Early development

The first fragments of an encyclopaedia to have survived are the work of Speusippus (died 339/338 bce), a nephew of Plato’s. Speusippus conveyed his uncle’s ideas in a series of writings on natural history, mathematics, philosophy, and so forth. Aristotle’s wide-ranging lectures at the Lyceum were equally influential, and he and Plato appear to have been the originators of the encyclopaedia as a means of providing a comprehensive cultural background.

The Greek approach was to record the spoken word. The Romans, on the other hand, aimed to epitomize existing knowledge in readable form. Their first known effort is the Praecepta ad filium (“Advice to His Son”; c. 183 bce), a series of letters (now lost) written by the Roman consul Marcus Porcius Cato (known as Cato the Censor) to his son. Cato’s intention was to provide a summary of useful information that could help in the process of living and in guiding and helping one’s fellow men. A more substantial attempt was made by the learned Latin writer Marcus Terentius Varro in his Disciplinarum libri IX (“Nine Books of Disciplines”), his Rerum divinarum et humanarum antiquitates (“The Antiquities of Things Divine and Human”), and his Imagines, which together covered the liberal arts, human efforts, the gods, and biographies of the Greeks and Romans.

The most important Roman contribution was the Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder, a vast work constituting a kind of classified anthology of information. Although undiscriminating in its record of fact and fancy, it was nevertheless very influential; the Latin grammarian and writer Gaius Julius Solinus drew nearly 90 percent of his 3rd-century Collectanea rerum memorabilium (“Collection of Memorabilia”) from Pliny, and the Historia naturalis served as a major source for other encyclopaedias for at least the next 1,500 years. Even today it is still an important record for details of Roman sculpture and painting.

The statesman Cassiodorus, when he withdrew to the Vivarium in 551, dedicated this monastery to sacred and classical learning. His Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum (“Institutes of Divine and Secular Literature”) seems to have been designed to preserve knowledge in times that were largely inimical to it. In his encyclopaedia, Cassiodorus drew a clear distinction between the sacred and the profane, but the first Christian encyclopaedia to be compiled for the benefit of the newly converted Spanish population followed a different scheme. St. Isidore (c. 560–636) considered the liberal arts and secular learning to be the true basis of a Christian’s education. His Etymologiae therefore paid much attention to practical matters and even included an etymological dictionary. This was in line with the thought of St. Jerome—on whose encyclopaedic Chronicon and De viris illustribus St. Isidore had drawn—who, in common with the early Christian Fathers, was eager to provide a basis for a Christian interpretation and organization of knowledge. This concept was much later to be renewed by the Catalan ecclesiastic Ramon Llull.

The development of the encyclopaedia during the next 500 years, though of social interest, was undistinguished from the point of view of scholarship. Rabanus Maurus (c. 776–856), one of the English scholar Alcuin’s favourite pupils, compiled De universo (“On the Universe”), which, despite its being an unintelligent plagiarism of St. Isidore’s work, had a lasting popularity and influence throughout the medieval period. A series of encyclopaedias of special subjects—undistinguished anthologies of classical and Christian writings on history, jurisprudence, agriculture, medicine, veterinary surgery, and zoology—was organized by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905–959). Michael Psellus (1018–96), a tutor of a later emperor, contributed a more interesting work, De omnifaria doctrina, in the form of questions and answers on both the humanities and science. At this time there was a growing influence on metropolitan and secular learning. In an attempt to counterbalance it, the brief but charming Didascalion of Hugh of Saint-Victor (c. 1096–1141), which paid much attention to practical matters as well as to the liberal arts, was soundly based on a profound classification of knowledge that influenced many later encyclopaedias. About this time an encyclopaedic dictionary known as Suda, or Suidas, broke with tradition by adopting alphabetical order for its contents. This had no effect on the plan of later encyclopaedias, but its contents included so much useful information that it has retained its importance as a source throughout the succeeding centuries.

The Liber floridus (c. 1120) of Lambert of Saint-Omer is an unoriginal miscellany, but it has an interest of its own in that it discards practical matters in favour of metaphysical discussion and pays special attention to such subjects as magic and astrology. The greatest achievement of the 12th century was the Imago mundi of Honorius Inclusus. Honorius produced his “mirror of the world” for Christian, later abbot of St. Jacob, and drew on a far wider range of authorities than any of his predecessors. The arrangement of the first section on geography, astrology, and astronomy was sound; it started with the creation and worked down to individual countries and cities. This was followed by a “chronicle,” and a third section provided a brief list of important events since the fall of Satan. Honorius accurately foresaw his book’s fate: innumerable copies, unauthorized plagiarisms, incessant criticism, and incompetent additions for at least 200 years.

Probably the first encyclopaedia to be compiled by a woman, the Hortus deliciarum of the abbess Herrad (died 1195), comprised a magnificent illuminated manuscript with 636 miniatures, intended to help and edify the nuns in her charge. Bartholomaeus Anglicus based his De proprietatibus rerum (1220–40) on the works of St. Isidore and Pliny. It was designed for ordinary people and became Europe’s most popular encyclopaedia for the next three centuries. But the outstanding achievement of the Middle Ages was the Speculum majus of Vincent of Beauvais. Vincent was not an original writer but he was industrious, and his work comprised nearly 10,000 chapters in 80 books; no encyclopaedia rivalled it in size until the middle of the 18th century. The work was very well balanced, almost equal space being allotted to the three sections. The “Naturale” dealt with God and man, the creation, and natural history. For this Vincent drew not only on Latin writings but also on Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew sources, which were at that time (through translations) making a very considerable impact on the thinking of the West. The “Doctrinale” covered practical matters as well as the scholastic heritage of the age. The “Historiale” included a summary of the first two sections and a history of the world from the creation to the times of St. Louis. A fourth section, “Morale,” based principally on St. Thomas Aquinas, was added after Vincent’s death. The influence of the Speculum majus was immediate and lasting. Translations were made into several languages, and complete reprints appeared as late as 1863–79. One of its many values is that it is a source for extracts from many documents of which no other parts have survived. Another is its detailed history of the second quarter of the 13th century.

Vincent’s was the last major work of its kind. Later encyclopaedists began to compile for a wider public than the very limited world of religious communities. The first breakaway from Latin came with Li livres dou trésor (“Treasure Books”) of Brunetto Latini (c. 1220–95), the master of Dante, and the Florentine poet and philosopher Guido Cavalcanti. Latini wanted to reach the mercantile and cultured classes of Italy; he therefore used French, their common language. The arrangement of his work was similar to Vincent’s but his approach was concise. The language, the brevity, and the accuracy of his encyclopaedia had an immediate and wide appeal. A friend of Petrarch’s, Pierre Bersuire, based his Reductorium, repertorium, et dictionarium morale utriusque testamenti (“Moral Abridgment, Catalogue, and Dictionary of Each Testament”; c. 1340) on Bartholomaeus’s De proprietatibus rerum. In contrast to Latini’s work, this was a return to the traditional, with its moralizings on the Bible, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and natural history, but it had a considerable success when printing was introduced, being issued 12 times by 1526.

One of the most delightful of all encyclopaedias is the little Margarita philosophica that Gregor Reisch (died 1525) wrote for young people. In some 200 pages he contrived to cover in a very pleasing style the whole university course of the day, both the trivium and the quadrivium (see liberal arts). The arrival of humanism is reflected in the De disciplinis of Juan Luis Vives, a pioneer in psychology and philosophical method; Vives grounded all his arguments on nature and made no appeal to religious authority. With the writing of the anonymous Compendium philosophiae (c. 1300), the concept of the modern scientific encyclopaedia was reached at last. It was the first encyclopaedia to adopt an inquiring and impartial attitude to the things described, and the old wives’ tales that had filled so many pages of encyclopaedias from the time of Pliny onward were replaced by the latest scientific discoveries.

The first indigenous French encyclopaedia, the popular Dictionarium historicum, geographicum, et poeticum (“Historical, Geographical, and Poetic Dictionary”) of Charles Estienne (1504–64), was not published until 1553. For encyclopaedias in their own language, the French still had to rely on translations of the encyclopaedias of other nations, such as Les diverses leçons (“The Various Lessons”; 1552) of Pedro Mexia, a mediocre Spanish historian whose haphazard compilation was enormously popular in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The development of the modern encyclopaedia (17th–18th centuries)

Francis Bacon’s purpose in writing the Instauratio magna was “to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations” in order to restore or cultivate a just and legitimate familiarity between things and the mind. Only a small part of this enormous work was ever completed, but the author had planned 130 sections divided into three main sections: external nature, man, and man’s action on nature. From its proposed contents Bacon’s intention was clearly to compile an encyclopaedia thoroughly scientific in character—“a thing infinite and beyond the powers of man”—that he himself recognized to be revolutionary in character. His most important contribution was, however, the devising of a new and thoroughly sound classification of knowledge that bears a remarkable resemblance to the classification put forward by Matthias Martini in his Idea Methodica (1606). Although Bacon was apparently unaware of this work, both philosophers were probably working from the same basic Platonic precepts. The results were profound: Diderot made a point of acknowledging the assistance Bacon’s analysis of the structure of human knowledge had afforded him in planning the contents of the Encyclopédie, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge hailed “the coinciding precepts of the Athenian Verulam and the British Plato.”

Only two more Latin encyclopaedias of any importance followed. Antonio Zara, bishop of Petina, compiled the Anatomia Ingeniorum et Scientiarum (“Anatomy of Arts and Sciences”; 1614), which was chiefly remarkable for the inclusion of an index. And Johann Heinrich Alsted, who, like Martini, came from Herborn, compiled an Encyclopaedia (1630) whose arrangement corresponds broadly to Matthias’s classification of human knowledge.

Zara’s and Alsted’s encyclopaedias were organized systematically by classification. The turning point came with Louis Moréri’s alphabetically arranged Grand Dictionnaire historique (1674), which was especially strong in geographical and biographical material. Its success was immediate; six editions were issued by 1691, each incorporating much new contemporary information. English editions followed in 1694, 1701, and (a supplement) 1705. Other encyclopaedias in England, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands acknowledged its inspiration. The alphabetically arranged encyclopaedia in the vernacular had almost won the day, in spite of the German scholar Daniel George Morhof’s modest success with his ill-balanced Polyhistor Literarius, Philosophicus, et Practicus (“Literary, Philosophical, and Practical History”; 1688–1708).

If there was any doubt concerning the more popular form of the encyclopaedia, the issue of Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel des arts et sciences (1690) confirmed the true nature of public taste. Furetière not only compiled a fine encyclopaedic dictionary, but he emphasized the arts and the sciences, thus reflecting the rapidly growing public interest in modern culture, science, and technology. If confirmation were still needed, the Académie Française’s commissioning of Thomas Corneille to compile Le Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences (1694), with its thorough and authoritative treatment of these new encyclopaedic features, demonstrated that even the more conservative scholars were by now keenly aware that a new spirit had arisen. The period of the clerical encyclopaedia had ended, as the Franciscan friar Vincenzo Maria Coronelli found when his Biblioteca Universale Sacro-Profano (1701–06) ceased publication at volume 7 of a projected 45.

Pierre Bayle, in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), achieved a most remarkable tour de force. Although his encyclopaedia purported to be an updating of the information in Moréri, the entries were largely unexceptionable. The real originality of his work lies in the profuse and scholarly footnotes and the commentaries that at times were an amazing mixture of skepticism, blasphemy, and ribaldry. Bayle challenged orthodox ideas; his brilliant mind spared nothing. This approach heralded that of Denis Diderot, and the distinguished writers who revised later editions—Prosper Marchand and Pierre Desmaizeaux—continued in the same style.

The Lexicon Technicum (1704) of John Harris represented the powerful impact of the work of the Royal Society (founded 1660). Here was all the equipment of the modern encyclopaedia: excellent engraved plates, clear practical text, bibliographies appended to the more important articles. So far, England had had to make do with translations of French encyclopaedias. Harris’s emphasis on the need to include scientific and technical subjects helped to reverse the trend. This process was completed by the issue of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728). Like Harris, Chambers omitted people in favour of more information on the arts and sciences, and he paid more attention to clear expositions of ancient and modern philosophical systems. His admirably cross-referenced work is universally recognized as the father of the modern encyclopaedia.

The French were well aware of these developments. By 1744 five editions of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia had been issued. The Paris publisher André Le Breton saw a ready market for a translation. The first proposals were a failure, however, and Diderot was enlisted to plan what at that time was still essentially a translation on a much broader basis. Under the hands of Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert the concept changed. The Encyclopédie (1751–65) was a philosophical undertaking carried out on a gigantic scale, and much of the writing was of a high standard. To the orthodox, it appeared that the project had got out of hand, but there were 2,000 subscribers to the first volume, and the subsequent scandals over the irreverent, authority-challenging articles only added to the number of purchasers. The equivocal attitude of high dignitaries in both church and court and the growing public dislike of the encyclopaedia’s chief critics—the Jesuits—led to a complex situation in which official disapproval and substantial private encouragement caused the production and fortunes of the Encyclopédie and its producers to lurch dangerously from one crisis to another. Curiously, Diderot did nothing to further the physical development of the encyclopaedia; his contribution was to fire men’s minds with a willful guidance that conformed to the country’s increasingly revolutionary spirit. As Voltaire said: “this vast and immortal work seems to reproach mankind’s brief life span.”

The shortcomings of the Encyclopédie were obvious. The essential ingredients of an encyclopaedia, the entries on every conceivable subject, had been sacrificed to make place for lengthy polemics on the controversial topics of the day. The Encyclopædia Britannica was intended to improve on this, and, with all its shortcomings, the first edition (1768–71) did exactly that. The achievement of its editors was the more remarkable in that there were already several English encyclopaedias on the market. The Scottish encyclopaedia, however, reflected the taste of the day better than any of its competitors, for it was a completely new work and not just a remaking of Chambers and Harris. There was much to criticize in the first edition, but the second (1777–84; dated 1778–83) was greatly improved, as were following editions.

Meanwhile, Germany, at first largely dependent on translations of foreign encyclopaedias, had produced the scholarly “Hübner” (1704), as it was known from the name of the author of the preface in this first of the Konversationslexikon type. The form appealed to the rapidly growing middle class of the country, who welcomed encyclopaedias designed to provide them with an adequate cultural background for polite society. Johann Theodor Jablonski’s illustrated Allgemeines Lexicon (1721) continued in this same style, and similar works were compiled by the Swiss theologian and philologist Jakob Christoph Iselin and Antonius Moratori (1727). Johann Heinrich Zedler’s huge Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (“The Great Comprehensive Universal Lexicon”; 1732–50) was in the older tradition but is important for its accuracy and its biographical and bibliographical material. An attempt to produce a German type of the Encyclopédie in 1778–1807 was, however, a failure. Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus recognized the real need of the German people. Reworking Renatus Gotthelf Löbel’s bankrupt encyclopaedia, he produced his first Konversations-Lexikon (1796–1811), thereby setting the pattern for at least half of all succeeding encyclopaedias throughout the western world. Brief, well-designed articles tightly packed with facts, comprehensive coverage, and a reputation for accuracy and up-to-dateness were the ingredients for one of the most successful of encyclopaedias.

The 19th century

Having served a long apprenticeship as a reviser of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, Abraham Rees at last produced a completely original and finely illustrated work, The New Cyclopaedia (1802–20), the only serious rival to the Britannica in a generation that saw some dozen “new” encyclopaedias rise and fall. What might have been the greatest encyclopaedia of the century, the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana (1817–45), failed miserably because of the early withdrawal of its designer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and subsequent financial troubles; but from it came the most notable contribution to the philosophy of encyclopaedia making since Bacon—Coleridge’s profound treatise “On Method” (1818).

To the principal influences on the compilation of encyclopaedias—Bacon, Diderot, the Britannica, and Brockhaus—must be added that of the Frenchman Pierre Larousse. His completely original approach to encyclopaedia making has given the series of encyclopaedias that bear his name a unique reputation. Emphasis throughout has been on readability; style has never been sacrificed to conciseness, and the successive editors of Larousse have paid very close attention to the changing public taste among French readers concerning the presentation of information.

The advent of the work of Noah Webster was fully as epoch-making as that of Brockhaus and Larousse. Webster’s informative American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) was encyclopaedic in character, but he avoided the long entries for the more important subjects that were such a feature of Larousse. Webster’s approach appealed to the American taste and captured a huge market that has only increased with the years.

Brockhaus soon faced opposition, for his encyclopaedia was stronger on the humanities than on scientific and technical subjects. Joseph Meyer’s Der grosse Conversations-Lexikon (1840–52) rectified this imbalance and was the first of a highly successful series that competed vigorously with Brockhaus for 100 years. In addition, Herder’s Conversations-Lexikon (1853–57) and its subsequent editions provided the Catholic counterbalance in a country where Protestants and Catholics were almost equal in numbers.

The market for encyclopaedias in 19th-century Great Britain seemed inexhaustible, but many publishers lost money by putting out works that failed to capture the public’s fancy. An exception was Chambers’s Encyclopaedia (1860–68), which was unconnected with Ephraim Chambers’s classic. Influenced by childhood access to a copy of the Britannica, Robert Chambers and his brother William compiled an original work, Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, that took the Konversationslexikon form and thus found a new market that has continued to the present day.

Beyond Webster’s work, a wide variety of encyclopaedias appeared in the United States during the 19th century, ranging from reprints of British encyclopaedias to homegrown works such as The New American Cyclopaedia (1858–63) and The People’s Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (1881). Perhaps as many as two dozen encyclopaedias were available to American readers. The Britannica was among them, and its ninth edition (1875–89) was much republished in authorized and pirated forms.

In the first half of the 19th century there was increasing activity in other countries too. Poland produced the Encyklopedia Powszechna (1858–68), known as “Orgelbrand” after its publisher. The Hungarians had followed the Bohemian Slovník naučný (“Scientific Dictionary”; 1860–90) with the Egyetemes magyar encyclopaedia (“Universal Hungarian Encyclopaedia”; 1861–76). The Russians had produced half an encyclopaedia, V.N. Tatishchev’s Leksikon rossyskoy (“Russian lexicon”), in 1793, and then issued A. Starchevsky’s Spravochny entsiklopedichesky slovar (“Encyclopaedic Reference Dictionary”; 1847–55) on the Brockhaus model. More important was the famous Entsiklopedichesky slovar (“Encyclopaedic Dictionary”; 1895), which became known as “Granat” after the Granat Russian Bibliographical Institute that produced it. A later edition (1910–48) of “Granat,” in 58 volumes, was not exported from the Soviet Union. Modeled on the Britannica, this edition contained many important articles, such as Lenin’s contribution on “Marx” and on “The Russian 19th-Century Agrarian Problem.” Successive ideological changes in Russian society caused many changes in the text of “Granat,” and it long remained one of the most inaccessible of all Russian encyclopaedias outside the Soviet Union.

Larousse did not go unchallenged. Inspired by the French politician Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus, La Grande Encyclopédie (1886–1902) provided France with a superb, authoritative, and comprehensive work, well documented, and of excellent scholarship throughout. In Denmark the century ended with the issue of no fewer than three new good multivolume encyclopaedias: Allers (1892–99), Hagerups (1892–1900), and Salmonsens (1893–1911), a situation without parallel in the history of encyclopaedias. During the course of the century practically every feature of the modern encyclopaedia had been introduced, and editorial standards had at times risen to a height that modern editors can only envy.

The 20th century and beyond

In 1890–1906 a Russian edition of Brockhaus, which subsequently had considerable success, was issued from the St. Petersburg office of Brockhaus. In contrast, S.N. Yushakov designed his Bolshaya entsiklopedya (“Great Encyclopaedia”; 1900–09) on the “Meyer” model. After “Granat” the next important encyclopaedia was the 65-volume Bolshaya sovetskaya entsiklopedya (“Great Soviet Encyclopaedia”; 1926–47), which was eventually discredited; the second edition (1949–58) had a Marxist-Leninist approach but was less biassed on nonpolitical subjects. It represented almost the whole of the Soviet Union’s cultural resources: 8,000 scholars contributed articles, and the appended bibliographies were truly international in scope. One complete volume was devoted to the Soviet Union. The yearbooks that supplemented this encyclopaedia were very well produced and maintained the high standards of the original work. From 1970 to 1978 a 30-volume third edition was issued. The reduction in size was accomplished by editing and the use of a smaller typeface. Early reviews indicated that the quality of the work was similar to that of the second edition. From 1973 to 1983 Macmillan released an English translation of the third Russian edition.

There was also a series of editions of the much smaller Malaya sovetskaya entsiklopedya (“The Little Soviet Encyclopaedia”), first issued in 1928–31.

In the United States, the first edition of The New International Encyclopaedia was issued in 1902–04 and was subsequently supplemented by yearbooks. The Encyclopedia Americana, which traced its ancestry to an English-language adaptation (1829–33) of the seventh edition of Brockhaus, took on new strength in 1902 when the editor of Scientific American, Frederick C. Beach, was appointed editor of the Americana. It has enjoyed growing success through its policy of following the continuous revision system, and yearbooks have supplemented it from 1923 onward. In 1950–51 a completely new American work, Collier’s Encyclopedia, appeared in 20 volumes, and subsequent editions have been supplemented by yearbooks since 1960. Collier’s was noted for its large number of illustrations and maps.

The “Espasa,” the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana (1905–33), like the Enciclopedia italiana, eschewed revision in favour of a series of sizable supplements. One complete volume was devoted to Spain and was separately revised and reissued from time to time. A smaller encyclopaedia, the Salvat universal diccionario enciclopédico (first issued in 1907–13), was revised at frequent intervals. Another major Spanish encyclopaedia, the Enciclopedia labor (first issued 1955–60), devoted one volume each to major subject areas, and an index volume provided the key to the total contents. This encyclopaedia was notable for the attention it paid to every Spanish-speaking part of the world.

One of the most important of all encyclopaedias, the Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere, ed arti (1929–39), was famous for its lavish production, its superb illustrations, and its lengthy, scholarly, and well-documented articles. Even its defense of Fascist ideology was not allowed to impinge on the general impartiality of the text. Supplements were issued after World War II. The postwar Dizionario enciclopedico italiano (1955–61), issued by the same publishers, was a much smaller, well-illustrated work. The Enciclopedia europea was released in Milan between 1976 and 1984. Although consisting largely of brief articles, it had numerous signed long articles of good quality. In Germany the three giants of the German encyclopaedia world—Brockhaus, “Meyer,” “Herder”—continued to produce new editions in the 20th century.

In spite of the continuing popularity of Larousse, France produced three other encyclopaedias of note in the 20th century. The Encyclopédie française (begun 1935) was an outstanding collection of monographs by well-known scholars and specialists, arranged in classified form and available in loose-leaf binders, supplemented by a continuously revised index. Its 21 volumes, each under the direction of a different authority, dealt with (1) human mental tools (logical thought, language, and mathematics); (2) physics; (3) heaven and earth; (4) life; (5) living beings; (6) human beings (the normal and the sick); (7) the human species; (8) the study of the mind; (9) the economic and social universe; (10) the modern state; (11) international life; (12) chemical science and industry; (13) industry and agriculture; (14) daily life; (15) education and learning theory; (16–17) arts and literatures; (18) the written word; (19) philosophy and religion; and (20) the world in its development (history, evolution, prospective); the 21st volume contained an index. The articles were notable for their almost total concentration on contemporary issues in the fields considered.

The Encyclopédie de la Pléiade (begun 1955) was an encyclopaedic series, each work (some in more than one volume) being a self-contained treatment of a broad subject field written in narrative form.

One of the most interesting new encyclopaedias was the Encyclopaedia Universalis (first issued 1968–74), edited by Claude Grégory and owned by the French Book Club and Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (since 2005 solely by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.). This work, inspired by L’Encyclopédie, eschewed the inclusion of minor items in favour of extensive and very well-illustrated articles on important subjects, and it paid special attention to modern science and technology. It was accompanied by a symposium and an elaborate thesaurus-index.

Encyclopaedia Universalis was doubly notable as the product of a contemporary publishing phenomenon known in the industry as “coproduction.” The term is applied in general to the collaborative efforts of publishing concerns in two or more countries that have combined forces to produce an encyclopaedia for sale in one of the countries or, with modifications to the volumes, in two or several countries. Successful examples of coproduction in the 20th century include the Buritanika Kokusai Dai Hyakka Jiten (Britannica International Encyclopædia) in Japan and the Concise Encyclopædia Britannica in China (both discussed below). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., in addition, was similarly involved in the development of the Taiwan edition of the Concise Encyclopædia Britannica in traditional Chinese characters (1989); the Korean Britannica World Encyclopædia; the Turkish AnaBritannica; two Spanish-language encyclopaedias, the Enciclopedia Barsa de consulta fácil and the Enciclopedia hispánica; the Portuguese-language Enciclopédia Barsa and Enciclopédia Mirador Internacional, a scholarly set first published in Brazil in 1975; Il Modulo, published in Italy; Britannica Hungarica Világenciklopédia (2002), published in Budapest; and Britannica Edycja Polska (1997–2005), published in Poznań, Pol. Coproduction was taken worldwide with localized editions of the one-volume Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, first published in English in 2002, based on Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia (2000), itself a coproduction between Britannica and Merriam-Webster, Inc. Within a decade, versions of Britannica Concise augmented with local content were planned in Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Other major instances of coproduction involved The New Caxton Encyclopedia, which originated in Italy with Istituto Geografico de Agostini and subsequently appeared in Great Britain, first sold in serial parts as Purnell’s New English Encyclopedia (1966) and then in a bound set of 18 volumes (1966); in France there appeared a version called Alpha: La Grande Encyclopédie Universelle en Couleurs, and in Spain a version called Monitor. The American-made The Random House Encyclopedia was adapted and translated in various languages and under various names for distribution in several countries.

By the 21st century virtually every Western country had domestically produced or released either a single-volume or a multivolume encyclopaedia in its native tongue. Many encyclopaedias were available additionally, and some solely, in CD-ROM, DVD, and online formats.

China

The contribution from the East to the history of encyclopaedias is distinctive and covers a longer period than that of the West. The Chinese have produced encyclopaedias for approximately 2,000 years, but traditionally they differ from the modern Western encyclopaedia in that they are mainly anthologies of significant literature with some elements of the dictionary. Compiled by scholars of eminence, they have been revised rather than replaced over hundreds of years. In the main, they followed a classified form of arrangement; very often their chief use was to aid candidates for the civil service. The first known Chinese encyclopaedia, the Huanglan (“Imperial Anthology”), was prepared by order of the emperor about ad 220. No part of this work has survived. Part of the Bianzhu (“Stringed Pearls of Literature”), prepared about 600, is still extant. About 620 the Yiwen leiju (“Anthology of Art and Literature”) was prepared by Ouyang Xun (557–641) in 100 chapters divided into 47 sections. The Beitang shuchao (“Extracts for Books”) of Yu Shinan (558–638) was more substantial and paid particular attention to details of the organization of public administration. An annotated edition, edited by Kong Guangdao, was published in 1880.

The Chuxueji (“Entry into Learning”) was a modest work compiled about 700 by Xujian (659–729) and his colleagues. A more important book was the Tongdian (“Comprehensive Statutes”) compiled by Du Yu (735–812), a writer on government and economics. Completed about 801, it contained nine sections: economics, examinations and degrees, government, rites and ceremonies, music, the army, law, political geography, national defense. In 1273 it was supplemented by Ma Duanlin’s enormous and highly regarded Wenxian tongkao (“General Study of the Literary Remains”), which included a good bibliography. Supplements to this work were published in the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries. Under the order of the second Song emperor, Song Taizong, the statesman Li Fang organized the compilation of the vast Taiping yulan (“Imperially Inspected Anthology of the Taiping Era”; see Researcher’s Note: Taiping yulan), which included extracts from many works of literary and scientific standing that are no longer extant. In 1568–72 the Taiping yulan was revised and reprinted from movable type; a new edition revised by Yuanyuan appeared in 1812. The Cefu yuangui (c. 1013), particularly strong in historical and biographical subjects, was almost as large as the Taiping yulan.

The historian Zheng Qiao (1108–66) compiled the Tongzhi (“General Treatises”), an original work with a strong personal contribution; the printed edition (1747) was in 118 volumes. One of the richest and most important of all Chinese encyclopaedias, the Yuhai (“Sea of Jade”), was compiled about 1267 by the renowned Song scholar Wang Yinglin (1223–92) and was reprinted in 240 volumes in 1738.

What was probably the largest encyclopaedia ever compiled, the Yongle dadian (“The Great Canon of the Yongle Era”), was issued at the beginning of the 15th century. Unfortunately, only a very small part of its 22,937 chapters has survived; these were published in 1963. A number of small encyclopaedias were issued in the 16th century, but the next important event was the publication of the small but profusely illustrated Sancai tuhui (1607–09), compiled by Wang Qi and his son Wang Siyi. In 1704–11 the Chinese literary encyclopaedia Peiwen yunfu was compiled by order of the emperor Kangxi; this was supplemented by the Yunfu shiyi (1720). Other works ordered by the emperor include the Bianzi leibian (1726) and the Zishi jinghua (1727). In 1726 the huge Gujin tushu jicheng (“Collection of Pictures and Writings”) was published by order of the emperor. Edited by the scholar Chen Menglei, it filled more than 750,000 pages and attempted to embody the whole of the Chinese cultural heritage.

At the turn of the century, a number of encyclopaedias were issued. Wang Qi’s Shiwu yuanhui, which covered well over 2,000 topics, was compiled in 1796. Lu Fengzuo’s Xiaozhilu (1804) is particularly valuable for its attention to technical terms, which previous works had ignored. Chen Wei’s Jingzhuan II (1804) concentrated on history and the great Chinese classics, whereas Wang Chenglie’s Qiming jishu (1806) is stronger in biographical material. Dai Zhaochun compiled the Sishu wujing leidian jicheng (1887), a historical work for the use of civil-service candidates. Wei Song’s Yishi jishi (1888) had actually been compiled 65 years previously, but it paid far more attention to practical matters. The Jiutongtong (1902) of Liu Keyi was in large measure a reassembly of material in the older encyclopaedias in a more efficient classification. A more important work of the period is the largely historical and biographical Ershisishi jiu tong zhengdian leiyao hebian (1902). The Qingchao xu wenxian tongkao (1905), compiled by Liu Jinzao, was revised and enlarged in 400 volumes in 1921. It includes contemporary material on fiscal, administrative, and industrial affairs and gives some attention to technical matters. Lu Erkui’s Ciyuan (1915), with a supplement issued in 1931, was the first really modern Chinese encyclopaedia and set the style for nearly all later works of this nature.

In 1980, officials of the Greater Encyclopedia of China Publishing House and Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., announced an agreement under which the Micropædia of the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica would be translated into Chinese for distribution in China. The 10-volume set for this project, The Concise Encyclopædia Britannica, was published serially in 1985–86. A 20-volume revised edition, Encyclopædia Britannica International Chinese Edition, was published in 1999 and substantially revised in 2007.

Japan

In the Edo, or Tokugawa, era (1603–1867) there appeared a kind of encyclopaedia that consisted of extracts of major works in Japanese and Chinese. Kojiruien (51 volumes, 1879–1914) and Nihon-hyakka-daijiten, or the “Great Japanese Encyclopaedia” (10 volumes, 1908–19) were somewhat more akin to modern encyclopaedias but were mostly compilations of scientific works. More complete general encyclopaedias appeared in the Showa period (1926–89); Dai-hyakka (28 volumes, 1931–35), Kokumin-hyakka (15 volumes, 1934–37), Sekai-daihyakka (24 volumes, 1955–68), and Japonica (19 volumes, 1967–72) are examples of well-compiled works. The Buritanika Kokusai Dai Hyakka Jiten, or Britannica International Encyclopædia (29 volumes), which began publication in 1972 and was completed in 1975, was the joint creation of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., and the Tokyo Broadcasting System acting together as TBS/Britannica Company, Tokyo. Unlike most Japanese-language encyclopaedias, which consisted largely of simple short entries, its main body consisted of 20 volumes of lengthy systematic entries (the main body was fully revised in 1988). Other sections of the four-part set included a six-volume reference guide, consisting of many thousands of short factual entries; a reader’s guide; a study guide; and an index. There were also supplemental yearbooks. After 2006 the encyclopaedia was available solely in electronic form, as Encyclopædia Britannica Online Japan.

The Arab world

The early encyclopaedias written in Arabic can be roughly divided into two classes: those designed for people who wished to be well informed and to make full use of their cultural heritage, and those for the rapidly growing number of official administrators. The latter type of encyclopaedia originated when the Arabs established their rule through so many parts of the Mediterranean region. The first true encyclopaedia was the work of Ibn Qutaybah (828–889), a teacher and philologist, who dealt with his topics by quoting traditional aphorisms, historical examples, and old Arabic poems. The arrangement and contents of his Kitāb ʿuyūn al-akhbār (“The Book of Choice Narratives”) set the pattern for many later encyclopaedias. The 10 books were arranged in the following order: power, war, nobility, character, learning and eloquence, asceticism, friendship, prayers, food, women. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih of Córdoba improved on Ibn Qutaybah’s work in his ʿIqd al-farīd (“The Precious Necklace”) by including more contemporary items of note.

What has often mistakenly been referred to as the first encyclopaedia, the Mafātīḥ al-ʿUlūm (“Keys to the Sciences”), was compiled in 975–997 by the Persian scholar and statesman al-Khwārizmī, who was well aware of the content of the more important Greek writings. He divided his work into two sections: indigenous knowledge (jurisprudence, scholastic philosophy, grammar, secretarial duties, prosody and poetic art, history) and foreign knowledge (philosophy, logic, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, mechanics, alchemy). The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (“Brethren of Purity”), a religious or political party founded at Al-Baṣrah in the 10th century, published the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ wa khillān al-wafāʾ (“Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Loyal Friends”), a remarkable work that consisted of 52 pamphlets written by five authors, comprising all the knowledge available in their milieu. The work included (1) mathematics, geography, music, logic, and ethics; (2) the natural sciences and philosophy; (3) metaphysics; and (4) religion, astrology, and magic. A complete edition was published in 1887–89.

The Egyptian historian and civil servant al-Nuwayrī (1272–1332) compiled one of the best-known encyclopaedias of the Mamlūk period, the Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab (“The Aim of the Intelligent in the Art of Letters”), a work of almost 9,000 pages. It comprised: (1) geography, astronomy, meteorology, chronology, geology; (2) man (anatomy, folklore, conduct, politics); (3) zoology; (4) botany; (5) history. A complete edition was issued in 1923. The Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (“Paths of Discernment in the Realms of the Great Cities”) of al-ʿUmarī (1301–48) was chiefly strong on history, geography, and poetry. A third Egyptian, al-Qalqashandī (1355/56–1418), compiled a more important and well-organized encyclopaedia, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā (“The Dawn for the Blind”), that covered geography, political history, natural history, zoology, mineralogy, cosmography, and time measurement. Al-Ibshīhī (1388–c. 1446) compiled a very individual encyclopaedia, the Mustaṭraf fī kull fann mustaẓraf (“A Quest for Attainment in Each Fine Art”), that covered the Islamic religion, conduct, law, spiritual qualities, work, natural history, music, food, and medicine. At the turn of the Arab fortunes, al-Ibshīhī had recapitulated all that was best in their culture.

The Persian jurist Dawānī (1427–1502/03) published a kind of encyclopaedia, entitled Unmūdhaj al-ʿulūm (“Program of the Sciences”), that consisted of documented questions and answers and technical inventions on a very wide range of subjects. Al-Shīrazī (died 1542) soon issued a refutation to it, the Maqālat al-radd ʿalā unmūdag ʿalā unmūdhaj al-ʿulūm al-jalāliyyah (“Treatise on the Refutation of Jalāl [al-Dīn Dawānī’s] Unmūdhaj al-ʿulūm”). The Majmaʿ multaqā al-zuhūr bī rawḍah min al-manẓūm wa al manthūr (1524; “Collection of Tangled Flowers in the Garden of Poetry and Prose”) of al-Ḥanafī comprised an encyclopaedic survey and description of the various branches of knowledge, with an appendix containing an alphabetical list of the names of God. In Lebanon, Buṭrus al-Bustānī and his sons compiled the Dāʾirat al-maʿārif (1876–1900; “The Circle of Knowledge”). A second edition (1923–25) was prepared by Muḥammad Farīd Wajdī, and a third edition was begun by Fuʾād Afrām al-Bustānī in 1956. Arabic encyclopaedias, both general and topical, were widely available by the start of the 21st century.