Aggravating ladies

The unwise seem to be of opinion that any fool can index, but we have already seen that the wise think differently.—Wheatley’s What is an index? 1879, p. 41.

The beginning of every book should be a table of contents, or an analytical table, or both, and the end a good index.

I can scarcely over estimate the importance which I attach to the index. A book may almost as well be unwritten, as be without an index.

The publications by “a lady,” are exceedingly deficient in indexes. It is amazing that authors who must have felt the want of indexes in the works of others should publish their own without such helps.

It would occupy too much space to give all the opinions I have collected of different authors entreating others never to publish a book without an index. Allibone never loses an opportunity, in his Dictionary of English Literature, of impressing upon his readers the importance of indexes. See more particularly an article of absorbing interest under the name of Samuel Ayscough of the British Museum, celebrated for his most useful indexes to Shakespeare, to that grand storehouse of information “The Gentleman’s Magazine” (obit. 1868), to “the Monthly Review,” and other works. Of such importance indeed does Allibone consider indexes, that, not content with insisting on them throughout his three ponderous volumes, he, on the very last page, gives a note “Concerning Indexes.” Often a good index obtains for a book a prominent position it might not otherwise obtain; as, for example, Godfrey Higgins’s “Anacalypsis,” which is said to be in the reading room of the British Museum, from its containing^[29] “thousands of statements cited from all quarters, and very well indexed.” What would Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica be without its two volumes of index to two volumes of authors. Bibliographical and biographical works beyond everything require the most minute indexes.

Formerly I was in love with the scientific look of a number of indexes, but I am now convinced that two heads are not better than one in this case and that one index is more useful than two. A person who consults an index wants to find something as quickly as possible, if there is only one index he cannot consult the wrong one first.

It has been suggested by Prof. De Morgan that historians by having no indexes, think to oblige their readers to go through their works from beginning to end. The contrary being the result.

If book buyers made a rule of not buying a book without an index, authors and publishers would then supply that want.

Beware, however, of snares, for such there are in this as in all else, big books with lean, lanky, and starved indexes.