Enquire Within upon Everything
Enquire Within upon Everything is a how-to book, akin to a short encyclopedia for domestic life, first published in 1856 by Houlston and Sons of Paternoster Square in London. The editor was Robert Kemp Philp. It was then continuously reprinted in many new and updated editions as additional information and articles were added (and obsolete material sometimes removed). Topics The book was created with the intention of providing encyclopedic information on topics as diverse as etiquette, parlour games, cake recipes, laundry tips, holiday preparation, and first aid: To quote from the editor's introduction: Though not rich in such material, Enquire Within also provided the basics of an English-usage style guide, and also preserved examples of regional dialect usage (which it tended to mock as faulty). Several editions between the 1880s and 1910s provide one of the only surviving records of the rules of the English version of trucco, a somewhat croquet-like form of ground billiards. Though some attempt was made to group related topics, in general the organization was chaotic, and required looking up topics in an index, then finding their numbered sections in the main text. History The early editions of this book contained 3,000 short pithy descriptions and