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| An Irish Esperantist in Parliament |
The Times, oddly enough gets to the size of the book, and so for anyone not familiar with book sizes, the spine height of Esperanto, the International Language, the Student’s Complete Text Book is 17.5 cm, or as the New York Times put it, “a 16mo of 176 pages.” I’m familiar with the various book sizes, but tended to think of sextodecimos as being smaller than they actually are (and clearly I’ve been thinking of the next size down, octodecimo). In other words, it’s a small hardback, about the size of a paperback book. Easy to carry about in pocket or purse for use while on the train or while waiting in lines (“on lines” if you’re a New Yorker, or (as this is a British book) in queues).
Now the word “16mo” in the third line of the New York Times review holds no mystery as to its meaning, only as to why the Times decided to describe the book this way, instead of calling it “a small book of 176 pages.” Esperanto texts do tend to be short. Seven years after J. C. O’Connor, Ivy Kellerman Reed called her book A Complete Grammar of Esperanto. It is just a little taller than O’Connor’s book, so technically an octavo (or 8mo), but we’re talking about a half centimeter taller, and it comprises 334 pages. Not a huge book, but it is complete. An introductory text book in French or German would run to far many more pages and still leave plenty of grammar for the next volume.
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