The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information

Abstract

THE Encyclopædia Britannica is of Scottish birth. Its first edition appears in 1771. Its interesting and rather chequered history occupies some three pages of the present (eleventh) edition, and shows its intimate connection with the land of its birth until the reprint of the ninth edition issued by The Times in 1898. Under the same auspices the eleven-volume supplement to the ninth edition was issued, and, together with that edition, formed the tenth, in 1902, and it is not a little curious to observe that the impression created by that issue appears to have been so strong that few realise off-hand that the present new edition has occupied eight years in the making. Its preparation continued to be conducted from the office of The Times until 1909, when the rights of publication were taken over by the Cambridge University Press, a step generally acknowledged to be peculiarly appropriate to the character of the work. It is proposed in the present general notice to consider some of the most notable characteristics of the work, such as distinguish it from former editions and from other works of reference. For that it possesses such characteristics cannot be questioned; the new edition shows evidence of much more than a simple reliance upon traditional form.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information.

Eleventh edition. Vols. i.–xiv. (A—Italic.) (Cambridge: University Press, 1910.)