After a Long While, Unboxing Continues: Childhood Encyclopedias, Edward Said, and Tanpınar

After a long hiatus, I am back with the unboxing. I finally have time and the opportunity to bring some boxes from my father’s storage place.

Sometime in the late 1980s

It should be the summer I finished the third year in primary school. As throughout the primary school summers, we were staying in my mother’s village in Bayburt. That summer was the summer of “circumcision” for me. My elder uncle, who is not always on good terms with my father, bought me this one-volume encyclopedia:

I remember that my recovery from circumcision lasted longer. At that time, I eagerly read it. I remember how I loved to read this encyclopedia. It was translated and published in 1984. I found the original:

• Full title: “All Colour Book of Science Facts: Our Earth, Plants and Animals, the Human Body, Science and Technology”

• Publisher: Marshall Cavendish, London — published 1980

• ISBN: 0856858315 / 9780856858314

• Extent: 221 pages, colour illustrations throughout, includes index

• Associated names listed on the record: Mark Lambert (b. 1946) and Linda Moore, alongside Keith Lye as you noted — it was a multi-contributor children’s science reference covering earth science, biology, the human body, and technology/science topics

The book is digitized and viewable on the Internet Archive.

Late 1980s, Early 1990s

Speaking of encyclopedias, one of the most joyful moments in my childhood was following weekly installments of an encyclopedia. I found more volumes of two encyclopedias I remember benefiting from:

Görsel Okul Ansiklopedisi; I remember it vividly, and Bilim ve Teknik Ansiklopedisi, less vividly.

Görsel Okul Ansiklopedisi was a Turkish translation and/or licensed adaptation of an Italian educational encyclopedia originally copyrighted in 1975 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore of Milan. Its Turkish edition was published by Görsel Yayınlar in 1982, with a second edition in 1983. The original contributors to the science volume included Alfredo Porati, Roberto Favilla, Massimo Gori, Sergio Tagliavini, Cesare Lamera, Luigi Vacchi, and Maria Teresa Merella.

Görsel Bilim ve Teknik Ansiklopedisi (Visual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology) was a Turkish-language illustrated reference work published by Görsel Yayınlar under licence from Marshall Cavendish Ltd. of London. The original copyright is dated 1982; the Turkish edition appeared in 1983–84 and was reissued in Istanbul in 1986.

The encyclopedia was promoted as “the first encyclopedia prepared with computers.” This phrase reflected not merely the use of computers in production but an editorial ambition: information was organised through a dense system of thematic links and cross-references. Its visual “Science and Technology Key” mapped relationships among broad areas such as life, Earth, space, energy, machines, technology, and behaviour.

The work is therefore significant both as a popular science reference source and as an example of the technological imagination of Turkish encyclopedia publishing in the 1980s. It illustrates how an internationally produced reference format was translated, licensed, designed, and distributed for a Turkish readership through Görsel Yayınlar and Hürriyet Holding.

1994-1999

Here are two other books out of the last box: A translation of Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual. I remember reading it on the South campus, Boğaziçi University, near the engineering building where the sociology department was previously located.

And here is a copy of Tanpınar’s Huzur. I remember reading it in a train restaurant in the middle of the steppes between Konya and Kütahya. My friend, Veli, and I were traveling around with a tight budget, and Tanpınar’s novel definitely provided me with peace of mind.