Everything Explained That Is Explainable
On the Creation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911
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- ¥850
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- ¥850
Publisher Description
Everything Explained That Is Explainable is the audacious, utterly improbable story of the publication of the Eleventh Edition of the legendary Encyclopædia Britannica. It is the tale of a young American entrepreneur who rescued a dying publication with the help of a floundering newspaper, and in so doing produced a series of books that forever changed the face of publishing. Thanks to the efforts of 1,500 contributors, among them a young staff of university graduates as well as some of the most distinguished names of the day, the Eleventh Edition combined scholarship and readability in a way no previous encyclopedia had (or ever has again). Denis Boyles’s work of cultural history pulls back the curtain on the 44-million-word testament to the age of reason that has profoundly shaped the way we see the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boyles (How to Catch a Pig) ventures too deep into minutiae in this painstaking account of the venture behind the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The prime mover behind the 11th edition and central figure in this narrative was Horace Everett Hooper, an American entrepreneur and bookseller, who dreamed of a magnificent edifice of everything worth knowing, published as a single work, that would also be a profitable product. Those twin pursuits fill the book, with the business end taking pride of place over the actual construction of the encyclopedia and its epistemological considerations. Boyles emphasizes Hooper's long association with the Times of London; Hooper felt that the gravitas of the newspaper brand would strengthen the Encyclopaedia Britannica readership while buoying the bottom line of the declining paper. Boyles also sketches the 11th edition's editorial staff, focusing on editor-in-chief Hugh Chisolm and senior editor and indexer Janet Hogarth. Boyles certainly comes close to explaining everything there is to know about this publication or maybe it's just that by the end of the book, it's hard to imagine wanting to know anything else.
