The New Millennium Encyclopaedia Edited by Everard Raven

Thanks to Britannica.com

Title: The New Millennium Encyclopaedia

Author: Edited by Everard Raven with the Assistance of Many Scholars and Men of Science 

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Appleby’s End by Michael Innes

Some years ago I read several Inspector Appleby books by Michael Innes. I can’t remember if I got them from a charity shop or a book stall at a fete: they were definitely second hand. At any rate, because there are so many books in this series (36 I think), I expected them to be readable and interesting. And they’re not. 

And it isn’t just me. Looking around online I have found a load of people writing about how they had obviously expected a good detective story, but like me, had found themselves with a weird, talky, over complicated plot, possibly meant to be humorous but not funny at all, with a murder mystery squeezed in at the edges. How did so many of these books get published we ask ourselves?

Well, we can’t know. Anyway, as I recall, these books are full of characters writing improbable books but I can’t check my old paperbacks because they went straight back to the nearest charity shop in the hope that somebody else might enjoy them. 

However, I can reveal that in Appleby’s End (which turns out to be a railway station), Detective Inspector John Appleby catches an antiquated train where he meets an elderly traveler with a suitcase full of books. The traveller, Everard Raven, Barrister-at-law, is compiling The New Millennium Encyclopaedia and carries his research books around with him. 

The Encyclopaedia is being printed in fortnightly instalments, with ‘Patagonia to Potato’ due to hit the newsstands next Thursday. Because of this method of printing Mr Raven is worried he may have so much information about Railways (because if you leave out too much there will be complaints), that he thinks he will have to leave out Ruritania altogether.

When he has finished the Encyclopaedia, Mr Raven has plans for a Dictionary: The Revised and Enlarged Resurrection. Which seems an odd name for a dictionary.

I got this information from a free online sample of a kindle version of Appleby’s End. This is the book where Appleby meets his wife.

Thanks to Smithsonian Magazine