Encyclopaedia Britannica
Rare and early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The Encyclopaedia Britannia, in its first edition a publication of only three, albeit stout, volumes, was compiled by the triumvirate of editor and antiquarian William Smellie (1740–1795), the engraver Andrew Bell (1726–1809), and the printer Colin Macfarquhar (died 1793). One of the most impressive and enduring products of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Encyclopaedia Britannia was indebted for its form to John Harris's Lexicon Technicum, 1704 and Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopedia, 1728, but broke new ground by arranging the entries under subject matter.
The second edition was swollen to 10 volumes, largely by the many contributions of James Tytler, a rackety drunk rescued from debtor’s prison for the purpose. But under the more sophisticated editorship of George Gleig, the Britannica in its third edition was expanded to a massive 20-volume work with authoritative articles. The fourth (1810) and fifth (1815) editions were relatively minor revisions of the third.
The copyright was bought in 1812 by Archibald Constable, who expanded the sixth edition to 25 volumes. He paid lavish sums to writers and scholars like Dugald Stewart the philosopher, John Playfair the mathematician, and Walter Scott, naming these eminent contributors for the first time, a factor which helped cement the Encyclopaedia Britannia’s position as the most distinguished compendium of knowledge of its day.
With the bankruptcy of Constable’s publishing house, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was taken over by the Edinburgh publishers A. & C. Black. Their ninth edition of 1875–89, dubbed “the Scholar’s Edition”, is widely regarded as the most authoritative of their proprietorship.
Towards the end of the century sales began to flag, and the rights were acquired by an American businessman, Horace Everett Hooper (1859–1922), who published the eleventh edition, generally admired for its lucidity. Sears Roebuck issued by mail-order a photographic reprint of that edition, physically smaller but complete, dubbed the Handy Volume edition (1915–16), often sold with an accompanying book case. Later editions continued the policy of popularizing the Britannica for the American mass market, but at the expense of scholarship.
