Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, often simply called Bartlett’s, is an American reference work that is the longest-lived and most widely distributed collection of quotations. The book was first issued in 1855.

The book arranges its entries by author, rather than by subject, as many other quotation collections, and enters the authors chronologically by date of birth rather than alphabetically. The book contains a thorough keyword index and details the source of each quotation.

This ninth edition, published in 1905, is the last one edited by Bartlett. It lists over 2000 authors in 12000 pages, and has a 300-page index. Cross references and footnotes make it easy to trace a quoted quotation back to its original source.

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (9th Edition)
A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature
• Compiler/Editor: John Bartlett
Text of the 1903 version published by Little, Brown & Company