‘A large work is difficult because it is large.’
Samuel Johnson, Preface to
A Dictionary of the English Language
, 1755
‘Books can be useful from so many points of view. In my early days, for example, I used to use the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
as a trouser-press, and certainly the house that was without it was to be pitied.’
Ford Madox Ford, letter to the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, September 1929
‘This great mass of human knowledge – so vast in its range that not even its editors can hope to read all through the complete work.’
BBC News report on the fourteenth edition of
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, 1951