Of the 1169 anagrams Bergerson lists, most are sourced to the files of the National Puzzlers' League, and some had been previously printed in Dmitri Borgmann's Language on Vacation.

[1] Among these is Bergerson's "Edna Waterfall", a 1039-letter poem which was for some time listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest palindrome in English.

[2] It was favourably reviewed in Word Ways, the journal of recreational linguistics which Bergerson formerly edited; fellow ex-editor Borgmann wrote that the book succeeds in "impart[ing] to palindromes and anagrams a status, a dignity, and a future they have not heretofore possessed", and concluded that it was therefore "a sine qua non for all serious logologists, as well as for all laymen interested in verbal curiosities".

[1] The book has since come to be regarded as groundbreaking and influential, and is said to be the greatest and most complete work on palindromes and anagrams up to the time of its publication.

[11] Edwin Fitzpatrick, the fictional Victorian palindromist to whom Bergerson credited many of the book's palindromes, proved to be a popular character among logologists.