Moore's Dublin Edition of ''

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, ...

'' was an Irish printing of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Third Edition, printed by James Moore of

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, Dublin. Moore primarily produced and sold reprints of English and Scottish books. Moore’s books were technically legal because British

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, ...

protections did not apply in Ireland until after the

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. Moore advertised the edition as the largest and most expensive publication to date in Ireland. It was published by subscription, with 1,222 subscribers at a price of one Irish

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per volume. Like the Edinburgh third edition, Moore's ''Britannica'' was published in 18 volumes, containing more than 14,500 total pages and 542

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s. The title pages are dated the year they were printed, in volume order from 1788 to 1797, as opposed to those of ''Britannica'', which were all dated 1797. This leads to the curious situation where the pirated version of a work has an earlier date than the original. Moore's edition is referenced in the 1928 Irish novel ''Yet Do Not Grieve'' by Conal O'Riordan. The novel is set in the early nineteenth century, and the protagonist's father was a proud subscriber to Moore's Dublin edition, and the protagonist is frequently instructed to consult it for his edification.

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