THE HOME STRETCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 12

THE HOME STRETCH

THE OXFORD JUNIOR ENCYCLOPAEDIA, Volume XI-The Home; general editors, Laura E. Salt and Robert Sinclair; Clarendon Press, Oxford, Geoffrey Cumberlege, London, English price 30/-.

(Reviewed by

J.

M.

S. BEETON (who should be living at this hour) would have enjoyed Volume XI of the Junior Encyclopaedia. Since she had a lively appreciation of the practical value of the expert she would have approved the coalition of talents which is to be found in the list of contributors. She would have applauded the directness and cogency of their writing, and the enthusiasm which keeps breaking through, as well as the quantity and quality of the illustrations. It is probable, too, that she would have been pleased to find herself remembered here -even if only in incidental references -after failing to make the grade in Great Lives (Volume V). It would probably not have occurred to her to suggest that this was the most readable book on the arts and crafts of the home to appear since her own time -and perhaps that is a large claim to make for it; but the Junior Encyclopaedia, since the appearance of the first

volume eight years ago, has been a source of temptation to the reviewer. It invites enthusiasm. There have been, of course, wordier, bulkier, more detailed "home encyclopaedias" for the housewife; there has certainly not been another more enjoyable for its own sake than this one volume-or more useful to those who may hope to be housewives themselves some day. If a general criticism is to be made, it might be that the volume ranges too widely rather than that it suffers from arbitrary restriction in its scope. Disease, for example, may well have its

germ in the home, but it is a long time since surgery was practised there, except in emergencies. Orthopaedics can be related directly to family life, even etymologically, but one can scarcely say the same for osteopathy; and a similar distinction might be made between allergies and anaesthesia. It is not denied that the topics are included by a quite logical extension from purely domestic subjects, but it is an extension which carries one

from the home to the larger social organism. The complexities of modern surgery do not .touch the home more closely than the industrial processing of foodstuffs, but whereas the latter are covered elsewhere (Farming and Fisheries or Industry and Commerce, Vols. VI and VII) there is no specific volume for health. Perhaps, too, a few topics have found their way into this present volume (the last of the projected 12 to be published) through the discovery of minor omissions earlier in the undertaking. Tattooing, for example, which is something more than personal adornment, would have been more appropriately included in Volume I. It is also notice-able-and, of course, natural-that the cross-references in later volumes are more numerous, The Encyclopaedia as

a whole integrates better backwards. This will, however, be revised in time and the promised Index Volume will do much to adjust this imbalance. It should be of some interest to New Zealanders (and perhaps a little parochial pride) that this volume has been edited by a New Zealander, Winifred Davin-wife of Dan Davin, of the Oxford Press-and that in the important sections dealing with food and cooking the principal contri-

butor is apparently another New Zealander: Elizabeth Mason, B.Sc. (N.Z.), B.A. (Cantab,). The food and cookery sections show a lively style ("The British national dish is said’ to be ‘the roast beef of Old England’; but in reality it is fish and chips from the fish and chips shop"), and the words New Zealand seem to jump from the page in all sorts of places. Bluff oysters get a mention, and toheroa soup, snapper, hapuka, _whitebait and kumaras. It ‘is recorded that we use dish-washing machines more than they do in the United Kingdom (or some of us do), and apparently some mute inglorious Escoffier in the Daisy Chain invented date-scones and applescone. There is, however, no mention of the pioneering work of Sir Truby King in the sections dealing with family welfare, and this is an omission that should be repaired.