Schott's Miscellanies
Encyclopedia
Ben Schott
Ben Schott is a British writer, photographer, and author of the "Schott's Miscellanies" and "Schott's Almanac" series.- Early life & university :...
. They consist of a collection of trivia
Trivia
The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...
generally centred on the culture of the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent the rest of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
). The first book was published in 2002 by Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Bloomsbury Publishing plc is an independent, London-based publishing house known for literary novels. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. The company's growth over the past decade is primarily attributable to the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. Bloomsbury was named Publisher of...
to widespread acclaim. The books are as follows: Schott's Original Miscellany, Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany, Schott's Sporting, Gaming & Idling Miscellany and Schott's Quintessential Miscellany. Together the first three books have sold over two million copies, and Schott's Original Miscellany has been translated into more than 13 languages (including Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
). Schott also compiled the annual Schott's Almanac
Schott's Almanac
Schott's Almanac was a best-selling UK reference book, published annually in the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2010. The book was compiled by Ben Schott and published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc....
, a modern take on the traditional almanac
Almanac
An almanac is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, and tide tables, containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar etc...
.
In December 2005 The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper, which described Schott's Original Miscellany as "the publishing sensation of the year", produced a special edition of its G2 section with selections from the 2006 edition of the book.
It has a parody called Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany, written by "A. Parody".