I.

Introduction

Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia, reference work that provides information on a range of subjects. Encyclopedias can encompass many areas of interest, or they can focus on a particular field of study, such as a geographic area, an ethnic group, a time period, or an academic discipline. Most encyclopedias have hundreds or thousands of articles, each addressing a distinct topic. Many of the articles contain illustrations, maps, photographs, and other media elements that help readers understand concepts. For centuries encyclopedias were published as multivolume sets of books, but in the late 20th century they appeared in new formats, such as compact disc (CD-ROM), digital versatile disc (DVD), and on the Internet.

The term encyclopedia comes from the Greek words enkyklios paideia, meaning “comprehensive education” and originally signifying instruction in all branches of knowledge, or a comprehensive education in a specific subject. This concept gave rise to the idea of collecting the materials for such instruction into a single work, in which the contents and relations of the various arts and sciences would be explained systematically. Attempts to produce books of this kind were made more than 2,000 years ago, although the name encyclopedia was not given to such works until the 16th century.

II.

Early Works of General Knowledge

Early encyclopedias were intended for continuous reading and study and represented the accumulated learning of their individual authors. They were designed to serve as all-inclusive textbooks and thus differed from modern encyclopedias, which serve chiefly as reference sources and are generally the products of cooperative scholarship among many people.

A.

Encyclopedias in the Ancient World

Although Greek philosopher Aristotle is sometimes referred to as the “father of encyclopedias” because of the wide range of subjects in his works and his attempts to summarize existing knowledge, the first encyclopedia is said to have been compiled in the 4th century bc by Greek philosopher Speusippus, a disciple of Greek philosopher Plato. However, no remnant of Speusippus’s work remains. The first Roman encyclopedist was Marcus Terentius Varro. His encyclopedia of the liberal arts was entitled Disciplinae (The Disciplines, 30 bc). It had nine books, one each for grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, music, medicine, and architecture. None of the books has survived.

The oldest complete encyclopedia still in existence is the Historia Naturalis (Natural History, about ad 77) of Roman writer Pliny the Elder. It is an encyclopedia of natural science. The topics treated in its 37 books and 2,493 chapters include mathematical and physical descriptions of the world; anthropology and human physiology; botany, including agriculture, forestry, and horticulture; zoology; and mineralogy, together with the use of metals and precious stones in the arts. The work remained popular for almost 1,500 years.

B.

Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

About the beginning of the 5th century ad, Martianus Minneus Felix Capella, a Latin writer who probably practiced law in Carthage (in what is now Tunisia), composed an encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts entitled De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, about 400). In the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) this work was highly esteemed and extensively used as a textbook. However, it has little if anything in common with modern encyclopedias. An allegory in prose and verse, the work describes the marriage of the Roman god Mercury with the “very learned maiden” Philologia (philology). In the work the various forms of learning are personified and introduced as bridesmaids. The most notable aspect of the work is the accurate statement that the planets Mercury and Venus revolve about the Sun and not around Earth. This fact was not scientifically accepted until centuries later, in the 1600s.

Another encyclopedic work held in great esteem for many centuries is the Etymologiae (Etymologies, or Origins), compiled in 623 by Spanish ecclesiastic and scholar Saint Isidore of Seville. It deals with the seven liberal arts and includes subjects such as medicine, animals, the Earth, Old Testament antiquities, grammar, war, games, ships, and buildings. In the 9th century, books 7 through 20 of Saint Isidore’s encyclopedia were rearranged in 22 books of 325 chapters and otherwise edited by Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mainz, Germany. His manner of arrangement, beginning with God and the angels, long remained the traditional manner of arrangement in methodical encyclopedias. Rabanus presented his work to Louis II, king of Germany, in 847. It was first printed in 1473.

The most important of all the early encyclopedias is the Speculum majus (Great Mirror, 1220-1244), compiled by Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais. This work, which sums up the learning of its time, is in four parts (or mirrors) and consists of 80 books. It represents the writings of 450 Greek, Hebrew, and Roman scholars. In 1481, early in the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), English printer and publisher William Caxton translated it and printed it as The Myrrour of the Worlde. More than any other medieval work, the Speculum majus revived interest in classical literature.

Subsequently, numerous works patterned after Vincent’s encyclopedia appeared, but few made any permanent or valuable contribution to knowledge. Italian scholar Brunetto Latini, friend and adviser of Italian poet Dante Alighieri, wrote Li livres dou trésor (The Treasure Books, 1262?-1266) while in exile in France. This work was written in French in order to gain a wider audience than was possible using Latin, which until this time had dominated encyclopedic writing. The work was an enormous, scholarly compendium with a unique section treating the political history of the Italian republics of the 13th century.

In 1559 the Encyclopaedia; seu, Orbis Disciplinarum, tam Sacrarum quam Prophanum Epistemon … of German writer Paul Scalich was published. This survey of the entire circle of science, “sacred and profane,” represented the first use of the term encyclopedia.

All these early compilations of knowledge and many of their successors were unsystematic or even chaotic in form and crude in substance. The problem of coordinating or systematizing all the branches of science remained a challenge until modern times.

In 1620 English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon organized a structure for his Instauratio Magna (The Great Reconstruction), which was intended to constitute an encyclopedia of all knowledge. It has been considered the first of the attempts made with adequate method and genuine philosophic organization, but Bacon never completed the project.

III.

Effects of the Age of Enlightenment

The modern type of encyclopedia was largely the result of the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, a period of intellectual curiosity and experimentation. One of the trends during this time was the increased desire to make reference works useful to a wide audience. Some works continued to use the logical arrangement of the material by subjects. This model was followed by numerous German works of the 18th and 19th centuries that were the products of philosophic schools based on the ideas of German philosophers Baron Christian von Wolff, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. These works include the Lehrbuch der Wissenschaftskunde (Textbook of Scientific Studies, 1792) of Johann Joachim Eschenburg, the Versuch einer systematischen Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften (Attempt at a Systematic Encyclopedia of Science, 1796-1798) by Wilhelm Traugott Krug, and Hegel’s own Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 1817).

In general, however, the arrangement of topics by subject gave way to an alphabetical arrangement by key words, names, or special topics. In this manner the form of the encyclopedia became similar to that of the dictionary, and the word dictionary (or lexicon) has been used in the title of many encyclopedic works.

A.

New Approaches to Creating an Encyclopedia

The encyclopedia eventually became a work of reference in the strictest sense of the word: a work for occasional use, in which readers can locate a particular topic or item of information under the proper term in alphabetical order. To varying degrees, modern works have been based on this practical aim and method. Some are more like dictionaries and subdivide their material into many short articles. Others combine the material as much as possible under broad titles. In its extreme form, the short-entry approach has given rise to the modern encyclopedic dictionary and encyclopedias such as the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX^e siècle (Great Universal Dictionary of the 19th Century) of French grammarian, lexicographer, and encyclopedist Pierre Athanase Larousse. The alternate approach has given rise to encyclopedias that are basically collections of monographs (longer pieces of writing on single topics).

Most modern encyclopedias employ both principles to varying degrees, but they tend more toward the dictionary type because it can serve both the specialized and general reader. Because information changes so rapidly, the short-entry approach also allows publishers more flexibility in adding topics to their encyclopedias. Most encyclopedia publishers employ a staff of specialists, both as compilers and as editors. The editors, who include scientists, historians, geographers, and various other specialists, collect knowledge and present it in a manner that is accurate yet clear enough for general readers to understand.

B.

Dictionary-Style Encyclopedias

The first notable encyclopedia of the dictionary type appeared in 1674: Le grand dictionnaire historique, ou mélange curieux de l’histoire sacrée et profane (The Great Historical Dictionary, or Anthology of Sacred and Secular History), by French priest and scholar Louis Moreri, is a special dictionary of history, mythology, genealogy, and biography. It was revised many times and was translated into English, German, Spanish, and Italian.

Among those who undertook the task of correcting Moreri’s original errors and omissions was French philosopher and critic Pierre Bayle, whose Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary, 2 volumes, 1697) is the most famous encyclopedic work of the 17th century. It was frequently translated and reissued, and it won a permanent place in the history of literature as well as lexicography because of the simplicity and clearness of its style.

In England the dictionary method was followed by John Harris, who compiled a Lexicon Technicum; or an Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves, published first in one volume in 1704 and then in a second edition of two volumes from 1708 to 1710. This work is generally considered the first alphabetically arranged encyclopedia in the English language. A supplement “by a society of gentlemen” appeared in 1744 and extended the contents to cover the customary range of subjects; the text was illustrated with diagrams and figures. Harris’s amended Lexicon long remained in popular use.

In Germany an excellent Lexicon Universale (4 volumes, 1677-1683) was compiled by Johann Jacob Hoffmann. Notable also are the lexicons edited by Johann Hübner in 1704 and 1712. They were the products of many minds and furnish the first example of the systematic collaboration of scholars that characterizes the modern encyclopedia. An English work by Ephraim Chambers—Cyclopaedia; or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Containing an Explanation of the Terms and an Account of the Things signified thereby in the several Arts … and … Sciences,… Compiled from the Best Authors …, in two volumes (1728)—is more comprehensive than Harris’s Lexicon. The systematic use of cross-references, enabling the reader to obtain a connected view of general subjects, was a particularly valuable contribution. The Cyclopaedia went through a number of editions during Chambers’s lifetime, and he has commonly been considered the father of English encyclopedic lexicography.

Chambers’s work was reedited by Abraham Rees in 1778 and again between 1781 and 1786, and it was finally brought out as the valuable New Cyclopaedia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (45 volumes, 1802-1820). This work also influenced similar literature on the European continent. A translation of the original Cyclopaedia, issued in Venice (9 volumes, 1748-1749), was the first completed Italian encyclopedia.

C.

Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie

A French translation of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia was the foundation of the famous Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Encyclopedia or Systematic Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Trades), commonly called the Encyclopédie. The task of revising the translation of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia was given to French encyclopedist, philosopher, and dramatist Denis Diderot. In his hands it developed into an immense intellectual enterprise. Associated with Diderot was a large group of the most distinguished scholars of the age, including mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert, who undertook the editing of the mathematical articles and wrote the famous preface. Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and scholar Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton also worked on the project. The greater part of the work, however, fell to Diderot, who was specially charged with the articles relating to the arts and trades, as well as those on history and ancient philosophy. In addition, he undertook the general revision and coordination of the material contributed by the others.

In form the Encyclopédie is essentially an encyclopedic dictionary, containing both the common words of the language and proper names, accompanied by lexical descriptions and definitions and also, in most cases, by encyclopedic comments. Its purpose as described in its preface was “to exhibit as far as possible the order and system of human knowledge, and as a dictionnaire raisonné [descriptive dictionary] of the sciences, the arts, and trades, to contain the fundamental principles and the most essential details of every science and every art, whether liberal or mechanical.”

The Encyclopédie presented definite philosophical views and was considered radical by conservative elements of society, who subjected it to condemnation and its editor to persecution. This aspect of the Encyclopédie has given it an important place in the history of modern thought. Those who were associated with it or accepted its views became identified as Encyclopedists, a term that denoted a definite social philosophy and defined a movement. The Encyclopédie was published between 1751 and 1772 in 28 volumes, including 11 volumes of illustration plates. Five supplementary volumes with more than 200 plates appeared in 1776 and 1777, and an analytical table of contents in two volumes appeared in 1780. Many editions followed.

In 1781 French publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke published the plan of an encyclopedia that divided the material of Diderot’s work into a series of independent dictionaries of particular subjects, to be compiled by special editors. This scheme was carried out, after Panckoucke’s death, in 167 volumes. Each of its 51 parts covered a separate subject, and it was completed in 1832.

D.

Monographic Encyclopedias

As the dictionary-style encyclopedia grew in importance, so did the monographic encyclopedia. A major example is the Encyclopædia Britannica, first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 100 parts from 1768 to 1771. It was then bound into three volumes. This work was planned by a “Society of Gentlemen” composed of three Scots: editor William Smellie, who wrote the principal articles, printer Colin Macfarquhar, and engraver Andrew Bell. It contained distinct treatises and long articles but also included definitions of technical and other terms in alphabetical order. These general characteristics have been retained in each of the successive editions since the 18th century.

The second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica was published between 1777 and 1784, also in parts, and was eventually accumulated in ten volumes. After publication of the 9th edition, the encyclopedia was purchased by American publishers Horace Hooper and Walter M. Jackson in 1901. The 11th edition (29 volumes), noted for its scholarship and careful editing, was issued in 1911. In 1920 the encyclopedia was bought by Sears, Roebuck and Co., but it retained Horace Hooper as its publisher.

An extreme example of the monographic encyclopedia is the Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, in alphabetischer Folge (Universal Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts, in Alphabetical Order), edited by Germans Johann Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber. The work contained articles as long as 1,000 pages and was begun in 1818. The 168th and final volume was issued in 1914.

One of the most useful and successful of the 19th-century reference works was the Konversations-Lexikon (Conversation-Dictionary), published between 1796 and 1811 by German lexicographer Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus. Konversations-Lexikon formed the basis of the original Encyclopedia Americana (1829-1833) and of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia (10 volumes, 1859-1868), a successful English work named after British publishers Robert Chambers and his brother William that currently comprises 15 volumes (new revised edition, 1973). After 1928 Konversations-Lexikon became known as Der grosse Brockhaus (The Great Brockhaus).

In the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Bolshaya sovetskaya entsiklopedya (Great Soviet Encyclopedia) was first published between 1926 and 1947 in 64 volumes. A second edition in 51 volumes appeared between 1950 and 1958. A 30-volume third edition began publication in 1970 and was completed in 1979. An English version, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, a translation of the third edition, was published in 32 volumes in 1983.

IV.

Encyclopedias in the Eastern World

Over the centuries many encyclopedias have been produced in China. Most of them are of great length and consist of anthologies of significant literary and historical texts and biographies, arranged according to various classifications. The first known Chinese encyclopedia was The Emperor's Mirror (about ad 220), but it has not survived. The first modern encyclopedia was published in 1915. The first multivolume Chinese encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of China, began publication in 1982 with a volume on astronomy. It was completed in 1993 and includes 74 monographic volumes covering the fields of philosophy, the humanities, the social and natural sciences, and technology. The illustrated, signed articles include bibliographies. A yearbook was also begun to complement the encyclopedia; it includes the latest information on events in China.

In Japan, The Great Japanese Encyclopedia (10 volumes, 1908-1919), although similar to modern Western works, is largely an anthology of scientific texts. More general reference sources include Japonica (19 volumes, 1967-1972) and the Encyclopedia Heibonsha (1984-1985).

Arabic encyclopedias, like the Chinese works, were anthologies of texts designed to help public officials with their varied administrative duties. The earliest Arabic encyclopedia, The Best Traditions, appeared in the 9th century. The ten-volume collection of poetry and prose is arranged by topic and set the example for later works. A modern work, the Global Arabic Encyclopedia, was published in 1996.

V.

North American Encyclopedias

The encyclopedic works published in North America during the 19th and 20th centuries included many works of general reference in various formats, designed for general readers or specifically for younger readers. Most of these encyclopedias, in addition to being frequently revised, were kept current with annual yearbooks that supplemented the basic encyclopedia articles.

The 30-volume Encyclopedia Americana was originally compiled in 1829 by German American publicist and educator Francis Lieber. Other general reference works that appeared included the 1-volume Columbia Encyclopedia (first edition, 1935; sixth edition, The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2000), the 24-volume Collier’s Encyclopedia (first edition, 1949-1951), and the 20-volume Encyclopedia International (first edition, 1963).

The 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1929) was fully revised and reissued in 24 volumes. In 1974 a completely new edition (15th edition, 30 volumes) appeared, entitled the New Encyclopædia Britannica and familiarly known as Britannica 3. The format included a 1-volume Propaedia outlining the “circle of modern knowledge,” a 10-volume Micropaedia with ready reference entries, and a 19-volume Macropaedia containing longer articles offering “knowledge in depth.” Revised in 32 volumes in 1985, the set later included a 2-volume index, a 1-volume Propaedia, a 12-volume Micropaedia, and a 17-volume Macropaedia.

Other American encyclopedias for the general adult reader included the Random House Encyclopedia (first edition, 1977; revised edition, 1990), published in two sections: a Colorpedia made up of long articles on broad topics and an Alphapedia of short articles that are alphabetically arranged. The 21-volume Academic American Encyclopedia (first edition 1980) was based on the short-entry approach. The Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia was first published in 1912 and was revised many times after that. The 1971 edition, Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, had 29 volumes.

A three-volume Canadian Encyclopedia (1st edition, 1985), designed to replace Encyclopedia Canadiana (10 volumes; 11th edition, 1975), was revised and expanded to four volumes in 1988. It was updated and revised as a single-volume edition in 2000. Comprehensive in the scope of subjects it covered, the work maintained a Canadian emphasis throughout.

Some encyclopedias were aimed at younger readers. These works tended to use relatively basic vocabulary while still exploring topics in depth. Notable among these encyclopedias were the 22-volume World Book Encyclopedia (first edition, 1917); the 15-volume Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia (first edition, 1922), which later became the 26-volume Compton’s Encyclopedia; and the 21-volume New Book of Knowledge (first edition, 1966), published by Grolier and based on the older Book of Knowledge (first edition, 1910). In 1972 Funk & Wagnalls first published the Young Students Encyclopedia, in 20 volumes. It was revised and released under the title Young Students Learning Library in 1988.

VI.

Recent Developments in Encyclopedia Publishing

Beginning in the 1980s encyclopedia publishing expanded to nonprint formats—first through dial-up systems, then by using compact discs (CD-ROMs) and digital versatile discs (DVDs), and finally through the Internet. In the early 1980s Academic American Encyclopedia, published by Grolier, became available online through a number of information services. Computer users accessed the encyclopedia by means of a modem that used telephone lines to link the computer to the text in the Academic American Encyclopedia database.

In the 1980s, encyclopedia content became available on computers in CD-ROM format. Encyclopedias in this format integrated sound, pictures, animation, and text. The first such encyclopedia was produced by Grolier in 1985. Compton’s Multimedia Encyclopedia was released in CD-ROM format in 1989.

In 1993 the Microsoft Corporation released Encarta Encyclopedia, a general multimedia encyclopedia on CD-ROM without an accompanying multivolume book set. Encyclopædia Britannica’s first electronic version was also published in 1993. A multimedia version of World Book Encyclopedia appeared on CD-ROM in 1995, although World Book had previously released an electronic encyclopedia called the Information Finder. The Canadian Encyclopedia appeared on CD-ROM in 1996. In 1999 Encarta Africana, dealing with the experiences of Africans, African Americans, and other people of African descent, became one of the first encyclopedias to appear first in CD-ROM format, and then later in print.

In December 1997 Encarta Encyclopedia became the first encyclopedia to be published in the DVD format. DVDs can store much more information than CD-ROMs, allowing greater use of complex multimedia features such as videos, animations, and interactivities.

Another innovation in encyclopedia publishing in the late 1990s involved the Internet. The Internet was first developed in the 1960s, but it was not until the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1989 that it became feasible to transfer multimedia information over computer networks. By the late 1990s computers and modems were powerful enough to allow encyclopedia publishers to develop online versions of their products. The online versions typically included all the text of the print and electronic disc versions, as well as much of the multimedia. The Internet also enabled publishers of CD-ROM encyclopedias to update the content of the CD-ROM. In 1995 Encarta published the first hybrid online-CD-ROM encyclopedia. This hybrid version could be updated monthly by downloading content from the Internet. The content was then seamlessly integrated with the content on the CD-ROM. Several later versions enabled weekly updates, and other CD-ROM encyclopedia publishers followed suit, adopting similar functionality.

Online publication, however, freed readers from having to install the products from CD-ROMs or DVDs. The new system also allowed encyclopedia editors to update their products much more frequently than they could when publishing on paper or on electronic disc. By the year 2000, several major North American encyclopedias—including Compton’s Encyclopedia, Encarta Encyclopedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, the New Book of Knowledge published by Groliers, and the World Book Encyclopedia—were available online.

In the early 21st century a new type of online encyclopedia, known as Wikipedia, enabled readers to create and edit encyclopedia articles. A wiki is a type of server software that enables users to create or alter content on a Web page. Wikipedia was closely associated with the open source software movement and rapidly expanded to include hundreds of thousands of articles, many on popular culture topics, in a number of languages. The philosophy behind Wikipedia was that a community of volunteers could pool their knowledge and crosscheck their work to create a free encyclopedia. Articles were often written by enthusiasts, rather than experts, and they remained unsigned and “open” to revision. Due to Wikipedia’s open-access policy, it was sometimes the target of vandalism or abuse. However, a crew of volunteer editors policed the site, usually identifying malicious content quickly and removing it. In cases where a subject was particularly controversial the article could be “locked” so that further alterations or amendments could not be made. Wikipedia became immensely popular as more and more people used the Web as a research tool, and it succeeded in receiving top rankings in search engine results.

A variant of Wikipedia was created by the Internet search engine Google in 2008. This online site, called Knol, also contained content provided by users, but the authors signed their articles and had the option of maintaining editorial control over the material in them.

In March 2009 Microsoft announced that it was discontinuing Encarta in light of changes in the way people “seek and consume information.” According to the announcement, Encarta discs would no longer be sold after June 2009, and its online sites would all disappear by the end of the year.