About the Book :
A Gazetteer is the end-product of
back-breaking search for nuggets of information, aggregating as well as
arranging them in a prescribed order so as to be used both as a necessary tool
of modern administration and for further advancement of knowledge. The first
edition of Lippincott Gazetteer was published in the year 1855. The edition that
has been re-published as the present volume pertains to 1906 and claims to
contain the most recent and authentic information respecting the countries,
cities, towns, resorts, islands, rivers, mountains, seas lakes, etc., in every
portion of the globe. It highlights the fact that dead matter has been squeezed
out to a considerable extent and replaced by new information that had been
gathered in the half century that had passed since the publication of first
edition. The Gazetteer made available for the first time to the world a view of
the Planet Earth as presented by the thick brush of the mural painter. Only the
details had to be filled in by explorers in later years. It may also be noted
that this publication is a pronouncing gazetteer. Very much more elaborate
systems of depicting pronunciation have been evolved since then. But for those
who are not students of phonetics and are not interested in finer nuances, the
system evolved by Joseph Thomas, the author of Lippincott Dictionary of
Biography and Mythology, and as modified by the Heilprins for purposes of this
edition appears to be quite adequate.
About Author :
Angelo Heilprin (March 31,
1853, at Sátoralja-Ujhely, Hungary 1907) was an American naturalist, geologist,
and traveler; son of Michael Heilprin, a scholar of Polish origin. From 1876 to
1878 he continued his studies at the Royal School of Mines, London; at the
Imperial Geological Institution of Vienna, and at Florence and Geneva,
subsequently returning to the U.S. He was professor of invertebrate paleontology
and of geology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia (1880-1900);
curator in charge of the museum of that institution (1883-1892); professor of
geology at the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia (1885-1890); and
was the first president of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, serving for
seven years. Heilprin also demonstrated his ability as an artist, and in 1880
exhibited Autumns First Whisper at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and
Forest Exiles at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1883.
