All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia

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‘Books can be useful from so many points of view. In my early days, for example, I used to use the

Encyclopaedia Britannica

as a trouser-press, and certainly the house that was without it was to be pitied.’

Ford Madox Ford, letter to the

Philadelphia Inquirer

, September 1929

‘This great mass of human knowledge – so vast in its range that not even its editors can hope to read all through the complete work.’

BBC News report on the fourteenth edition of

Encyclopaedia Britannica

, 1951

Introduction

On Friday, 4 June 2021, I made peterhodgson1959 an offer for his encyclopaedias. He was selling what he described on eBay as ‘Encyclopedia britannica pre-assembly suppliment set 4th, 5th & 6th editions’. Seven tall volumes, condition ‘acceptable’. They dated from 1815 to 1824, with articles on acoustics, aeronautics and Spain. I was intrigued by the prospect of a twenty-nine-page entry on Chivalry, and frightened by the forty-page treatise on Equations. I hoped to learn what 1819 knew about Egypt, and what 1824 understood about James Watt.

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