Umpteens

Christopher Ricks

  • Bloomsbury Dictionary of Dedications edited by Adrian Room
    Bloomsbury, 354 pp, £17.99, September 1990, ISBN 0 7475 0521 7
  • Unauthorised Versions: Poems and their Parodies edited by Kenneth Baker
    Faber, 446 pp, £14.99, September 1990, ISBN 0 571 14122 6
  • The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse edited by Tom Paulin
    Faber, 407 pp, £14.99, November 1990, ISBN 0 571 14470 5

Adrian Room has garnered umpteen dedications, and some of them are of interest, but what is the point of unrolling them alphabetically as something purporting to be a dictionary? Abbott opens, and Zangwill closes, yet the book is not a work of reference. It is an anthology. A lazy piece of work, or of relaxation, and not just because its compiler has declined the effort of an imaginative ordering and has instead fallen back on A to zzzz.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions