Edward Searl

In May, 2007 I completed a five-book series of quote collections for Skinner House Books. Several years ago Skinner House asked me to edit a single volume of quotes around the four great life passages: birth, coming-of-age, marriage, and death. This work would have updated a classic Beacon Press quote book of the 1960s, Great Occasions by Carl Seaburg, which Skinner House had acquired.

After reviewing the first batch of materials, Skinner House decided to dedicate a single book to each of the four rites of passage, all with the phrase of “a treasury of poems, quotations, and readings” in the title. I scoured libraries, bookstores, and the Internet for suitable materials to fit into my vision of the evolution and transformation of a typical human life from birth to death. This project was possible thanks to the remarkable resources of the World Wide Web.

It was clear from the beginning: I was striving to express the human condition and its meaning by drawing from the wisdom of the ages, but with the focused understandings of this new day. Over the span of three years, I completed the original project and a fifth quote book, In Praise of Animals. The latter fits into the original project by placing humankind into the overarching scheme of Nature and relationships with other species.

The softcover books are unified in design and size (5 ½ x 6 ½). Eleanor Rubin, a Massachusetts artist, provided the cover art—watercolors that insinuate the volumes’ themes. The results are handsome and friendly books.

Ed Searl
July 2007