The story
1996
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., has published one of the world's finest encyclopedias for more than two centuries. The Britannica is respected throughout the world for its combination of breadth and thoroughness in its treatment of everything from the Punic Wars to quantum mechanics, and many of its articles, written by outstanding scholars in their respective fields, are masterpieces of compact erudition unlike anything else in the field of learning. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., markets the Britannica in more than 100 countries around the world and is also the parent company of Merriam-Webster, Inc., publishers of the famed dictionaries. The popularity of personal computers and the Internet have had a profound impact on the company, which now relies largely on sales of CD-ROM versions of the Encyclopaedia and the subscriptions of online educational users to stay afloat. Since its purchase in 1996 by financier Jacob Safra, the company has dropped its home sales program and has put the encyclopedia online for free via the advertising-supported Britannica.com, a sister company.
18th Century Origins in Scotland
The Encyclopaedia Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 'by a society of gentlemen in Scotland, printed in Edinburgh for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, and sold by Colin Macfarquhar at his printing office in Nicolson-street,' as the First Edition's title page informed its readers. The idea of uniting in a single publication all aspects of human knowledge went back at least to Roman times, but it was in the 18th-century, the Age of Enlightenment, that encyclopedias in the modern form began to appear in Europe. The French Encyclopedie, first published in 1751, became the symbol of French radical humanism and generated international controversy for its allegedly blasphemous philosophy, but there is no evidence that the creators of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were directly inspired by the fame of the Encyclopedie (which in fact was begun as a translation of an earlier work by the Englishman Ephraim Chambers).
18th Century Origins in Scotland The Encyclopaedia Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 'by a society of gentlemen in Scotland, printed in Edinburgh for A.
1809–1827
Andrew Bell, a prosperous engraver of Edinburgh, and printer Colin Macfarquhar were convinced that the English-speaking world could use a reference work featuring substantial treatises on the arts, sciences, and trades combined alphabetically with shorter entries defining important terms and concepts. The two men engaged William Smellie, a 28-year-old scholar at the University of Edinburgh, as general editor of the First Edition of their proposed Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was published and sold in 100 parts between 1768 and 1771. The Encyclopaedia contained 2,659 pages, including articles borrowed from such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin (on electricity) and John Locke (on human understanding). The editors themselves wrote many of the shorter articles, while the longest pieces ('Surgery' and 'Anatomy') were treatises of well over 100 pages each. The new encyclopedia sold well, and its editors began immediate preparations for a second, much larger edition.
James Tytler succeeded Smellie as editor of the Second Edition, which was published between 1777 and 1784 in ten volumes totaling 8,595 pages and 340 copperplates engraved by Bell. The Second Edition was among the first encyclopedias to include articles on history and biography, two subjects which have since become standard. It was followed by a Third Edition of 18 volumes completed in 1797, edited by Macfarquhar and George Glieg, later a bishop and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. (Macfarquhar died in 1793 at the age of 48, 'worn out,' as later publisher Archibald Constable put it, 'by fatigue and anxiety of mind.') By this time the Britannica was well known and widely sought after; the Third Edition sold between 10,000 and 13,000 copies and is said to have returned the substantial profit of £42,000 to Andrew Bell, its sole proprietor after the death of Macfarquhar.
Bell remained the owner and manager of the Britannica until his own death in 1809, after which his heirs sold the company's stock and copyrights for £13,500 to Archibald Constable, an Edinburgh publisher. Constable was an able promoter and manager, and under his direction the Britannica made important advances in the quality of its writing and increased sales both in Great Britain and the United States. Constable's Fifth Edition of 1817 was criticized as little more than a reprint of Bell's Fourth, but soon afterward a six-volume Supplement appeared which cemented the reputation of the Britannica as the premier encyclopedia of the English-speaking world. Constable was the first Britannica publisher to solicit new articles from the leading scholars and artists of his day, and among the contributors to the Supplement and the Sixth Edition, both completed in 1824, were such distinguished men of letters as William Hazlitt, Walter Scott, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus. Constable died in 1827, before he could make a start on the planned Seventh Edition.
The 1800s: The A & C Black Era