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.

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. 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 find their numbered sections in the main text.

History

The early editions of this book contained 3,000 short pithy descriptions and was one of a set of 20 books.
The book was a popular addition to the Victorian home. By 1862, the book was sold 196,000 times; by the 89th edition, some 1,180,000 copies had been published. With the release of the 113th edition, this number had risen to over 1,500,000 and by 1976 was in its 126th edition. Modernised versions were still in print as late as 1994. Unauthorized reproductions of the first and some subsequent editions, without credit to the original editor and publisher, were made in United States by the New York publisher Garret, Dick & Fitzgerald, under the title Inquire Within for Anything You Want to Know. Later official editions were published by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton Kent & Co., also of London.
Agatha Christie used Enquire Within upon Everything as an important clue in the Hercule Poirot detective novel, Hallowe'en Party.
Tim Berners-Lee named his precursor of the World Wide Web, ENQUIRE, after this work in 1980. A Forbes article quoted Berners-Lee as saying: