Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Facilography

This is probably the best book title I have ever heard - and no, this is not made up, the book in question really does exist. Really:

Facilography, or, A system of easy, expeditious writing : entirely new, applicable to all languages, ancient and modern, in characters completely adapted to conciseness and currency in combination, expressing every word without the omission of a single letter, in half the space and in one third the time required for common running hand, comprised and rendered attainable in six lessons, calculated to facilitate the accounts, correspondence and memorandums of the merchant and man of business, where both accuracy and dispatch are indispensibly requisite, and to expedite the preparations in manuscript, and other exertions of the man of letters. : To which is added, an appendix, shewing by an easy and comprehensive method, how the same is applicable as a universal system of stenography, fully demonstrating the most superior elegance, lineality, legibility, and dispatch, in rules peculiarly and admirably suited, to free from every ambiguity this important science, to professional gentlemen, students at law, divinity, &c. to reporters and every person in the habit of making notes for memorandums or business, this stenography will be found highly deserving of preference for its complete adaptation to follow the most rapid speaker. The whole treatise as a system of expeditious and short writing, combining information not to be found in any other work now extant. Illustrated by numerous examples, on nine elegantly engraved copperplates. Dedicated to the Honourable Sir William Garrow, His Majesty's Attorney General
/ by Thomas Oxley, author of several fugitive pieces, essays, &c. moral and philosophical; and Master of a mathematical and commercial academy. 1816.

You just have to love it, don't you?

3 comments:

Peter Ards said...

would be nice to see an example of this. Book is now out of print Can't find any online examples either.
Sounds great
Thanks
Peter

Phil Paine said...

I have seen a copy of this book:

The works of Homer, the celebrated Grecian poet, including new and complete editions of the Iliad, and the Odyssey, those very celebrated and universally-admited Epic or Heroic Poems in twenty four Books-Being composed on the Subject of the memorable Siege of Troy-Interspersed with the most beautiful Allegories, and containing a most sublime Description of the Battles between the Greeks and Trojans, during a Ten Years Siege, in which the Great and Valiant Achilles, the principal Hero of the War, after his Reconciliation with Agamemnon, slew Hector with his own Hand, and afterwards dragged the Corpse at his Chariot Wheels round the Walls of Troy, comprizing a great Variety of valuable and useful Maxims on Military Discipline, Stratagem, Exploits in Civil Affairs, Politics, Virtue, Resolution, Prudence, Oeconomy, and, in short, respecting all the various Offices and Duties of Human Life and affording the most important, agreeable, and entertaining Instruction, conveyed in the most lively Manner, to Mankind in general, and containing, among a Variety of other useful and entertaining Particulars, a most magnificent and delightful Description of the Voyages and Adventures of the wise and venerable Ulysses, King of Ithaca, in Greece, and one of the Princes who conducted the Siege of Troy, during his Absence for Twenty Years from his Queen Penelope, exhibiting not only a just Picture of the Ancient Grecians, but a beautiful System of Morality, Wisdom, Fortitude, Perseverance, Moderation and Temperance, instructive to all Degrees of Men, and filled with striking Images, Similies, Examples, and Precepts of Civil and Domestic Life, including also that other excellent Piece of Homer, entitled The battle of the frogs and mice, a very beautiful, ingenious, satyrical, and interesting Production, replete with Wit, Humour, and Entertainment, allegorically describing the Valour and Intrepidity of those sagacious Animals, carefully translated from the original Greek.

Not quite as grand as your example, but quite good, don't you think?

Ola Wikander said...

Oh, just lovely! Thanks!