Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia

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Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia is a reference work devoted to world literature. The first volume, edited by Pulitzer Prize-winner William Rose Benét, appeared in 1948. It was based on Ebenezer Brewer's classic Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and offered a compendium of curious information (such as "Aani. In Egyptian mythology, the dog-headed ape sacred to the god Thoth"). The second edition appeared in 1965, and added illustrations.

More widely available is the third edition, published in 1987. While this edition no longer mentions such arcane figures as Aani, it offers substantial background on a wide variety of literary figures. Jeppe Aakjaer, for instance, appears as a novelist who "was intensely concerned with social misery and the need for reform," though he is "best known" for his "lyric poetry, in which he celebrates the courage of the peasants and the beauties of his native Jutland."

In 1996, the fourth and to date most recent edition of this useful reference work appeared.