All The Knowledge In The World: The Extraordinary History Of The Encyclopaedia

Simon Garfield W&N £18.99

★★★★★

Did you know that a complete set of the 1997 Encyclopaedia Britannica – all 35 volumes – could be yours for 1p on eBay? Simon Garfield’s history of the encyclopaedia is full of such jawdropping facts, and he turns what might have been a dry subject into an enjoyable, quirky, highly informative tour.

The chapters in this history are, appropriately, ordered alphabetically, but the story he tells is chronological: from the early efforts of Pliny and Isidore of Seville to the great French Encyclopédie of the 18th Century, and then into the golden epoch of the German Brockhaus and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, before an inevitable decline in the age of Wikipedia and the internet.

Along the way there is an account of the dubious art of encyclopaedia-selling, an

encounter with a fabulous Chinese encyclopaedia bound in silk and a tribute to Microsoft’s doomed Encarta. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is, of course, the gold standard, ‘a publishing achievement like no other’, and Garfield rightly devotes most space to the fascinating history of this behemoth.

First appearing in 1768, it has been through 15 editions, with famous contributors including Einstein, until 2010. Wikipedia, now the world’s largest online reference work, plundered huge amounts of the 22,000 pages of its 11th edition as its core knowledge base. Much of the knowledge Britannica contained is also now obsolete, occasionally unsavoury. Yet the sheer publishing effort required was truly remarkable. There is an element of nostalgia about all this, for a halcyon past when people read physical copies, but Garfield raises interesting questions about the value of information in the computer age and the verifiability of facts.