Encyclopaedia Britannica First Edition (1768-1771), Edinburgh

The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published in Edinburgh between December 1768 and 1771, issued in weekly parts and then bound into three volumes. Created by two Edinburgh tradesmen and edited by the 28-year-old William Smellie, it was a product of the Scottish Enlightenment and a deliberate attempt to organise knowledge in a new way. From these modest beginnings it grew into the most famous English-language reference work of the next two centuries.

Background: an age of dictionaries

The 18th century was the great age of the encyclopedia. In England, Ephraim Chambers had published his two-volume Cyclopaedia in 1728, and in France the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert had been appearing since 1751, with its plates still being issued in the 1760s. Booksellers knew that readers in a growing middle class wanted affordable guides to the arts and sciences.

Edinburgh in the 1760s was an especially good place to attempt such a project. The city was home to a famous university and medical school, to philosophers such as David Hume and to a busy printing trade. Historians call this period of intellectual activity the Scottish Enlightenment, and the Britannica was one of its most lasting products.

The name itself was a statement. By calling the work “Britannica”, its Scottish creators presented it as a British national achievement, published only a generation after the Jacobite rising of 1745 and at a time when many educated Scots were keen to show that Edinburgh could rival London as a centre of learning.

The founders: Macfarquhar, Bell and Smellie

The work was planned by Colin Macfarquhar, a printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver known for his skill and, by tradition, for his unusually short stature and large nose. They needed an editor who could write quickly on almost any subject. They chose William Smellie (1740-1795), a printer who had attended university classes and was respected for his learning in natural history and medicine.

Smellie was reportedly paid £200 for the whole task. He wrote and compiled much of the text himself, drawing heavily on existing books, as encyclopedists of the time routinely did. A well-known anecdote, of uncertain reliability, has Smellie joking that he made the work with a pair of scissors. The title page credited the work to “a Society of Gentlemen in Scotland”, a phrase that gave the project dignity but concealed how small the team really was.

The new plan

The full title described the work as a “Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon a new plan”. The new plan was the main selling point. Instead of breaking every science into dozens of short alphabetical entries, the editors placed the major subjects in long, systematic treatises. Anatomy, surgery, chemistry, agriculture, bookkeeping and other topics each received an extended article that a reader could follow from beginning to end.

Between these treatises sat thousands of short entries defining terms and directing readers to the main articles. This mixture of long essays and brief definitions became a lasting feature of the Britannica’s design. The first edition concentrated on the arts and sciences in the 18th-century sense, meaning practical and theoretical knowledge. It largely left out history, geography of a narrative kind and biography, which were added in later editions.

Publication in weekly parts

Readers did not buy the encyclopedia all at once. It appeared in 100 weekly numbers, sold for sixpence each on ordinary paper or a little more on finer paper, beginning in December 1768. This method spread the cost for subscribers and gave the publishers a steady income while writing and engraving continued.

When the series was complete in 1771, the parts were bound into three quarto volumes. Together they contained roughly 2,400 to 2,700 pages, depending on how plates and preliminary pages are counted, and 160 copperplate engravings by Andrew Bell. The print run is usually estimated at around 3,000 copies. The plates illustrated subjects such as machinery, ships, botany, anatomy and midwifery.

By the numbers

These figures are those most often given in histories of the encyclopedia. Exact page counts vary between surviving sets and bibliographies, partly because plates, title pages and prefaces were numbered separately and some copies were bound differently by their owners.

Contents and controversies

The first edition reflected both the strengths and the limits of its time. The medical and scientific treatises were often detailed and practical. Some short entries, by contrast, were brief to the point of curtness, and modern readers often quote the entry for “Woman”, which simply defined her as the female of man and referred the reader elsewhere.

The detailed midwifery plates caused some offence. A frequently repeated story says that King George III ordered the pages to be torn out of copies; this tale is hard to verify and is best treated as a tradition rather than an established fact. What is clear is that the encyclopedia was a commercial work meant for practical readers, not a polished academic project.

Growth through later editions

The first edition sold well enough to justify a second, much larger edition published between 1777 and 1784 in ten volumes, edited by James Tytler. This edition added history and biography. The third edition (1788-1797), in 18 volumes, was a major financial success and was dedicated to King George III. Macfarquhar died in 1793 while it was in progress.

In the 19th century the rights passed to the Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable and then to Adam and Charles Black. The ninth edition (1875-1889) became known as the “scholar’s edition” for its contributions by leading experts. The celebrated eleventh edition (1910-1911) was published with Cambridge University Press. During the 20th century ownership moved to the United States, and the encyclopedia was later based in Chicago.

Timeline

• 1728: Ephraim Chambers publishes his Cyclopaedia in London, an important model for later British encyclopedias.
• 1751: The first volume of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie appears in Paris.
• 1768, December: The first weekly part of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is published in Edinburgh.
• 1771: The 100 parts are complete and bound into three volumes dated 1771.
• 1777-1784: The second edition, edited by James Tytler, appears in ten volumes.
• 1788-1797: The third edition, in 18 volumes, is published.
• 1910-1911: The eleventh edition is published with Cambridge University Press.
• 2012, March: The publishers announce that the 2010 edition will be the last printed set.

Legacy

The Britannica outlived almost all of its 18th-century rivals. Its combination of systematic treatises and short entries influenced how encyclopedias were organised for generations, and its long run of editions makes it a valuable record of how knowledge and attitudes changed between the Enlightenment and the digital age.

The first edition is now a collector’s item and a historical source in its own right. Facsimile reprints have been produced, and scholars study it to understand what educated Scots of the 1760s thought a reader needed to know. It also stands alongside works such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as a reminder of how much the small city of Edinburgh contributed to the modern world of ideas.

Why it matters

The first Encyclopaedia Britannica turned the Enlightenment ambition to collect and explain knowledge into an affordable, practical product for ordinary subscribers. Begun by a printer, an engraver and a young editor, it developed into one of the longest-lived publishing projects in history, printed for more than 240 years before moving fully online.