Ephemera enshrined.(Review)

Ephemera is the plural form of the Greek word ephemeron (epi = on, about, round; hemera = day). Literally it refers to something that lasts through the day, which is the case with some winged insects." The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, from which these words are quoted, was compiled in large part by Maurice Rickards, who died several years ago at the age of seventy-nine. It was completed by Michael Twyman, who had worked with Rickards during his lifetime. Twyman hopes that the encyclopedia will be expanded in future by others. The one-day fly has found tenacious champions.

Twyman justifies this scholarly attention to the evanescent by citing Rickards's conviction that "ephemera can bring the past to life more vividily and often with greater particularity than many other forms of documentation." But what to include? "Why broom labels are covered, but garden spade and fork labels are not; or why fruit wrappers find a place, whereas the equally collectable sugar wrapper does not. The only riposte to any such criticisms is to point to the first editions of one-man encyclopedias in other fields."

The seal of approval was the acceptance of the manuscript for publication by the British Library in 1998, the year Rickards died. The Centre for Ephemera Studies at the University of Reading, England, which was established by both authors, was much involved in the meticulous checking of every fact and spelling that could be verified. The list of those who supplied information on an unimaginable variety of topics runs to two pages of tiny type. Denis Vendervelde, for example, helped with "disinfected mail." The entry for this oddity reveals that in times of plague and other epidemics letters were perforated with "spike-headed 'rastel' tongs, needles, or knives"; immersed or sprinkled with vinegar or sea water; or heated and fumigated. They were then stamped or labeled to show what had been done. Illustrated is a disinfected letter of 1854 from Naples that is stamped "Netta dentro e fuori" (clean inside and out). Its measurements are given both in millimeters and inches. After listing the terms used to signif y disinfection in the various European languages, the entry relates that in the early eighteenth century the British demanded health declarations under oath from the masters of incoming ships. "A Bible, kept for the purpose, was handed from shore to ship at the end of a boathook for the declaration. It was afterwards dragged through sea water to purify it." Later the plague and cholera were traced to rat fleas and polluted drinking water, respectively, and the entry concludes: "The measures taken to disinfect mail are now seen not merely as inadequate but unnecessary." Nonetheless, among the bibliographical references for this entry is a publication called Pratique: Quarterly Newsletter of The Disinfected Mail Study Circle, inaugurated in London in 1974.

Ephemera may be short lived but it must survive or there could be no encyclopedia. Thus a great many of the entries concern printed matter, from "Aerial leaflet" to "'Zine." The first concerns "leaflets dropped from the air, in peace as well as in war, [which] have for the most part carried hard-line messages of persuasion or propaganda." The three-column entry proceeds from souvenir messages dropped by balloonists in the 1830s ...