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The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the ''
Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...
''. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, has entered the
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
and is readily available on the Internet. Its use in modern scholarship and as a reliable source has been deemed problematic due to the outdated nature of some of its content. Nevertheless, the 11th edition has retained considerable value as a time capsule of scientific and historical information, as well as scholarly attitudes of the era immediately preceding
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
.


Background

The 1911 eleventh edition was assembled with the management of American publisher Horace Everett Hooper. Hugh Chisholm, who had edited the previous edition, was appointed editor-in-chief, with Walter Alison Phillips as his principal assistant editor. Originally, Hooper bought the rights to the 25-volume 9th edition and persuaded the British newspaper ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' to issue its reprint, with eleven additional volumes (35 volumes total) as the tenth edition, which was published in 1902. Hooper's association with ''The Times'' ceased in 1909, and he negotiated with the
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
to publish the 29-volume eleventh edition. Though it is generally perceived as a quintessentially British work, the eleventh edition had substantial American influences, in not only the increased amount of American and Canadian content, but also the efforts made to make it more popular. American marketing methods also assisted sales. Some 14% of the contributors (214 of 1507) were from North America, and a New York office was established to coordinate their work. The initials of the encyclopaedia's contributors appear at the end of selected articles or at the end of a section in the case of longer articles, such as that on China, and a key is given in each volume to these initials. Some articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time, such as Edmund Gosse, J. B. Bury, Algernon Charles Swinburne,
John Muir John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the national park, National Parks", was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologi ...
,
Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended the Page Corps and later s ...
, T. H. Huxley, James Hopwood Jeans and William Michael Rossetti. Among the then lesser-known contributors were some who would later become distinguished, such as
Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both Atomic physics, atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nu ...
and
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...
. Many articles were carried over from the 9th edition, some with minimal updating. Some of the book-length articles were divided into smaller parts for easier reference, yet others were much abridged. The best-known authors generally contributed only a single article or part of an article. Most of the work was done by journalists,
British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
scholars and other scholars. The 1911 edition was the first edition of the encyclopaedia to include more than just a handful of female contributors, with 34 women contributing articles to the edition. These included Adelaide Anderson, Gertrude Bell, Margaret Bryant, Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes, Harriette Lombard Hennessy, and Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. The eleventh edition introduced a number of changes of the format of the ''Britannica''. It was the first to be published complete, instead of the previous method of volumes being released as they were ready. The print type was kept in galley proofs and subject to continual updating until publication. It was the first edition of ''Britannica'' to be issued with a comprehensive index volume in which was added a categorical index, where like topics were listed. It was the first not to include long treatise-length articles. Even though the overall length of the work was about the same as that of its predecessor, the number of articles had increased from 17,000 to 40,000. It was also the first edition of ''Britannica'' to include biographies of living people. Sixteen maps of the famous 9th edition of '' Stielers Handatlas'' were exclusively translated to English, converted to
imperial units The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed thr ...
, printed in Gotha, Germany, by Justus Perthes and the maps became a part of this edition. Later editions only included Perthes' maps as low-quality reproductions. According to Coleman and Simmons,''All There is to Know'' (1994), edited by Alexander Coleman and Charles Simmons. Subtitled: "Readings from the Illustrious Eleventh Edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''". p. 32. the content of the encyclopaedia was distributed as follows: Hooper sold the rights to Sears, Roebuck and Company of Chicago in 1920, completing the ''Britannica''s transition to becoming a substantially American publication. In 1922, an additional three volumes (also edited by Hugh Chisholm) where published, covering the events of the intervening years, including
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. These, together with a reprint of the eleventh edition, formed the twelfth edition of the work. A similar thirteenth edition, consisting of three volumes plus a reprint of the twelfth edition, was published in 1926. The London editor was J.L. Garvin, as Chisholm had died. The twelfth and thirteenth editions were closely related to the eleventh edition and shared much of the same content. However, it became increasingly apparent that a more thorough update of the work was required. The fourteenth edition, published in 1929, was considerably revised, with much text eliminated or abridged to make room for new topics. Nevertheless, the eleventh edition was the basis of every later version of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' until the completely new fifteenth edition was published in 1974, using modern information presentation. The eleventh edition's articles are still of value and interest to modern readers and scholars, especially as a cultural artifact: the
British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...
was at its maximum,
imperialism Imperialism is the maintaining and extending of Power (international relations), power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultura ...
was largely unchallenged, much of the world was still ruled by monarchs, and the tumultuous
world war A world war is an international War, conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World War I ...
s were still in the future. They are a resource for topics omitted from modern encyclopaedias, particularly for biography and the history of science and technology. As a literary text, the encyclopaedia has value as an example of early 20th-century prose. For example, it employs literary devices, such as pathetic fallacy (attribution of human-like traits to impersonal forces or inanimate objects), which are not as common in modern reference texts.


Reviews

In 1917, using the pseudonym of S. S. Van Dine, the US art critic and author Willard Huntington Wright published '' Misinforming a Nation'', a 200+ page criticism of inaccuracies and biases of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' eleventh edition. Wright claimed that ''Britannica'' was "characterized by misstatements, inexcusable omissions, rabid and patriotic prejudices, personal animosities, blatant errors of fact, scholastic ignorance, gross neglect of non-British culture, an astounding egotism, and an undisguised contempt for American progress". Amos Urban Shirk, known for having read the eleventh and fourteenth editions in their entirety, said he found the fourteenth edition to be a "big improvement" over the eleventh, stating that "most of the material had been completely rewritten". Robert Collison, in ''Encyclopaedias: Their History Throughout The Ages'' (1966), wrote of the eleventh edition that it "was probably the finest edition of the ''Britannica'' ever issued, and it ranks with the and the '' Espasa'' as one of the three greatest encyclopaedias. It was the last edition to be produced almost in its entirety in Britain, and its position in time as a summary of the world's knowledge just before the outbreak of World War I is particularly valuable". Sir
Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director and broadcaster. His expertise covered a wide range of artists and periods, but he is particularly associated with Italian Renaissa ...
, in ''Another Part of the Wood'' (1974), wrote of the eleventh edition, "One leaps from one subject to another, fascinated as much by the play of mind and the idiosyncrasies of their authors as by the facts and dates. It must be the last encyclopaedia in the tradition of
Diderot Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during t ...
which assumes that information can be made memorable only when it is slightly coloured by prejudice. When T. S. Eliot wrote 'Soul curled up on the window seat reading the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'',' he was certainly thinking of the eleventh edition." (Clark refers to Eliot's 1929 poem " Animula".) It was one of
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...
's favourite works, and was a source of information and enjoyment for his entire working life. In 1912, mathematician L. C. Karpinski criticised the eleventh edition for inaccuracies in articles on the
history of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the History of mathematical notation, mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples ...
, none of which had been written by specialists. English writer and former priest Joseph McCabe claimed in ''Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopædia Britannica'' (1947) that ''Britannica'' was censored under pressure from the
Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
after the 11th edition. Initially, the eleventh edition received criticism from members of the Roman Catholic Church, who accused it of misrepresenting and being biased against Catholics. The most "vociferous" American Catholic critics of the eleventh edition were editors of the
Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
magazine '' America''. Authorities ranging from
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...
to professors criticised the 11th edition for having
bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...
and old-fashioned opinions on art, literature, and social sciences. A contemporary Cornell professor, Edward B. Titchener, wrote in 1912, "the new ''Britannica'' does not reproduce the psychological atmosphere of its day and generation... Despite the halo of authority, and despite the scrutiny of the staff, the great bulk of the secondary articles in general psychology ... are not adapted to the requirements of the intelligent reader". In an April 2012 article, Nate Pederson of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' said that the eleventh edition represented "a peak of colonial optimism before the slaughter of war" and that the edition "has acquired an almost mythic reputation among collectors". Critics have charged several editions with racism,
sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is int ...
, and
antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
. The eleventh edition characterises the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
as protecting the white race and restoring order to the American South after the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, citing the need to "control the negro", and "the frequent occurrence of the crime of rape by negro men upon white women". Similarly, the "Civilization" article argues for
eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...
, stating that it is irrational to "propagate low orders of intelligence, to feed the ranks of paupers, defectives and criminals ... which to-day constitute so threatening an obstacle to racial progress". The eleventh edition has no biography of Marie Curie, despite her winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, although she is mentioned briefly under the biography of her husband
Pierre Curie Pierre Curie ( ; ; 15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, Radiochemistry, radiochemist, and a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity, and radioactivity. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, ...
. The ''Britannica'' employed a large female editorial staff that wrote hundreds of articles for which they were not given credit.


Public domain

The 1911 edition is no longer restricted by
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
, and it is therefore freely available in several more modern forms. While it may once have been a reliable description of the academic consensus of its time, many modern readers find fault with the ''Encyclopedia'' for several major errors, ethnocentric and
racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
remarks, and other issues: * Contemporary opinions of race and
ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...
are included in the ''Encyclopædia''s articles. For example, the entry for "
Negro In the English language, the term ''negro'' (or sometimes ''negress'' for a female) is a term historically used to refer to people of Black people, Black African heritage. The term ''negro'' means the color black in Spanish and Portuguese (from ...
" states, "Mentally the negro is inferior to the white... the arrest or even deterioration of mental development fter adolescenceis no doubt very largely after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro's life and thoughts." The article about the
American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...
attributes the success of the United States in part to "a population mainly of good English blood and instincts". * Many articles are now outdated factually, in particular those concerning science, technology, international and municipal law, and medicine. For example, the article on the vitamin deficiency disease
beriberi Thiamine deficiency is a medical condition of low levels of thiamine (vitamin B1). A severe and chronic form is known as beriberi. The name beriberi was possibly borrowed in the 18th century from the Sinhalese phrase (bæri bæri, “I canno ...
speculates that it is caused by a fungus,
vitamin Vitamins are Organic compound, organic molecules (or a set of closely related molecules called vitamer, vitamers) that are essential to an organism in small quantities for proper metabolism, metabolic function. Nutrient#Essential nutrients, ...
s not having been discovered at the time. * Even where the facts might still be accurate, new information, theories and perspectives developed since 1911 have substantially changed the way the same facts might be interpreted. For example, the modern interpretation of the history of the
Visigoths The Visigoths (; ) were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied Barbarian kingdoms, barbarian military group unite ...
is now very different from that of 1911; readers of the eleventh edition who want to know about the social customs and political life of the tribe and its warriors are told to look up the entry for their king,
Alaric I Alaric I (; , 'ruler of all'; ; – 411 AD) was the first Germanic kingship, king of the Visigoths, from 395 to 410. He rose to leadership of the Goths who came to occupy Moesia—territory acquired a couple of decades earlier by a combine ...
. The eleventh edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' has become a commonly quoted source, both because of the reputation of the ''Britannica'' and because it is now in the
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
and has been made available on the Internet. It has been used as a source by many modern projects, including Wikipedia and the ''Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia''.


''Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia''

The ''Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia'' is the eleventh edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', renamed to address Britannica's trademark concerns.
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...
's offerings are summarized below in the
External links An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a web page to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. It is the opposite of an external link, a link that directs a user to content that is outside its d ...
section and include text and graphics. , Distributed Proofreaders are working on producing a complete electronic edition of the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.


See also

* '' Catholic Encyclopedia'' * '' New American Cyclopedia''


References


Further reading

* Boyles, Denis. ''Everything Explained That Is Explainable: On the Creation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911'' (2016),
online review
*


External links


Free, public-domain sources for 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' text

* vi
HathiTrust
* :s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Prefatory Note to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' 11th ed. dated Cambridge November 1, 1910: with separate volumes below in several formats on the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
: *
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...
Encyclopedia:
Flash reader (Empanel)
with full-page scans


Other sources for 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' text


Encyclopedia Britannica 1911
theodora.com – unedited, html version, from scan/ocr of the original text, with interactive alphabetical index, and Google translation into Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Russian, Hindi, Arabic and Portuguese.

StudyLight.org – "Containing 35,820 entries cross-referenced and cross-linked to other resources on StudyLight.org". "Copyright Statement these B 1911files are public domain".
''The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information (11th edition)''
at the Online Books Page of the University of Pennsylvania. The preceding links adopt the spellings used in the target. {{DEFAULTSORT:Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition 11 1911 non-fiction books Britannica, 1911 Encyclopaedia 1911 in the United Kingdom 20th-century encyclopedias