The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium
By Philip Dodd
(Gotham, Hardcover, 9781592403479, 272pp.)
Publication Date: January 2008
Other Editions of This Title: eBook
Categories: Etymology
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What's in a name? For Philip Dodd, this question led to an international hunt for the best stories of eponymous heroes-- an extraordinarily diverse group of people with just one thing in common: by chance or deliberately, they have left their names deeply embedded in the language and consciousness of future generations.
A few, such as instrument-maker Adolphe Sax, set out to achieve immortality. A handful - Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, for example - positively shunned the prospect. But the majority, like Joseph P. Frisbie or Ernst Gräfenberg (the G in G- spot), simply had no idea that some strange quirk of their lives, work, or personalities would catapult them to fame, or that one day their family name would become a household word.
Tracing their varied paths to glory has taken Philip Dodd on a worldwide quest. He has voyaged to the desolate Matagorda peninsula on the Gulf Coast of Texas to find out the truth about the notorious cattle rancher Samuel Maverick. He has been to Happy Valley, California, to find Roy Jacuzzi, alive and well and still bubbling with ideas. He has followed the story of Joseph P. Frisbie from a former pie factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to the headquarters of Wham-O, trying the fledgling sport of `Frisbie golf' and taking home a rather strange and macabre memento... And, of course, he has ventured to the St Ann's River in Trinidad to see for himself the spot where Robert Lechmere Guppy, naturalist extraordinaire, first collected a certain small freshwater fish. His discoveries breathe life back into words that we too readily take for granted.
Philip Dodd's globetrotting, personal approach brings these idiosyncratic, occasionally bizarre stories to vivid life-- armchair travel at its best. In this marvelous tribute to the forgotten people who changed our language, we learn that the prospect of immortality is only a fluke away. In an age of instant 15-minute celebrity, that's a reassuring thought.
Philip Dodd developed a love of words and language as the son of dedicated crossword solvers, while studying French and Spanish at Jesus College, Oxford, and in a career as a book publisher and editor. His books include The Book Of Cities (Pavilion, with Ben Donald), a tour d'horizon of the world's most intriguing metropolises, and Musical Instruments (HarperCollins), one of the Collins Gem series. He has also worked with the Rolling Stones, interviewing them for their 2003 autobiography According To The Rolling Stones, and with Nick Mason on his memoir Inside Out: A Personal History Of Pink Floyd, and he is the editor of Genesis: Chapter & Verse.
?Unstintingly and amusingly disrespectful?
?Sunday Times (London)
?A deft blend of substance and style?
?Rolling Stone
?Hard to beat when it comes to an infectious sense of excitement?
?Daily Mail (London)
?Phil is the Swiss Army Knife of writers. And I don?t mean the pathetic key ring one, I mean the really good one that can do anything!?
?Nick Mason, Pink Floyd
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