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| History | |
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Main article: History of the Encyclopædia Britannica
Ownership has changed many times, past owners including the Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and William Benton. The present owner of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. is Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire and actor. Recent advances in information technology and the rise of electronic encyclopedias such as Encarta and Wikipedia have reduced the demand for print encyclopedias.[1] To remain competitive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has stressed the reputation of the Britannica, reduced its price and production costs, and developed electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD, and the World Wide Web. Since the early 1930s, the company has promoted spin-off reference works.[2]
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| Editions | |
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Title page of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
The Britannica has been issued in 15 editions, with multi-volume supplements to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the Table below). The 10th edition was only a supplement to the 9th, just as the 12th and 13th editions were supplements to the 11th. The 15th underwent massive re-organisation in 1985, but the updated, current version is still known as the 15th.
Throughout history, the Britannica has had two aims: to be an excellent reference book and to provide educational material.[3] In 1974, the 15th edition adopted a third goal: to systematise all human knowledge.[4] The history of the Britannica can be divided into five eras, punctuated by changes in management or re-organisation of the dictionary.
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| 1768–1826 | |
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In the first era (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the Britannica was managed and published by its founders, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, by Archibald Constable, and by others. The Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh as the Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon a New Plan. In part, it was conceived in reaction to the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (published 1751–1772), which had been inspired by Chambers's Cyclopaedia (first edition 1728). The Britannica was primarily a Scottish enterprise; it is one of the most enduring legacies of the Scottish Enlightenment.[5] In this era, the Britannica moved from being a three-volume set (1st edition) compiled by one young editor—William Smellie[6]—to a well known[7] 20-volume set written by numerous authorities. Several other encyclopaedias competed throughout this period, among them editions of Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia and Coleridge's Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.[8] and David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia.
The early 19th-century editions of Encyclopædia Britannica included seminal research such as Thomas Young's article on Egypt, which included the translation of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone (pictured).
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| 1827–1901 | |
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During the second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the Britannica was managed by the Edinburgh publishing firm, A & C Black. Although some contributors were again recruited through friendships of the chief editors, notably Macvey Napier, others were attracted by the Britannica's reputation. The contributors often came from other countries and included the world's most respected authorities in their fields. A general index of all articles was included for the first time in the 7th edition, a practice maintained until 1974. The first English-born editor-in-chief was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who oversaw the production of the 9th edition; dubbed the "Scholar's Edition", the 9th is the most scholarly Britannica.[9][10] After 1880, Baynes was assisted by William Robertson Smith.[11] No biographies of living persons were included.[12] James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Huxley were special advisors on science.[13] However, by the close of the 19th century, the 9th edition was outdated and the Britannica faced financial difficulties.
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| 1901–1973 | |
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In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–73), the Britannica was managed by American businessmen who introduced direct marketing and door-to-door sales. The American owners gradually simplified articles, making them less scholarly for a mass market. The 10th edition was a nine-volume supplement to the 9th, but the 11th edition was a completely new work, and is still praised for excellence; its owner, Horace Hooper, lavished enormous effort on its perfection.[10] When Hooper fell into financial difficulties, the Britannica was managed by Sears Roebuck for 18 years (1920–23, 1928–43). In 1932, the vice-president of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell, assumed presidency of the Britannica; in 1936, he began the policy of continuous revision. This was a departure from earlier practice, in which the articles were not changed until a new edition was produced, at roughly 25-year intervals, some articles unchanged from earlier editions.[2] Powell developed new educational products that built upon the Britannica's reputation. In 1943, ownership passed to William Benton, who managed the Britannica until his death in 1973. Benton set up the Benton Foundation, which managed the Britannica until 1996. In 1968, near the end of this era, the Britannica celebrated its bicentennial.
U.S. advertisement for the 11th edition from the May 1913 issue of National Geographic Magazine
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| 1974–1994 | |
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In the fourth era (15th edition, 1974–94), the Britannica introduced its 15th edition, which was re-organised into three parts: the Micropædia, the Macropædia, and the Propædia. Under Mortimer J. Adler (member of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and its chair from 1974; director of editorial planning for the 15th edition of Britannica from 1965),[14] the Britannica sought not only to be a good reference work and educational tool but to systematise all human knowledge. The absence of a separate index and the grouping of articles into parallel encyclopaedias (the Micro- and Macropædia) provoked a "firestorm of criticism" of the initial 15th edition.[9][15] In response, the 15th edition was completely re-organised and indexed for a re-release in 1985. This second version of the 15th edition continues to be published and revised; the latest version is the 2010 print version. The official title of the 15th edition is the New Encyclopædia Britannica, although it has also been promoted as Britannica 3.[9]
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| 1994–present | |
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In the fifth era (1994–present), digital versions have been developed and released on optical media and online. In 1996, the Britannica was bought by Jacqui Safra at well below its estimated value, owing to the company's financial difficulties. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc split in 1999. One part retained the company name and developed the print version, and the other, Britannica.com Inc., developed digital versions. Since 2001, the two companies shared a CEO, originally Ilan Yeshua, who has continued Powell's strategy of introducing new products with the Britannica name.
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| Dedications | |
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The Britannica was dedicated to the reigning British monarch from 1788 to 1901 and then, upon its sale to an American partnership, to the British monarch and the President of the United States.[9] Thus, the 11th edition is "dedicated by Permission to His Majesty George the Fifth, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, and to William Howard Taft, President of the United States of America."[16] The order of the dedications has changed with the relative power of the United States and Britain, and with relative sales; the 1954 version of the 14th edition is "Dedicated by Permission to the Heads of the Two English-Speaking Peoples, Dwight David Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second."[17] Consistent with this tradition, the 2007 version of the current 15th edition was "dedicated by permission to the current President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II,"[18] while the 2010 version of the current 15th edition is "dedicated by permission to Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II."[19]
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| Reputation | |
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A copperplate by Andrew Bell from the 1st edition.
Since the 3rd edition, the Britannica has enjoyed a popular and critical reputation for general excellence.[9][20][21] Various editions from the 3rd to the 9th were pirated for sale in the United States,[10] beginning with Dobson's Encyclopædia.[22] On the release of the 14th edition, Time magazine dubbed the Britannica the "Patriarch of the Library".[23] In a related advertisement, naturalist William Beebe was quoted as saying that the Britannica was "beyond comparison because there is no competitor."[24] References to the Britannica can be found throughout English literature, most notably in one of Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Red-Headed League". The tale was highlighted by the Lord Mayor of London, Gilbert Inglefield, at the bicentennial of the Britannica.[25]
The Britannica has a reputation for summarising knowledge.[26] To further their education, many have devoted themselves to reading the entire Britannica, taking anywhere from three to 22 years to do so.[10] When Fat'h Ali became the Shah of Persia in 1797, he was given a set of the Britannica's 3rd edition, which he read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopædia Britannica."[25] Writer George Bernard Shaw claimed to have read the complete 9th edition—except for the science articles[10]—and Richard Evelyn Byrd took the Britannica as reading material for his five-month stay at the South Pole in 1934, while Philip Beaver read it during a sailing expedition. More recently, A.J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire magazine, read the entire 2002 version of the 15th edition, describing his experiences in the well-received 2004 book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. Only two people are known to have read two independent editions: the author C. S. Forester[10] and Amos Urban Shirk, an American businessman, who read the 11th and 14th editions, devoting roughly three hours per night for four and a half years to read the 11th.[27] Several editors-in-chief of the Britannica are likely to have read their editions completely, such as William Smellie (1st edition), William Robertson Smith (9th edition), and Walter Yust (14th edition).
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| Awards | |
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The online Britannica won the 2005 Codie award for "Best Online Consumer Information Service";[28] the Codie awards are granted yearly by the Software and Information Industry Association to recognise the best products among categories of software. In 2006, the Britannica was again a finalist.[29] Similarly, the CD/DVD-ROM version of the Britannica received the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers,[30] and Codie awards in 2000, 2001 and 2002.[31][32] On 15 July 2009, Encyclopædia Britannica was awarded a spot as one of "Top Ten Superbrands in the UK" by a panel of more than 2,000 independent reviewers, as reported by the BBC.[33]
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| Coverage of topics | |
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Topics are chosen in part by reference to the Propædia "Outline of Knowledge".[4] The bulk of the Britannica is devoted to geography (26% of the Macropædia), biography (14%), biology and medicine (11%), literature (7%), physics and astronomy (6%), religion (5%), art (4%), Western philosophy (4%), and law (3%).[9] A complementary study of the Micropædia found that geography accounted for 25% of articles, science 18%, social sciences 17%, biography 17%, and all other humanities 25%.[20] Writing in 1992, one reviewer judged that the "range, depth, and catholicity of coverage [of the Britannica] are unsurpassed by any other general encyclopedia."[34]
The Britannica does not cover topics in equivalent detail; for example, the whole of Buddhism and most other religions is covered in a single Macropædia article, whereas 14 articles are devoted to Christianity, comprising nearly half of all religion articles.[35] However, the Britannica has been lauded as the least biased of general encyclopedias marketed to Western readers[9] and praised for its biographies of important women of all eras.[20]
It can be stated without fear of contradiction that the 15th edition of the Britannica accords non-Western cultural, social, and scientific developments more notice than any general English-language encyclopedia currently on the market.
—Kenneth Kister, in Kister's Best Encyclopedias (1994)
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| Criticisms | |
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The Britannica has received criticism, especially as editions become outdated. It is expensive to produce a completely new edition of the Britannica,[36] and its editors delay for as long as fiscally sensible (usually about 25 years).[2] For example, despite continuous revision, the 14th edition had become outdated after 35 years (1929–1964). When American physicist Harvey Einbinder detailed its failings in his 1964 book, The Myth of the Britannica,[37] the encyclopaedia was provoked to produce the 15th edition, which required 10 years of work.[9] It is still difficult to keep the Britannica current; one recent critic writes, "it is not difficult to find articles that are out-of-date or in need of revision", noting that the longer Macropædia articles are more likely to be outdated than the shorter Micropædia articles.[9] Information in the Micropædia is sometimes inconsistent with the corresponding Macropædia article(s), mainly because of the failure to update one or the other.[20][21] The bibliographies of the Macropædia articles have been criticised for being more out-of-date than the articles themselves.[9][20][21]
While Britannica's authors have included authorities such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Leon Trotsky, some have been criticised for lack of expertise:[38]
With a temerity almost appalling, [the Britannica contributor, Mr. Philips] ranges over nearly the whole field of European history, political, social, ecclesiastical... The grievance is that [this work] lacks authority. This, too—this reliance on editorial energy instead of on ripe special learning—may, alas, be also counted an "Americanizing": for certainly nothing has so cheapened the scholarship of our American encyclopaedias.
—Prof. George L. Burr, in the American Historical Review (1911)
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| Bias | |
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Authorities ranging from Virginia Woolf to professors criticised the 11th edition for having bourgeois and old-fashioned opinions on art, literature, and social sciences.[26] A contemporary Cornell professor, Edward B. Titchener, wrote in 1912, "the new Britannica does not reproduce the psychological atmosphere of its day and generation... Despite the halo of authority, and despite the scrutiny of the staff, the great bulk of the secondary articles in general psychology ... are not adapted to the requirements of the intelligent reader."[39]
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| Editorial choices | |
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The Britannica is occasionally criticised for its editorial choices. Given its roughly constant size, the encyclopaedia has needed to reduce or eliminate some topics to accommodate others, resulting in controversial decisions. The initial 15th edition (1974–1985) was faulted for having reduced or eliminated coverage of children's literature, military decorations, and the French poet Joachim du Bellay; editorial mistakes were also alleged, such as inconsistent sorting of Japanese biographies.[40] Its elimination of the index was condemned, as was the apparently arbitrary division of articles into the Micropædia and Macropædia.[9][15] Summing up, one critic called the initial 15th edition a "qualified failure...[that] cares more for juggling its format than for preserving information."[40] More recently, reviewers from the American Library Association were surprised to find that most educational articles had been eliminated from the 1992 Macropædia, along with the article on psychology.[41]
Britannica-appointed contributors are occasionally mistaken or unscientific. A notorious instance from the Britannica's early years is the rejection of Newtonian gravity by George Gleig, the chief editor of the 3rd edition (1788–1797), who wrote that gravity was caused by the classical element of fire.[10] However, the Britannica has also staunchly defended a scientific approach to emotional topics, as it did with William Robertson Smith's articles on religion in the 9th edition, particularly his article stating that the Bible was not historically accurate (1875).[10]
Wendy Doniger, who is on the editorial board of Britannica,[42] has been criticized for her negative portrayal of Hinduism.[43][44] Britannica's presentation of Hinduism has also been criticized.[45]
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| Racism and sexism | |
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Critics have charged past editions with racism and sexism.[26][46] For instance, the 11th edition (1910–1911) characterises the Ku Klux Klan as protecting the white race and restoring order to the American South after the American Civil War, citing the need to "control the negro", and "the frequent occurrence of the crime of rape by negro men upon white women."[47][48] Similarly, the "Civilization" article argues for eugenics, stating that it is irrational to "propagate low orders of intelligence, to feed the ranks of paupers, defectives and criminals ... which to-day constitute so threatening an obstacle to racial progress."[49] The 11th edition has no biography of Marie Curie, despite her winning of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, although she is mentioned briefly under the biography of her husband Pierre Curie.[50] The Britannica employed a large female editorial staff that wrote hundreds of articles for which they were not given credit.[26]
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| Inaccuracy | |
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In 1912 mathematician L. C. Karpinski criticised the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition for inaccuracies in articles on the history of mathematics, none of which had been written by specialists.[51]
In 1917, art critic Willard Huntington Wright published Misinforming a Nation,[52] which highlighted inaccuracies and English biases of the Eleventh Edition, particularly in humanities. Many of Wright's criticisms were addressed in later editions. However, his book was denounced as a polemic one by some contemporary reviewers; for example, the New York Times wrote that a "spiteful and shallow temper...pervades the book", while The New Republic opined, "it is unfortunate for Mr Wright's remorseless purpose that he has proceeded in an unscientific spirit and given so little objective justification of his criticism."[10]
English writer and former priest Joseph McCabe claimed in Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1947) that Britannica was censored under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church after the 11th edition.[53]
American physicist Harvey Einbinder detailed failings of the 14th edition in his 1964 book, The Myth of the Britannica.
An Irish newspaper, The Evening Herald, based in Dublin, said in February 2010 that Britannica offers a "farcically inaccurate version" of the country's history. An opposition Senator said: "This screwy version of events is a gross insult to our people and our history. That it is being used to educate our children is even more ridiculous." The Department of Education and Science, which paid €450,000 to give children in school online access to the Encyclopaedia, said it was "disappointed".[54][55]
The Britannica has always conceded that errors are inevitable. Speaking of the 3rd edition (1788–1797), its chief editor George Gleig wrote that "perfection seems to be incompatible with the nature of works constructed on such a plan, and embracing such a variety of subjects." More recently (March 2006), the Britannica wrote that "we in no way mean to imply that Britannica is error-free; we have never made such a claim."[56] The sentiment is expressed by its original editor, William Smellie:
With regard to errors in general, whether falling under the denomination of mental, typographical or accidental, we are conscious of being able to point out a greater number than any critic whatever. Men who are acquainted with the innumerable difficulties of attending the execution of a work of such an extensive nature will make proper allowances. To these we appeal, and shall rest satisfied with the judgment they pronounce.
—William Smellie, in the Preface to the 1st edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
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| Present status | |
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15th edition of the Britannica. The initial volume with the green spine is the Propædia; the red-spined and black-spined volumes are the Micropædia and the Macropædia, respectively. The last three volumes are the 2002 Book of the Year (black spine) and the two-volume index (cyan spine).
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