Professors publish Encyclopedia of New England

CONCORD, N.H. – It may be the only place where candlepin bowling and Paul Revere meet between the covers, and cookies, covered bridges, diners and doughnuts could ever appear as successive entries.

A new encyclopedia, 13 years in the making and out this month, covers the history, politics, art, geography and culture of New England.

The 1,564-page, 8-pound Encyclopedia of New England wrestles with capturing a region that is unique, yet the source of much of what is considered generically American.

“New England is to the rest of the United States what Europe is to New England,” writes New Hampshire poet Donald Hall in his foreword. “New England is empty mills, new inventions, wooden scythes … a snowmachine, biotechnology, and contrails from Logan and Pease Air Force Base streaking the blue air above the cellar hole of a farmer who came north after the Revolution to build his land.”

Editors David Watters and Burt Feintuch, both University of New Hampshire professors, said they wanted the encyclopedia, published by Yale University Press, to reflect venerated icons and tastes of everyday regional America.

Its sports section, for example, includes candlepin bowling – the Yankee variant of “big ball bowling,” – wiffle ball (invented in Fairfield, Conn., in 1952) and contradancing alongside the Boston Marathon, the Harvard-Yale football game, and the head of the Charles Regatta.

“We wanted it to be useful to everyday New Englanders,” said Watters, an English professor and director of the university’s Center for New England Culture. “We have the town common, we’ve got the Kennedy family, we have Revolutionary War heroes, we have great mills, we have New England inventors. … But then we have the very new – we have biotechnology and the computer industry.”

Similar volumes from Yale University Press cover New York City, the American West and Ireland. Watters and Feintuch were inspired by The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1989.

“I wrote for that back in the mid-1980s,” said Feintuch, who teaches folklore and English and directs UNH’s Center for the Humanities. “That’s what got me thinking New England should have something like that.”

The encyclopedia, which costs $65, is organized in 22 sections, from agriculture to folklore to science and medicine. There’s also a catchall section, “images and ideas” focusing on New England symbols – that’s the Boston Post Cane, Julia Child, hermits, L.L. Bean, Plymouth Rock, “Peyton Place” and preppies, to name a few.

Luckily, readers are free to disagree that “New England is the finest example of a cultural hearth in the Western Hemisphere” – an assertion that could ruffle only half of the world.

Sharp-eyed New Englanders more likely will scan the encyclopedia looking for trivia, smile when they recognize a name, or take pleasure when they best the book, such as spotting a typo (such as on page 612, the extra “p” used to spell the name of former New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim Thomson) that only insiders would know.

“We’re really hoping that people can enjoy browsing,” said Watters. “I think you have a focus on the region that you just can’t find elsewhere.”