The story
Past owners have included, in chronological order, the Scottish printers Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, the Scottish bookseller Archibald Constable, the Scottish publisher A. & C. Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck, William Benton, and Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire residing in New York.
Recent advances in information technology and the rise of electronic encyclopaedias such as Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Encarta and Wikipedia have reduced the demand for print encyclopaedias. 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 also promoted spin-off reference works.
Editions
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has been issued in 15 editions, with multi-volume supplements to the 3rd edition and to the 4th, 5th, and 6th editions as a group (see the Table below). The 5th and 6th editions were reprints of the 4th, and the 10th edition was only a supplement to the 9th, just as the 12th and 13th editions were supplements to the 11th. For the 15th edition (1974), the Britannica underwent a massive reorganization and became the New Encyclopaedia Britannica. The 14th and 15th editions were edited every year throughout their runs, so that later printings of each were quite different from early ones.
Throughout its history, the Britannica has had two aims: to be an excellent reference book, and to provide educational material. In 1974, the 15th edition adopted a third goal: to systematize all human knowledge.
The history of the Britannica can be divided into five eras, punctuated by changes in management or reorganization of the encyclopaedia.
1768–1824
In the first era (1st–6th editions, 1768–1824), the Britannica was managed and published by its founders, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and by Archibald Constable.
The Britannica was first published in serial instalments between December 1768 and about August 1771 in Edinburgh as the Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon a New Plan. The new plan in question was an organizational one, namely to include two kinds of typographically distinct entries (articles and longer "treatises") in a single alphabetical sequence. In principle, "treatises" were to cover the arts and sciences, leaving articles to deal with their subordinate objects. The idea may have been inspired by Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal History of Arts and Sciences, an alphabetical encyclopaedia that contained only treatises. Regardless, the Britannica continued to intermix formally distinguished articles and treatises through the 10th edition.
According to Arthur Herman's book How the Scots Invented the Modern World, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is one of the most enduring legacies of the Scottish Enlightenment. It is important to be more specific, however, about how the early Britannica was and was not Scottish and a monument to the Scottish Enlightenment. The two publishers and William Smellie, whom they engaged to compile the work, were all Scots. Much of the first edition was compiled by Smellie from Scottish sources. At the same time, despite working in Edinburgh, the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment, neither Smellie nor James Tytler, the editor of the second edition, arranged for contributions from any local luminaries. Nor does the work seem to have been much noticed by participants in the Scottish Enlightenment before its third edition. Likewise, it is significant that the title chosen was the Encyclopaedia Britannica (and not the Encyclopaedia Scotorum, or 'Scottish Encyclopaedia'). Indeed, by the time of the third edition, the Britannica was starting to evolve into a symbol of Britishness.
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In this era, the Britannica grew significantly in size, sales, and reputation. Just as important were changes to the way it was compiled and edited. On his tombstone, Smellie was characterized as the editor of the first edition of the Britannica, but he was not an editor in anything like the sense in which Macvey Napier, who edited the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions, was. Smellie compiled nearly all the articles in the first edition himself, although we know he had minor help from at least one contributor, James Anderson, who wrote the articles "Dictionary," "Pneumatics," and "Smoke." For the third edition and its Supplement, editors still compiled the bulk of the articles, but they were assisted by dozens of collaborators. We know of thirty-five who wrote for the third edition, for example, some of them named in the preface, including the chemist Joseph Black and the natural philosopher John Robison. Then, by the time of the Supplement, Napier had become mostly a managing editor. He still wrote some articles, but his main job was recruiting collaborators, for the prospectus stipulated that "the various articles, in the Supplement, shall be written by the most Eminent Men, in the different departments of Science."
Several other encyclopaedias competed with the Britannica throughout this period, among them editions of Ephraim Chambers' and Abraham Rees's Cyclopædia, Coleridge's Encyclopædia Metropolitana, and David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopædia.
1827–1901
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.
Production of the 9th edition was overseen by Thomas Spencer Baynes, the first English-born editor-in-chief. Dubbed the "Scholar's Edition", the 9th edition is the most scholarly of all Britannicas. After 1880, Baynes was assisted by William Robertson Smith. No biographies of living persons were included. James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Huxley were special advisors on science. However, by the close of the 19th century, the 9th edition was outdated, and the Britannica faced financial difficulties.
1901–1973
In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–1973), 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 an eleven-volume supplement (including one each of maps and an index) to the 9th, numbered as volumes 25–35, but the 11th edition was a completely new work; its owner, Horace Hooper, lavished enormous effort on the project.
When Hooper fell into financial difficulties, the Britannica was managed by Sears Roebuck for 18 years (1920–1923, 1928–1943). 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. Powell developed new educational products that built upon the Britannica's reputation.
In 1943, Sears donated the Encyclopædia Britannica to the University of Chicago. William Benton, then a vice president of the university, provided the working capital for its operation. The stock was divided between Benton and the university, with the university holding an option on the stock. Benton became chairman of the board and managed the Britannica until his death in 1973. Benton set up the Benton Foundation, which managed the Britannica until 1996, and whose sole beneficiary was the University of Chicago. In 1968, the Britannica celebrated its bicentennial.
1974–1994
In the fourth era (1974–1994), the Britannica introduced its 15th edition, which was reorganized 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), the Britannica sought not only to be a good reference work and educational tool, but to systematize 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. In response, the 15th edition was completely reorganized and indexed for a re-release in 1985. This second version of the 15th edition continued to be published and revised through the release of 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.
On 9 March 1976 the US Federal Trade Commission entered an opinion and order enjoining Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. from using: a) deceptive advertising practices in recruiting sales agents and obtaining sales leads, and b) deceptive sales practices in the door-to-door presentations of its sales agents.
1994–present
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 Incorporated, developed digital versions. Since 2001, the two companies have shared a CEO, Ilan Yeshua, who has continued Powell's strategy of introducing new products with the Britannica name. In March 2012, Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz, announced that it would not produce any new print editions of the encyclopaedia, with the 2010 15th edition being the last. The company will focus only on the online edition and other educational tools.
Britannica's final print edition was in 2010, a 32-volume set. Britannica Global Edition was also printed in 2010, containing 30 volumes and 18,251 pages, with 8,500 photographs, maps, flags, and illustrations in smaller "compact" volumes, as well as over 40,000 articles written by scholars from across the world, including Nobel Prize winners. Unlike the 15th edition, it did not contain Macro- and Micropædia sections, but ran A through Z as all editions up through the 14th had. The following is Britannica's description of the work:
The editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, the world standard in reference since 1768, present the Britannica Global Edition. Developed specifically to provide comprehensive and global coverage of the world around us, this unique product contains thousands of timely, relevant, and essential articles drawn from the Encyclopædia Britannica itself, as well as from the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, the Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions, and Compton's by Britannica. Written by international experts and scholars, the articles in this collection reflect the standards that have been the hallmark of the leading English-language encyclopedia for over 240 years.
In 2020, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. released the Britannica All New Children's Encyclopedia: What We Know and What We Don't, an encyclopaedia aimed primarily at younger readers, covering major topics. The encyclopaedia was widely praised for bringing back the print format. It was Britannica's first encyclopaedia for children since 1984.
Dedications
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. 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." 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."
From Wikipedia’s article on Britannica.com Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3