Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest English-language general encyclopaedia. The Encyclopædia Britannica was first published in 1768, when it began to appear in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Since its founding, the Encyclopædia Britannica has relied upon both outside experts and its own editors with various subject-area proficiencies to write its entries. Those entries are then fact-checked, edited, and copyedited by Britannica editors, a process intended to ensure that the articles meet Britannica’s long-held standards for readability and accuracy. Moreover, that same team of editors regularly revise and update existing articles to reflect new developments in those realms of knowledge.
The following account sketches the development of the Encyclopædia Britannica from its Scottish beginnings to its established position as a major English-language work of reference with editorial offices in Chicago and thousands of contributors worldwide.
First edition
The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published and printed in Edinburgh for the engraver Andrew Bell and the printer Colin Macfarquhar by “a society of gentlemen in Scotland” and was sold by Macfarquhar at his printing office on Nicolson Street. On December 10, 1768, the Caledonian Mercury and the Edinburgh Evening Courant carried an advertisement announcing that “This day is published” the edition’s first part; it further pledged that the encyclopædia would provide “Accurate Definitions and Explanations, of all the Terms as they occur in the Order of the Alphabet.” The work was issued in parts from December 1768 to 1771 with double-columned pages. The parts were bound in three stout quarto volumes of some 2,500 pages, with 160 copperplate engravings by Bell, and dated 1771. The title page begins as follows: “Encyclopædia Britannica; OR, A DICTIONARY OF ARTS and SCIENCES, COMPILED UPON A NEW PLAN.” The work could not compete in bulk with the 68 volumes of Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal Lexicon or with the French Encyclopédie, whose 17 volumes of text had recently been completed. But it did challenge comparison with all previous dictionaries of arts and sciences, large or small, because of its new plan.
Earlier encyclopaedias—save for Denis de Coëtlogon’s An Universal History of Arts and Sciences (1745)—had not given systematic instruction on major subjects at all, either because they aimed at dealing with such subjects in a more general way (as in the Encyclopédie) or because articles on such subjects used their space chiefly in explanations of the technical terms involved (as in Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia). Further, in the latter case, the reader wishing merely to learn the meaning of a technical term had to search through a long article before he could find the information he wanted. The “new plan” of the Encyclopædia Britannica consisted of including “treatises” on the arts (i.e., practical arts) and sciences in the same alphabetical series as short articles on technical terms and other subjects, with plentiful cross references from the one type of entry to the other. It was thus intended to satisfy two kinds of readers simultaneously: those wishing to study a subject seriously, who would work their way through the treatises; and those in search of quick reference material, who could instantly turn to what they wanted in its alphabetical order.
There were more than 40 “treatises” in the first edition, indicated by crossheads (i.e., titles printed across the top of the page). Some of them, such as “Anatomy” at 165 pages, covered their subjects at much greater length than, as well as in different ways from, their counterparts in the Encyclopédie, though the shortest, “Alligation” and “Watch and Clock Work,” were only 2 pages long. A few of the articles without crossheads, such as “Money” at 15 pages and “Mahometans” at 17 pages, exceeded in length some of the treatises. “Smoke,” at 7 pages, instructed the mason on chimney making so that smoky rooms might be avoided. The vast majority of the other articles, however, were only a few lines long, some being hardly more than definitions. There were entries on cities, countries, and rivers and other geographical subjects, but there were no biographies.
Inserted after the preface in the first volume was a two-page list of the publications used in compiling the work. Thus “Bleaching” was extracted, paragraph after paragraph with only minor editorial changes and a few omissions, from Francis Home, Experiments on Bleaching (1756); “Bookkeeping” similarly from John Mair, Book-keeping Methodiz’d, 2nd ed. (1741); and “Law,” which dealt only with Scottish law, from John Erskine, Principles of the Law of Scotland: In the Order of Sir George Mackenzie’s Institutions of that Law, 3rd ed. rev. (1764). Two books reprinted almost without change were John Bartlet, The Gentleman Farrier’s Repository, 5th ed. rev. (1764), in “Farriery”; and John Trydell, Two Essays on the Theory and Practice of Music (1766), in “Musick.”
For some articles, however, such as “Aether” and “Abridgement,” new content was written by William Smellie (1740–95), an Edinburgh printer hired to undertake “15 capital sciences,” to “write up the subdivisions and detached parts of these conform to your plan [sic] and likewise to prepare the whole work for the press.” This (quoted from a letter to Smellie from Bell) implies that the new plan was Smellie’s idea. This inference is supported by Smellie’s biographer, Robert Kerr, who claimed that Smellie devised the plan and wrote or compiled all the chief articles and recorded how he used to say jocularly that he “had made a dictionary of arts and sciences with a pair of scissors.” Later Smellie became Secretary and Superintendent of Natural History and keeper of the museum of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries.
Smellie is generally known as the editor of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, though the biographer of James Tytler claims that Tytler edited both the first and second editions and suggested the idea of such a work to Macfarquhar. The preface to the third edition regards Macfarquhar as the editor of the first and second editions as well as of the first half of the third edition, but the preface to the Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions says that Smellie edited the first.
The first edition was reprinted in London, with slight variants on the title page and a different preface, by Edward and Charles Dilly in 1773 and by John Donaldson in 1775.
Second edition
The second edition was a much more ambitious work in both length and scope. It was “a dictionary of Arts, Sciences, &c.,” running to 10 volumes of some 9,000 pages. These appeared in parts from June 1777 to September 1784, though the dates on the title pages are 1778–83. The last part of the 10th volume was a supplement that brought the work up to date and corrected errors. There were more treatises than in the first edition, and many new articles, as well as previous articles much increased in length. The plates, again by Bell, numbered 340 (300 according to the edition’s title page).
The scope of the second edition was enlarged by the inclusion of biographical articles, by the expansion of geographical articles to become history articles, and in general by the insertion of “Various Detached Parts of Knowledge” (as the title page put it). Further, the treatises were in many cases lengthened by covering not only the practice of the subject concerned but also its history, where ascertainable, and its theory. The second edition thus went beyond the accepted scope of a dictionary of arts and sciences, which was why Smellie, who objected to the biographical material, refused to be its editor. The work was undertaken by James Tytler (1745–1804), a brilliant but penniless polymath described by the Scottish poet Robert Burns as “an obscure, tippling, but extraordinary body,” who was later outlawed for printing a seditious handbill and died at Salem, Mass.
The second edition was a revision, though a much enlarged one, of the first, on the same new plan, with some of the treatises reprinted, such as “Geometry”; others enlarged, such as “Commerce,” with a historical section, and “Law,” with a general section and an English section added to the original wholly Scottish article; and others replaced, such as “Gardening,” which was descriptively treated in the second edition, whereas in the first it was only instructional. There were treatises on new subjects such as “Drawing” (5 pages), “Dyeing” (5 pages), “Gunnery” (37 pages), “History” (39 pages), “Legerdemain” (11 pages), “Magnetism” (7 pages), “Oratory” (100 pages), “Painting” (32.5 pages), “Poetry,” treated comprehensively as “the art of expressing our thoughts by fiction” (189.5 pages), and “War” (135.5 pages). Both “Medicine” (35 pages) and “Optics” (163 pages), which were treated under the three heads of history, theory, and practice, have indexes attached; the new treatise “Pharmacy” (127 pages) also had an index.
As in the first edition, some of the ordinary articles exceeded some of the treatises in length. The most notable example was “Scotland” (184.5 pages), which covered Scottish history up to the union with the crown of England in 1603 (“Britain,” at 80 pages, continued the story) and gave a general account of the country. “England” had 71 pages of history up to 1603 and 3 pages on New England, and “Rome” had 135, whereas “America” (20 pages) discussed only geography and American Indians. There was an article of just more than 16 pages titled “Blind,” which dealt with educating the blind and cited amazing achievements by certain blind persons. (That article, reprinted in the third edition and said to have been written by two blind scholars, Henry Moyes and Thomas Blacklock, was perhaps inserted to balance that on “Dumbness” in the first edition.) The supplement in the 10th volume included 25 pages on “Air,” with a detailed description of the recent experiments with balloons in France in 1783 and instructions for making such balloons, an art Tytler attempted unsuccessfully in 1784.
At the end of the last volume, more than four pages listed the chief publications used in compiling the second edition, and the preface pointed out how much more expensive it would be to buy them all than to buy the encyclopaedia. In addition, the title page stated that material had also been drawn from “…the Transactions, Journals, and Memoirs, of Learned Societies, Both at Home and Abroad; the MS Lectures of Eminent Professors on Different Sciences; and a Variety of Original Materials, Furnished by an Extensive Correspondence.” It seems that most of the compiling, writing, and editing was done by Tytler.
Third edition
The third edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, “A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature,” was longer than the second, appearing in parts forming 18 volumes of 14,579 pages (1788–97). The same plan was followed, and there were 542 copperplates by Bell. Dedicated by Bell and Macfarquhar to the king (i.e., George III), it was edited by Macfarquhar until his death in 1793, when he had reached the treatise “Mysteries.” George Gleig (1753–1840), a Scottish Episcopalian clergyman of Stirling who later became bishop of Brechin, took over the work, but the lack of continuity is apparent in various omissions and duplications in the second part of the edition. When the edition was completed, Bell bought the whole copyright. A two-volume supplement edited by Gleig and printed for Thomson Bonar, Bell’s son-in-law, appeared in 1801. It contained 50 copperplates by Daniel Lizars (none by Bell). Gleig’s dedication of that supplement to the king includes the following remarks: “The French Encyclopédie has been accused, and justly accused, of having disseminated, far and wide, the seeds of Anarchy and Atheism. If the Encyclopædia Britannica shall, in any degree, counteract the tendency of that pestiferous Work, even these two Volumes will not be wholly unworthy of Your Majesty’s Patronage.”
The new treatises in the third edition included “Aerostation” (on balloon flights, treated in the supplement to the second edition), “Husbandry,” “Logarithms,” “Polytheism,” and (in the supplement) “Galvanism” (“the influence discovered nearly eight years ago by the celebrated Galvani”), and “Critical Philosophy” (i.e., Kant’s). Indexes were appended to four more treatises: “Astronomy,” “Chemistry,” “Electricity,” and “Surgery.”
As before, many of the ordinary articles exceeded the treatises in length, such as “Revolution” (50 pages, on the French Revolution), “America” (80 pages, covering colonial history and the War of Independence as well as geography and American Indians), “Scripture” (68 pages), “Microscope” (50 pages, which covered both description and use of the instrument), and “Language” and “Telescope” (both 32 pages). Some of the shorter treatises reappeared in the third edition as ordinary articles. Subjects of general interest, such as “Friendship” and “Infidelity,” began to appear, and biographical articles were increased in number and scope; “Paulo (Marco)” was included for the first time, and “Dante” was given more space than in the second edition.
Instead of printing a list of publications consulted, as in the two previous editions, the third edition mentioned in the preface the names of the chief contributors. Certain articles, although not signed in the body of the work, could thus be ascribed to their authors, while others remained reprints of earlier articles originally extracted from books. Macfarquhar’s death left many articles in the first part of the alphabet without a record of authorship, though the preface suggested probable names, such as that of Tytler as the contributor responsible for several of the scientific treatises, including, as might be expected, “Aerostation.” John Robison, professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh, provided various treatises and other articles, besides being readily available for consultation. The editor, Gleig, wrote or collaborated on about 20 main subjects and must in fact have compiled a great many of the shorter articles. Most of the contributors were distinguished Scottish scholars of the period, and the edition was a worthy monument to Edinburgh’s “Augustan Age.”
According to Robert Kerr, about 10,000 copies of the third edition were printed, and the profit to Bell and Macfarquhar’s heirs was £42,000. According to Archibald Constable, an enterprising Edinburgh publisher, who bought the copyright of it from Bell’s heirs for £14,000 and the copyright of the Supplement to the third edition from Bonar for £100, 13,000 copies were sold.
There were two pirated editions of the third edition. Thomas Dobson, a printer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published a reprint titled simply Encyclopædia (which he called the first American edition), with some parts rewritten to correct British bias. James Moore’s Dublin reprint (1791–97) was an exact reproduction of the third edition, with the addition of “Moore’s Dublin Edition” at the top of the title page and his imprint at the foot and with some minor changes in the title page wording.
Fourth edition
The fourth edition appeared from 1801 to 1809, and when completed it was bound in 20 volumes of 16,033 pages, dated 1810. The first volume of the complete edition was prefaced by a dedication to the king written by Bell before his death in 1809. Essentially, it was a revised reprint of the third edition, with two additional volumes to include new and enlarged treatises, extra pages to bring history articles up to date, and more biographical articles. However, the fourth edition excluded the supplement to the third edition, of which Bell did not possess the copyright. The editor, James Millar (1762–1827), an Edinburgh physician and natural scientist, took pains to repair the deficiencies caused in the third edition by the untimely death of Macfarquhar. He reorganized some of the material to avoid omissions and duplications, and in particular he tried to repair omissions among the biographies. The fourth edition was the earliest in which articles appeared on Amurath (i.e., Murad, the name of several Ottoman sultans), the Croatian astronomer and mathematician Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich (titled “Roger Joseph Boscovich”), the ancient Greek physician Galen, the French general Lazare Hoche (titled “Lazarus Hoche”), the English scholar Sir Henry Savile, and the Scottish political economist Adam Smith. “America” was brought up to 1800 and quoted the U.S. constitution, while Britain’s history was brought up to 1803, India’s to 1804, and Spain’s to 1809.
There were several treatises on new subjects such as “Conchology,” “Mammalia,” “Political Economy,” and “Science, Amusements or Recreations of,” a title defended as follows: “It must not be supposed…that the subjects which we are here to discuss are puerile or trifling. They will be such as are best calculated to excite the attention, quicken the ingenuity, and improve the memory of our young readers.” Some of the treatises were different from those in the previous edition, such as “Galvanism” (which first appeared in the supplement to which Bell did not own copyright) and “Midwifery,” while others were enlarged. Among the latter was “Gardening,” which reprinted the descriptive piece from the second and third editions and added to it a new section with practical instructions for each month of the year that reverted to the treatment in the first edition.
As in the third edition, notable contributors were singled out in the preface, which was itself largely reprinted from the third edition. Several treatises, however, still remained anonymous; although Millar did not claim to have written any, he may well have done so.
Fifth and sixth editions
The fifth edition was a corrected reprint of the fourth, and the sixth was a reprint of the fifth with some articles brought up to date. Both were of small importance compared with the Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions, which were being concurrently prepared and printed.
Fifth edition
The fifth edition, on which work started immediately after the fourth was finished in 1810, was completed in 20 volumes, dated 1815, and sold at a price of £36. After the first five volumes, which were supervised by Bonar, it was again edited by Millar and was brought out by Constable. On Bonar’s death in 1814, Constable bought his share in the third edition from his heirs for £4,500. Realizing the inadequacy of simply reprinting the fourth edition, Constable at once began planning supplementary volumes, which started to appear at the end of 1815, the year that the fifth edition was completed. Before the supplementary volumes were themselves completed in 1824, however, a sixth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica had been published.
Sixth edition
The sixth edition, numbering some 16,017 pages, appeared between 1820 and 1823, edited by Charles Maclaren, the first editor of The Scotsman. By 1820 the fifth edition was noticeably out of date (e.g., the last event of the historical list given in “Chronology” is dated 1804), yet an extensively revised or new edition was out of the question when the Supplement was still in progress. Constable adopted a compromise solution: the fifth edition was essentially reprinted, with the same pagination almost entirely and in the same number of volumes, but some articles were brought up to date, chiefly by inserting the 1811 statistics in many British town and county articles and by deleting passages in country and major city articles to make room for their history and topography since the beginning of the century. Some revisions were also made in a few scientific articles.
