Encyclopaedic Visions by Richard Yeo How to research a book online History in peril from 'slash and burn' librarians Reference and languages Inadmissible evidence Nigel Rees's Dictionary of Anecdotes contains 'over 1,000' anecdotes. You start out life as a query and end up as an anecdote - if you're lucky. Right this moment, all over the world, all sorts of People are being plucked and jointed and elaborately sauced, ready for a retelling over dinner tonight. Grandparents are old wives' tales.
Parents are reminiscences.
Your afterlife is an anecdote, and vice versa. This is because they already inhabit that deathly world called public life, where image means more than substance. Here, the carefully polished bon mot and high-glossed sally of wit are important signs of social status. It may also be that they are the only professions with enough gall to try and fob off their ramblings on the public, although football managers and newspaper columnists have also started getting in on the act. Anecdotes are made and not given, as Rees's habitual means of attribution confirms.