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

J

JAHRBUCH

We have seen with the Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon Aller Wissenschafften und Künste, Welche bißhero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden und verbessert worden how the Germans love a long title.

So it should come as little surprise to learn that the greatest German encyclopaedia of the age had a name that also refused to roll off the tongue. But it was at least enduring. Conversations-Lexikon oder kurzgefasstes Handwörterbuch für die in der gesellschaftlichen Unterhaltung aus den Wissenschaften und Künsten vorkommenden Gegenstände, mit beständiger Rücksicht auf die Ereignisse der älteren und neuren Zeit was a title that lasted, in various forms, almost 200 years, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 2006, increasing and decreasing in size and popularity, and second only to the Britannica in influence, regard and longevity.

The first six-volume edition appeared between 1809 and 1811, and its 2000 copies sold out within months. When a new and revised edition was published between 1812 and 1819, Europe’s revolutionary wars and industrial expansion necessitated an increase to ten volumes and a print run of 3000. Its title was also revised, and inevitably lengthened, and was now almost a volume in itself:

Conversations-Lexicon oder Handwörterbuch für die gebildeten Stände über die in der gesellschaftlichen Unterhaltung und bei der Lectüre vorkommenden Gegenstände, Namen und Begriffe, in Beziehung auf Völker- und Menschengeschichte, Politik und Diplomatik, Mythologie und Archäologie, Erd-, Natur-, Gewerb- und Handlungskunde, die schönen Künste und Wissenschaften: mit Einschluß der in die Umgangssprache eingegangenen ausländischen Wörter und mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die älteren und neuesten merkwürdigen Zeitereignisse was edited and published by David Arnold Friedrich Brockhaus. To save time and energy, his great encyclopaedia was – almost from its inception – known simply as Brockhaus. And in Germany the word Brockhaus is to encyclopaedia what Roget is to thesaurus.

The spark came from the German scholar Dr Renatus Gotthelf Löbel. In 1796, aware of the impact of both the Encyclopédie and Britannica, Löbel began work in Leipzig on a modest version of a new German encyclopaedia, but died before the century was out. After several other editors and publishers took the helm, Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus acceded to the venture and, with the aid of his two sons, transformed it.

What set it apart? What would prompt the eleventh edition of Britannica (1910/11) to conclude that ‘no work of reference has been more useful and successful, or more frequently copied, imitated and translated, than that known as the Konversations-Lexikon of Brockhaus’? The answer, pertinently, lay in (part of) the title. This translated as ‘General German Encyclopedia for the Educated’, and it announced a simple concept with wide appeal. Rather than the increasingly lengthy, philosophical and scientific entries of the Britannica, it offered a more popular approach to the attainment of knowledge: the ‘educated’ of the title was inclusive, the volumes written to appeal to curious young adults rather than just the highly qualified. Further, the venture had an element of the newspaper to it: from 1857, supplements would appear every month, confusingly called the Jahrbuch. When the supplements appeared twice monthly from 1865, the name was changed to Unsere Zeit (Our Time). Never before had an encyclopaedia created a sense of a living tutorial focused on continual intellectual improvement.*

Frequent new editions of increasing size were met with a corresponding increase in sales; the fifth edition was reprinted twice and sold more than 30,000 copies, a magnificent achievement, and soon its influence extended well beyond Germany. A translation of its seventh edition provided the groundwork for the Encyclopedia Americana (1829–33), the most successful American encyclopaedia after Dobson’s. In 1890, a Russian version was published in St Petersburg, where readers could choose either the thirty-five or eighty-six-volume set.*

The Brockhaus was based in the same building in Leipzig from 1808 to 1943, when it was bombed and partially destroyed by the British. It took four years to resurrect itself on a smaller scale in Wiesbaden, and the great project flourished again until the last full-scale print edition of 2006, by which time it had been partially destroyed by the Internet. It still thrives online, where one is greeted with the message ‘Willkommen in der Welt des Wissens und Lernens!’*

A popular approach: hounds, locomotives and English artistry in the expansive Brockhaus

In Edinburgh, the importance of the regular update wasn’t lost on Britannica. Facing increasing competition, its publishers realised that the depth and quality of its entries, not to say its dependability, would only continue to appeal if it kept pace with the world around it. Revolution was everywhere: technological, medical, philosophical, geopolitical. The answer would be supplements and yearbooks, but it wouldn’t entirely solve the problem. Rival publications appeared more in tune with the times merely because they were new.

And at the turn of the nineteenth century there were a lot of them. One could choose between William Henry Hall’s New Royal Encyclopaedia, Kendal’s Pocket Encyclopaedia, the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, the English Encyclopaedia, and the Domestic Encyclopaedia. All of them were smaller, cheaper and more hastily assembled than Britannica, and while envious of Britannica’s success, they claimed their brevity made them more suitable to the general reader.

But the biggest threat came from an updated version of an old friend and spur, the Cyclopaedia. This was no longer the concise two-volume folio edited by Ephraim Chambers in 1728; in fact, it was almost its opposite – a vast thirty-nine-volume quarto edition, with 32,000 pages and about 32 million words of text, with an additional five plate volumes and an atlas with sixty-one folding maps, making it almost exactly twice as large as Diderot’s Encyclopédie and the 1810 fourth edition of Britannica. It appeared serially and alphabetically between 1802 and 1819, which meant – as with similar publications – readers learnt a lot about the world’s As and Bs years before they learnt anything about its Ys and Zs; during its seventeen years of completion, this occasionally made a mockery of the extensive system of cross-referencing, with the reader of ‘Acorn: denotes the fruit of trees of the Oak kind … see Seed’ having to wait years and many volumes before their enquiry was rewarded.

Its editor was Abraham Rees, a Welsh Presbyterian minister, a fellow of the Royal Society, a man determined to spread knowledge ‘far beyond the schoolroom, even the university’. His new enterprise satisfied the desire for biography and contemporary history, while its sympathetic coverage of revolutionary Europe led to accusations of subversive sympathies. To counteract this, its editor went to sincere lengths to stress its Protestant leanings and Englishness, even referring to King Louis as ‘King Lewis’. In other ways the volumes were exemplary examples of the Enlightenment: some of the most numerous and longest articles tackled the latest interpretations of the atomic system, the cosmos and the origins of the earth, as well as recent research in botany, zoology and natural history.

There were many engaging and surprising anomalies. Some of the alphabetical ordering, for example, was original: New York appeared as ‘York, New’ and St Ives as ‘Ives, St’. Occasionally an entry starting with a letter earlier in the alphabet would invade a later one – entries beginning with I and J often appearing quite randomly, as if the editor had thought of a new addition when it was too late to reset the printing plates. And some of the editorial judgements were erratic, or at least acutely specialised, such as the sixteen pages of arcane tables devoted to the heliocentric tracking of the latitude and longitude of Jupiter, which required two pages of explanatory notes and made a rocket ride to the planet an easier option:

From Table 1 of the epochs, take out the epochs of the mean longitude of the aphelion and node, with the Arguments II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and place them in an horizontal line. But if the given year not be found in that Table, take the nearest year preceding the given year as an epoch, and take out as before; under which, from Table II, place the mean motion in longitude, of the aphelion and node, with the Arguments.

*

Other entries now provide us with an intriguing glimpse into technological and scientific progress at the beginning of the nineteenth century:

BATTERY: In electricity, a combination of coated surfaces of glass, so connected together that they may be charged at once and discharged by a common conductor. Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin […] constructed a battery consisting of eleven panes of large sash-glass, coated on each side, and connected in such a manner that the whole might be charged together. A more complete battery is described by Dr. [Joseph] Priestley, of which he says, that after long use he sees no reason for wishing the least alteration in any part of it. This battery consists of 64 jars, each ten inches long and 2½ inches in diameter, coated within 1½ inch of the top; and contains in the whole 32 square feet.

The most perfect batteries of modern construction since that of Dr. Priestley have been made in Holland for Teyler’s museum at Haerlem by Mr Cuthbertson of Poland Street, London, then residing in Amsterdam […] Teyler’s second grand battery was finished by Mr. Cuthbertson in 1789. This is the largest and most complete battery that was ever made […] 100 jars […] the whole battery contains 550 square feet of coating and for convenience it is put into four separate cases.

COLUMBIUM: In chemistry, a new metal discovered by Mr [Charles] Hatchett in the year 1802, in a mineral which he had from the British Museum. The mineral, it appears, had been sent with some specimens of iron ore from Massachusetts in America to Sir Hans Sloane, in whose catalogue it is described as ‘a very heavy black stone, with golden streaks’. Its lustre is vitreous, slightly inclining in some parts to metallic, moderately hard, and very brittle.

RAILWAY: Tram or Dram-road, or Waggon-way, in Rural Economy, a track constructed of iron, stone, timber or other material. […] Speaking of the great utility of canals in the carriage of various articles in [Shropshire], it is observed by Mr [Thomas] Telford, an able engineer, that another mode of conveyance has frequently been adopted to a considerable extent; which is that of forming roads by means of iron rails laid along them, upon which materials are carried in waggons, which contain from six to thirty hundred weight; experience, he thinks, has now convinced us that in countries the surfaces of which are rugged, or where it is difficult to obtain water for lockage, where the weight of the article of the produce is great in comparison with their bulk, and from where they are mostly to be conveyed from a higher to a lower level, that in those cases, iron railways are in general preferable to canal navigation.

When the project was complete, its preface announced that the publication was ‘very much to the relief of the Editor’s mind’. Writing in the godlike third person, Abraham Rees explained how neither expense nor energy had been spared in its construction, although ‘if he had foreseen the time and attention which the compilation and conduct of it required, and the unavoidable anxiety which it has occasioned, he would probably never have undertaken it.’ Further, he calls upon our sympathy, for ‘he has devoted almost twenty years of his life, measured not by fragments of time, but by whole days of twelve or fourteen hours … and in so doing impaired his health and constitution.’

And even in the preface he admits an element of failure. Some of the details in his contributors’ articles appeared to him ‘erroneous … they are actually controverted and contradicted in other parts of the Cyclopaedia.’ And he regretted its unanticipated length: ‘It would have been … more gratifying to the Editor to have compiled a Cyclopaedia in fewer volumes … as in all probability the sale would have been greater and the sum of money expended upon it would of course have been much less.’

A similarly exhaustive task was nearing completion in France. Only this one was bigger – much bigger. The Encyclopédie Méthodique (1782–1832) was a vastly reorganised and expanded version of Diderot and D’Alembert’s work, published and edited by Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, resulting in 203 volumes and over 100 million words.*

The Méthodique rejected an alphabetical arrangement in favour of ‘subject dictionaries’ that might allow readers a broader educational view. In his prospectus, Panckoucke compared the formation of his work to a brick-by-brick reconstruction of a beautiful palace. The old palace was Diderot’s; the new editor’s contributor-contractors installed conservatories as far as the eye could see.

The greater length of the treatises ensured that the more controversial doctrines of the Enlightenment could be maintained with greater concealment from censors, although the extended number and the length of these entries did little to guarantee quality or a high subscription rate. Some contributors may have lengthened their entries to increase their fee, while others couldn’t bear the thought of not including everything known on their subject. As for Panckoucke, its chief editor, it seemed as if he refused to actually edit. More was more. The ambition to create the ultimate work of reference must have been as frustrating as an attempt to reach the end of the Internet. Ultimate for whom? And how could this unique and overwhelming work possibly hope to keep pace with the nineteenth century? Abraham Rees had admitted as much in the preface to his own vast undertaking: ‘Science is progressive, and since the commencement of this work, its advances in several departments have not been inconsiderable.’

The scope of the Méthodique resembled the conception of perfect cartography by Lewis Carroll and Jorge Luis Borges: for true accuracy, a map would have to be the same size as the area it covered, at the scale of a mile to a mile. Such exactitude was clearly absurd, as absurd as the encyclopaedia of everything. The complete set of Encyclopédie Méthodique sold about 1500 copies.

As they aimed for an optimum size in the decades to come, all the editors of every encyclopaedia reluctantly agreed on one thing: they couldn’t win. A wider reading public, the expansion of trade and industry, cheaper costs of printing and more outlets for marketing hastened the growth of both the specialist encyclopaedia and the two- or three-volume general set. Even the editors of Britannica, which ran to twenty-one volumes for both its seventh edition (1830–42) and its eighth (1853–60) confirmed to readers that their sets contained everything they needed to know rather than everything knowable. By its ninth edition (1875–99) it was edging towards a specialism of its own – the foregrounding of experts, particularly on scientific matters. Its twenty-five volumes became known as the Scholar’s Edition, such was the academic style of its prose, frequently pitching itself beyond the capability of the general reader.

And underpinning all of this was a grander question, one we may argue still: what is knowledge, and how should it be presented in a book?

* Not that Brockhaus didn’t have competition. The generously illustrated Konversations-Lexikon produced by Joseph Meyer, for example, was a larger and more political work, and its size made it less nimble in adapting to changes and new events. The Wunder-Meyer, as it was known, was taken over by the Nazis during the Second World War. The two enterprises merged in the mid-1980s.

The word Lexikon translates formally as dictionary, but in the eighteenth century became applicable to anything in alphabetical order. Konversations-Lexikon came to denote the popular or accessible encyclopaedia of things, rather than a catalogue of words.

* Unlike Britannica, the Brockhaus had always been a fairly modest publication, its size adapting to the perceived demands of its readership, which in modern times meant a reduction due to financial constraints and narrowing attention spans. The sixteenth edition of 1952–57, for example, the first to be published after the war, reduced the number of volumes from twenty-five to twelve, and the number went down again for the eighteenth edition of 1977–81.

* Welcome to the world of knowledge and learning!

* The tables were published more than sixty years after John Harrison’s horological establishment of longitude at sea.

* One may be reminded of Franckenstein and Zedler’s comparably ambitious Universal-Lexicon from 1731, although that was a miserly sixty-four volumes published over eighteen years.