![]() ![]() There is no better place to go to for a sense of what the world at the turn of the century looked like to some of the best minds of the time. The Eleventh Edition (1910-11) is the most famous of all. ![]() Thomas Young’s 1818 article on Egypt, for example, with its speculations on the Rosetta Stone, is credited with having inaugurated the serious study of Egyptology the Edinburgh Review described it at the time as “the greatest effort of scholarship and ingenuity of which modern literature can boast.” James Frazer was invited to write articles on totemism and taboo for the Ninth Edition (1889) his research became the basis of The Golden Bough. What appeared in Encyclopaedia Britannica was frequently the definitive work on the subject. Beginning early in the nineteenth century, one finds articles by William Hazlitt on fine art, by Thomas De Quincey on Pope and Shakespeare, by Sir Walter Scott on chivalry, by Robert Malthus on population. With its Third Edition, Britannica adopted the practice of inviting leading authorities to contribute to it. Lawrence, the Iroquois, or five Indian nations, the Huron and Illinois Lakes, on the east and south and by unknown lands, on the west. The entry on Canada in the First Edition consisted entirely of the following:ĬANADA, or New France, an extensive tract of North America, bounded by New Britain and the British colonies on Hudson’s Bay, on the north by the river of St. The three volumes which made up the First Edition were devoted solely to the arts and sciences biography and history weren’t added until the ten-volume Second Edition of 1777-1784. The First Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was published in Edinburgh between 17 (and named Britannica because it was intended for all English-speaking peoples in the world). The merchandising of these works is a silent business beyond the reach of criticism, and their success often depends on the skill and ingenuity of salesmen rather than the quality of their contents.” As Harvey Einbinder put it ten years ago in his book length critique of the Fourteenth Edition, The Myth of Britannica, “Each week magazines and newspapers devote many pages to the latest novel, biography or bit of political journalism embalmed in hard covers but very little is published about the reference works that are a major investment of the book buying public. There’s probably no one living competent to assess an entire encyclopaedia, and yet it’s obvious that such attempts, however modest, need to be made. The president of Encyclopaedia Britannica has modestly described the new edition as “the greatest single publishing event in the history of mankind.” More money - $32 million - has been spent on it than perhaps on any publishing venture in history. The Fifteenth Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 43 million words in thirty volumes, is the first new edition of the famous reference work in forty-five years. I wanted to see how well Canada was represented in such reference works. Like other general encyclopedias, Britannica claimed to be ‘international’ in scope. This essay, written for the Globe and Mail in 1974, is a review of the Fifteenth Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica which had just appeared. ![]()
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