Baker Street: Conan Doyle, stories of Sherlock Holmes -- 4. Absorption and love: Angela Thirkell, Northbridge Rectory (1941); County Chronicle (1950) -- 5. Deer-stalkers and data banks: indexers and indexes in crime fiction -- 6. Ladies at work: Barbara Pym, Excellent Women (1952); Jane and Prudence (1953); No Fond Return of Love (1961); An Unsuitable Attachment (1982) -- 7. A hundred million entries: Bertrand Russell, 'The Theologian's Nightmare' (1954) -- 8. A shameless exhibition: Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle (1963) -- 9. If unpublished, burn: Georges Perec, Life: a User's Manual: Fictions (1970) -- 10. Infatuation with a swarming index: Jane Langton, The Memorial Hall Murder (1974) -- 11. Eccentric, shabby and normally drunk: C. Northcote Parkinson, Jeeves: a Gentleman's Personal Gentleman (1979) -- 12. Archives of oblivion: Graham Swift, Shuttlecock (1982) -- 13. Lively indexers: Penelope Lively, Perfect Happiness (1983) -- 14. A life-time's task: Anita Brookner, Lewis Percy (1989) -- 15. Lady obstructionist: A. S. Byatt, Possession (1990) -- 16. More than one needs to know: Paul Bailey, Kitty and Virgil (1998) -- 17. Life is just an index: Deborah Moggach, 'How to Divorce Your Son' (2000).