Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A Book 24 Years Ahead of Its Time

Mad Men's Lane Pryce at his desk with the three-volume OED in the background
Any Mad Men fans out there? Did anyone else notice the Compact Oxford English Dictionary prominently featured on the credenza of the new character, British overloard Lane Pryce?

Two-volume OEDI did. Seeing it had three volumes, I assumed it was older and more British than the two-volume Book of the Month club version I bought as a teenager (shown at right).

But no! The Visual Thesaurus reports that the three-volume set is an utter anachronism -- there was no compact edition until 1971 (the one I have, I assume), and the three volume set is from 1987!

(Via the wonderful Twitter phenomenon thatwhichmatter -- tweeting a half-dozen times a day on the finer points of grammar.)

1 comment:

elena said...

I thought that was a poorly chosen prop, and wondered, too, about the 3rd volume. Thanks for sleuthing!