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On August 4, 1855, John Bartlett publishes "Familiar Quotations" From the article:

"John Bartlett, who ran the University Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was frequently asked for information on quotations and he began a commonplace book of them for reference. In 1855, he privately printed his compilation as A Collection of Familiar Quotations. This first edition contained 258 pages of quotations by 169 authors, chiefly the Bible, William Shakespeare, and the great English poets. Bartlett wrote in the fourth edition that "it is not easy to determine in all cases the degree of familiarity that may belong to phrases and sentences which present themselves for admission; for what is familiar to one class of readers may be quite new to another."

The book was a great success, and Bartlett issued three more editions before joining the Boston publishing firm of Little, Brown, and Company. Bartlett rose to be the senior partner of the firm and supervised nine editions of the work before his death in 1905, the work selling over 300,000 copies. The seventh edition had appeared in 1875, the eighth edition in 1882, and the ninth in 1891. The tenth edition, however, would not appear for more than twenty years.

Edited by Nathan Haskell Dole, the tenth edition (1914) was much like its predecessors. The book began with quotations originally in English, arranging them chronologically by author (Geoffrey Chaucer was the first entry, Mary Frances Butts the last). These quotes were chiefly from literary sources. A "miscellaneous" section follows of quotations in English from politicians and scientists (such as "fifty-four forty or fight!"). A section of "translations" follows, consisting mainly of lines from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The last section was devoted to the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Quotations were arranged in a single column.

The eleventh edition (1937), edited by Christopher Morley (1890–1957) and Louella D. Everett, expanded the page size and created a two-column format, making it the first edition that is recognizable to users of the modern work. A twelfth edition (1948) was also edited by Morley and Everett.

The thirteenth edition (1955) was billed by the publisher as the "Centennial Edition." While the work was credited to the editors of Little, Brown, the preface gives special thanks to Morley and Everett as well as Emily Morison Beck (1915–2004). The volume continued to add more recent material, the two youngest authors being cartoonist Bill Mauldin and Queen Elizabeth II. Beck also edited the fourteenth edition (1968) and the fifteenth (1980). Aram Bakshian said Beck's work on the fifteenth edition was the start of the work's downfall: "Donning the intellectual bell-bottoms and platform shoes of its era, Bartlett's began spouting third-rate Third World, youth-culture, and feminist quotes," part of "a middle-aged obsession with staying trendy."[attribution needed]

Following Beck's retirement, Little, Brown entrusted the editorship to Justin Kaplan, whose life of Mark Twain Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain had won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Kaplan brought out the sixteenth edition (1993) to criticism in part because he included only three minor Ronald Reagan quotations and commented publicly he despised Reagan. (Franklin D. Roosevelt had 35 entries and John F. Kennedy had 28.) Jonathan Siegel, who edited the Macmillan Book of Political Quotations, said Kaplan was "an insult to the memory of John Bartlett and the ideologically inclusive spirit of the first fifteen editions."[attribution needed] Kaplan was also criticized for including pop culture material that was considered neither "familiar" nor durable. Similar criticisms were leveled against his editing of the seventeenth edition (2003) which included entries for the first time from J.K. Rowling, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry David. Classics were cut: eleven quotations by Alexander Pope were dropped, as were what Kaplan considered high-sounding sentimental quotes. Kaplan did include six Reagan quotations, and Kaplan told USA Today "I admit I was carried away by prejudice. Mischievously I did him dirty."[1][2]

The eighteenth edition, which came out in 2012, was edited by poet, critic, and editor Geoffrey O'Brien (O'Brien is also the editor-in-chief of the Library of America)."