I am reviewing here the fourth edition of the book, published in 1995 and thus at the very end of the era before the internet became so important for reference works. Edited by Laura Standley Berger and published in Detroit, it is a very large hardback - and an expensive one too, having cost over £100 when new. Except for the cover picture - a representation of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland - it is utterly devoid of illustrations, something which gives you an idea as to its target audience.

The entry for each of the hundreds of authors covered proceeds in the same way - first there is a “Who’s Who” style potted biography (though why it matters in most cases which schools they went to is beyond me), then a list of their children’s books (huge in the case of someone like Enid Blyton) and an amusingly dismissive “Publications for Adults” section and finally the critical analysis.
It is this last section that, to me at least, is the most interesting part of the book. In signed articles, editors give their assessment of each writer in considerable detail, can usually be found some interesting nugget of information or other, although they are not particularly rich in the type of near-trivia that these days dot the electronic pages of Wikipedia and its friends.

I said earlier that I was not altogether happy with the choice of authors covered. As an example, no place has been found for Richard Adams, which seems bizarre considering that Watership Down has sold so many copies, including in the United States from where this book hails. However, it is still a worthwhile publication for what it does cover. It’s rather a shame, I think, that paper reference works on this scale are now almost an endangered species.

Rating: 7