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.
