SHORT NOTICES
- A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols. Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought. By WOLFRAM EBERHARD. Pp. 332, illus. Routledge: London, New York. 1988. £7.95. ISBN: 0-415-00228–I.
- A paperback edition of the 1986 translation of a dictionary first published in Germany in 1983. Some 400 symbols drawn from novels, theatre, erotica, paintings and popular beliefs are analysed. Eberhard's collection will be of use to the modern traveller as much as to the historian.
- Dye-Makers of Great Britain 1856–1976. A History of Chemists, Companies, Products and Changes. By M. R. Fox. Pp. x + 296, illus. Imperial Chemical Industries PLC: Manchester. 1987. £15.
- A meticulously detailed record of Levinstein's, Read Halliday's, Perkin's, Simpson, Maule & Nicholson's, and the dozens of other chemical companies which were amalgamated to form the British Alizarine Company, the British Dyestuffs Corporation, and, finally, the dyestuffs and organic division of Imperial Chemical Industries. Rich in documentary detail, biographies of works' chemists, this well-illustrated and helpfully-indexed volume is a major reference work lovingly compiled. It is sad that the author, Maurice Fox (1915–1982), like his friend and adviser, Wilfred Farrar, did not live to see the results of his handiwork so handsomely realized by his former employer, ICI.