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Everything Explained That Is Explainable: On the Creation of the Encyclopedia Britannica's Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911
Denis Boyles tells the amazing story of this atlas of human brilliance, a massive 29-volume, 44 million word anthology of some of the best essays written in English. It is the story of how Horace Everett Hooper - a volatile, self-assured, impulsive, and optimistic American, an autodidact and natural-born salesman - got into the book business at age 16, moved to the Western frontier and on to Chicago, and became hugely successful. With a brilliant adman named Henry Haxton as his partner, he went about buying publishing rights to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a work incredibly distinguished by entries from Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Sir Walter Scott, David Ricardo, William Hazlitt, and John Locke (some, like Benjamin Franklin's entry on electricity, extending back to the first edition published in Edinburgh in 1768). Incredibly distinguished, but selling only 600 copies a year in Britain in its ninth edition, the Encyclopedia Britannica was on the brink of financial collapse.
Hooper and Haxton, with superb business skill and a respect for authority and style shared by their fascinating English colleagues, Hugh Chisholm and Janet Hogarth, turned things completely around, selling hundreds of thousands of copies of EB11 in Britain and America while adding writers of entries such as Jessie Weston, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Muir, Lord Macaulay, T. H. Huxley, G. K. Chesterton, Edmund Husserl, Alfred North Whithead, Bertrand Russell, Edmund Gosse, and W. M. Rossetti, among others.
Denis Boyles tells a wonderful story of a business enterprise infused by a truly democratic desire to spread knowledge to the widest audience possible.
Hooper and Haxton, with superb business skill and a respect for authority and style shared by their fascinating English colleagues, Hugh Chisholm and Janet Hogarth, turned things completely around, selling hundreds of thousands of copies of EB11 in Britain and America while adding writers of entries such as Jessie Weston, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Muir, Lord Macaulay, T. H. Huxley, G. K. Chesterton, Edmund Husserl, Alfred North Whithead, Bertrand Russell, Edmund Gosse, and W. M. Rossetti, among others.
Denis Boyles tells a wonderful story of a business enterprise infused by a truly democratic desire to spread knowledge to the widest audience possible.
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First published June 7, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 19, 2019
Full disclosure: I am the author's child. Of course I loved it.
But Boyles' style is light and easy to read even when deep in the trenches of early 20th century publishing, or the niceties of relations between Cambridge and Oxford. His compilation of primary sources is really something, too; the invitation of Haxton's original ad copy is an unexpected delight. I read this out loud with my spouse, and it made great material for the kind of consumption.
But Boyles' style is light and easy to read even when deep in the trenches of early 20th century publishing, or the niceties of relations between Cambridge and Oxford. His compilation of primary sources is really something, too; the invitation of Haxton's original ad copy is an unexpected delight. I read this out loud with my spouse, and it made great material for the kind of consumption.
July 12, 2018
Maybe it’s the audiobook format here but I found this book to be impenetrable and full of useless information. I often love useless information, but only when it’s amusing (see, e.g., A Brief History of Nearly Everything). The strange detours the author took in just the first few chapters were dry and spent a lot of time talking about boring people without justifying why they were relevant to the 11th edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica. I thought this book would be about all the contributors involved with the Encyclopaedia, but stopped reading it once I realized it was going to be a tale of book supply chains and distribution.
July 26, 2016
Forget the Bloomsbury group, I want to go back in time and experience the Encyclopaedia Britannica's offices! Filled with scholars, writers, philosophers, the greatest minds of the 20th century who just popped in and out for a bit of a nosh and a friendly chat as they dropped off their articles.
While admittedly reading this book will forever secure your place in book geekdom (mine was secured with Salt: A World History which I still contend is one of the best books I've ever read), it is way more exciting than you might expect. Filled with historical details, intrigue and a touch of drama. Not bad for a book about another book which many consider a dusty old tome!
The surprising element is the social implications the creation and more importantly the marketing and selling of the EB had on the British public. It was fascinating to read the impact the brash, outspoken, money-scentric American way of thinking had on the more formal, restrained British public. The EB was full of contradictions. It was celebrated for upholding old scholarly traditions. Expected to report on the latest technological advances and thinking of the age and yet the people involved in financing it, balked at the social change it would help bring.
The books main drawback was the name-dropping and the dropping of names. It was common to read numerous names of people and events that were unfamiliar especially if you are not British and not really pertinent to the story. This was frustrating and occasionally I tapped into EBs lesser modern spawn, Wikipedia, to learn who they were, but overall it didn't take away from the general enjoyment of the book. The other issue was the dropping of names. You would read about someone for three-quarters of the way thru the book (ex. Bell), get invested in this person, and the moment they were no longer specifically involved with the EB, they dropped off the page. It would have been nice to have a sentence or two to round out their tale.
Overall, as a fan of historical fiction, I found this an enjoyable read. I am pleased I saw it recommended in the Wall Street Journal and snatched up a copy! It won't be for everyone but if you like "slice of life" unique historical non-fiction, I recommend you give it a try.
While admittedly reading this book will forever secure your place in book geekdom (mine was secured with Salt: A World History which I still contend is one of the best books I've ever read), it is way more exciting than you might expect. Filled with historical details, intrigue and a touch of drama. Not bad for a book about another book which many consider a dusty old tome!
The surprising element is the social implications the creation and more importantly the marketing and selling of the EB had on the British public. It was fascinating to read the impact the brash, outspoken, money-scentric American way of thinking had on the more formal, restrained British public. The EB was full of contradictions. It was celebrated for upholding old scholarly traditions. Expected to report on the latest technological advances and thinking of the age and yet the people involved in financing it, balked at the social change it would help bring.
The books main drawback was the name-dropping and the dropping of names. It was common to read numerous names of people and events that were unfamiliar especially if you are not British and not really pertinent to the story. This was frustrating and occasionally I tapped into EBs lesser modern spawn, Wikipedia, to learn who they were, but overall it didn't take away from the general enjoyment of the book. The other issue was the dropping of names. You would read about someone for three-quarters of the way thru the book (ex. Bell), get invested in this person, and the moment they were no longer specifically involved with the EB, they dropped off the page. It would have been nice to have a sentence or two to round out their tale.
Overall, as a fan of historical fiction, I found this an enjoyable read. I am pleased I saw it recommended in the Wall Street Journal and snatched up a copy! It won't be for everyone but if you like "slice of life" unique historical non-fiction, I recommend you give it a try.
Want to read
July 9, 2016For encyclopedia buffs, freethinkers, and connoisseurs of arcana, the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica ("the sum of human knowledge") was the greatest set of encyclopedias ever compiled. (Or so I'm told; see below).
I knew a man -- a brave and resolute atheist/freethinker -- who had a set and who cherished it as one of the crown jewels of his life-long-procured massive collection of anti-theist/nontheist literature. His collection filled his two-story home from top to bottom and climaxed in a beautifully curated and archived basement of shelf rows that put most regular libraries to shame. He proclaimed his holdings to constitute the best collection of freethought lit in the country, and I had little doubt of it. The 1911 Britannica, he explained, was the last "unexpurgated" edition before the Catholic Church purged it of religiously problematic ideas.
As it happens, the 1911 Britannica can be read in its entirety online, and while I doubt I'll ever actually do that, this particular book about its making does interest me. The encyclopedia, despite its supposed advanced non-theistic bent, is, to be honest, a relic of its time. Some of its racial notions are downright hilarious in their bluntness. Black people, it asserts, mainly think about sex. Sheesh, join the club.
This is at my library, so I will investigate.
Will read and review to come later.
(KevinR@Ky 2016)
I knew a man -- a brave and resolute atheist/freethinker -- who had a set and who cherished it as one of the crown jewels of his life-long-procured massive collection of anti-theist/nontheist literature. His collection filled his two-story home from top to bottom and climaxed in a beautifully curated and archived basement of shelf rows that put most regular libraries to shame. He proclaimed his holdings to constitute the best collection of freethought lit in the country, and I had little doubt of it. The 1911 Britannica, he explained, was the last "unexpurgated" edition before the Catholic Church purged it of religiously problematic ideas.
As it happens, the 1911 Britannica can be read in its entirety online, and while I doubt I'll ever actually do that, this particular book about its making does interest me. The encyclopedia, despite its supposed advanced non-theistic bent, is, to be honest, a relic of its time. Some of its racial notions are downright hilarious in their bluntness. Black people, it asserts, mainly think about sex. Sheesh, join the club.
This is at my library, so I will investigate.
Will read and review to come later.
(KevinR@Ky 2016)
September 9, 2020
Everything Explained that is Explainable, by Denis Boyles; Alfred A. Knopf: New York; $30.00 hardback
We all remember them, the finely bound encyclopedias of our youth. The ancient forebear of these works, of course, is the great Encyclopaedia Britannica, founded as a hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment. These volumes of all the knowledge of the world stood as one of the great leaps of this era when Reason, not emotion or sentimentality, ruled the day. Denis Boyles, eclectic successful writer of books, articles, journals and reviews, is a professor in France whose grasp of the Age of Reason--- begun by the French Revolution--- is cleverly expressed in this work. He writes, that is to say, of 'the celebrated 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910-1911'.
Boyles tells a remarkable story of American ingenuity linked with cultural admiration for the "old country". Numerous volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica existed when Horace Everett Hooper came on the scene. An American entrepreneur, he saw a possibility to meld the wisdom of the ages to the burgeoning population of the new Western frontier, recently settled and subdued by Americans. In short, Hooper decided to sell a new edition to the now entrenched citizens of our Great American West who sought to make their land equally as attractive to the educated as the farmer. They wanted their own descendants to be educated people.
And sell them he did. His venture brought not only the collected wisdom of some 1,500 authors to the plains, but also the prejudices and preconceptions of the triumphalism of the West. The turn of the last century was a time of pride, and a belief in the ever more, inexorable march of Western Civilization. Each of the astounding essays reflected, in some manner or form, this belief in the inevitability of Progress. Progress was defined as bringing Western ways of art, culture, science, and Christianity to a benighted world.
We follow the adventures of Horace Everett Hooper as he links a problematic business model of the nevertheless greatly admired London Times to his discovery of the availability of the new edition of the encyclopedia. What comes next is a triumph of salesmanship, a new practice in a brash country where anything was possible. We see the yearnings of an informed populace on the frontier, seeking wisdom with their new found wealth. We also discover a last hurrah for an age whose belief in endless progress would soon to be doomed by the Great War, World War 1. This is not just a book about the rebirth of a great literary event, though it is that,it is a metaphor for what that world view represented, on the eve of its demise.
We all remember them, the finely bound encyclopedias of our youth. The ancient forebear of these works, of course, is the great Encyclopaedia Britannica, founded as a hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment. These volumes of all the knowledge of the world stood as one of the great leaps of this era when Reason, not emotion or sentimentality, ruled the day. Denis Boyles, eclectic successful writer of books, articles, journals and reviews, is a professor in France whose grasp of the Age of Reason--- begun by the French Revolution--- is cleverly expressed in this work. He writes, that is to say, of 'the celebrated 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910-1911'.
Boyles tells a remarkable story of American ingenuity linked with cultural admiration for the "old country". Numerous volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica existed when Horace Everett Hooper came on the scene. An American entrepreneur, he saw a possibility to meld the wisdom of the ages to the burgeoning population of the new Western frontier, recently settled and subdued by Americans. In short, Hooper decided to sell a new edition to the now entrenched citizens of our Great American West who sought to make their land equally as attractive to the educated as the farmer. They wanted their own descendants to be educated people.
And sell them he did. His venture brought not only the collected wisdom of some 1,500 authors to the plains, but also the prejudices and preconceptions of the triumphalism of the West. The turn of the last century was a time of pride, and a belief in the ever more, inexorable march of Western Civilization. Each of the astounding essays reflected, in some manner or form, this belief in the inevitability of Progress. Progress was defined as bringing Western ways of art, culture, science, and Christianity to a benighted world.
We follow the adventures of Horace Everett Hooper as he links a problematic business model of the nevertheless greatly admired London Times to his discovery of the availability of the new edition of the encyclopedia. What comes next is a triumph of salesmanship, a new practice in a brash country where anything was possible. We see the yearnings of an informed populace on the frontier, seeking wisdom with their new found wealth. We also discover a last hurrah for an age whose belief in endless progress would soon to be doomed by the Great War, World War 1. This is not just a book about the rebirth of a great literary event, though it is that,it is a metaphor for what that world view represented, on the eve of its demise.
January 21, 2021
If you want to read about how the encyclopedia was compiled in this book you will be utterly disappointed, like me. It dealt with the commercial side of how the obsolete 9th edition was marketed and how The Times was involved to give the book prestige. Then the legal entanglement between the owners.
Then the Cambridge University was brought in to give prestige to the 11th edition.
Abruptly the female subferage was brought into the book for little reason rather than some women was involved in the production.
Then the Cambridge University was brought in to give prestige to the 11th edition.
Abruptly the female subferage was brought into the book for little reason rather than some women was involved in the production.
May 11, 2018
The title isn't misleading but doesn't make clear that this is an account of the business or commercial aspect of the subject and has very little to do with the content and writing of the encyclopedia.
November 2, 2017
I started this as an audiobook, but this isn't a book that I can digest in that format. I liked the context that it gives to that era of history, especially how books get sold.
September 22, 2018
Wish it was more an intellectual history of the EB, rather than the minutiae of London Times publishing business backroom dealings
November 18, 2018
Tedious. A book about the history of the hyperbolic marketing found in newspapers. Regarding the history of the encyclopedia, a summary, "It took a lot of time and people, it was challenging."
July 11, 2018
There is much to be said about "Everything Explained That is Explainable". It contains a lot of information that is useful for fact finders or lovers of historical facts.
Two examples:
1.)"The idea as one full-page ad on May 8th, 1899, explained was to establish a "Times Library" for the common man, one that happened to include every book The Times had ever sold" (132).
2.) "In 1890 a new system , formulated by Sir Frederick Macmillan was put in place to guarantee publishers and booksellers a special status in the kingdom of commerce- Macmillan's plan established two classes of books- "net books", which could never be sold new for less than the cover price, and "subject books", which could be sold without any regard for the published price. Publishers were asked to sign this "net book agreement" (189).
The eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica was certainly grand in its in-depth encyclopedic article descriptions which came from thousands of editors whom were specialists in their respective fields. I have had the personal pleasure of scribing notes from the eleventh edition set, upon making a trip out to a Special Collection library.
However, as great as the eleventh edition may be, I find the ninth edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica to have an equally scholarly, yet more personable feel to its volumes, in comparison to the eleventh edition volumes.
For instance, in the ninth volume of the ninth edition (first printed in the year 1879), the subject of Falcons are discussed. There is an article concerning the Merlin Falcon which stresses that the Merlin Falcon has been observed to be aggressive and willing to take on a man, as well as a bird of twice its size. Such an elaboration seems a true field tested one. There is no such elaboration concerning the Merlin Falcon (of this magnitude) within the eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In conclusion to this review of "Everything Explained That is Explainable", I think the author (Denis Boyles) did a fantastic job on this book and I would be delighted to meet him in person at a conference event.
Two examples:
1.)"The idea as one full-page ad on May 8th, 1899, explained was to establish a "Times Library" for the common man, one that happened to include every book The Times had ever sold" (132).
2.) "In 1890 a new system , formulated by Sir Frederick Macmillan was put in place to guarantee publishers and booksellers a special status in the kingdom of commerce- Macmillan's plan established two classes of books- "net books", which could never be sold new for less than the cover price, and "subject books", which could be sold without any regard for the published price. Publishers were asked to sign this "net book agreement" (189).
The eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica was certainly grand in its in-depth encyclopedic article descriptions which came from thousands of editors whom were specialists in their respective fields. I have had the personal pleasure of scribing notes from the eleventh edition set, upon making a trip out to a Special Collection library.
However, as great as the eleventh edition may be, I find the ninth edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica to have an equally scholarly, yet more personable feel to its volumes, in comparison to the eleventh edition volumes.
For instance, in the ninth volume of the ninth edition (first printed in the year 1879), the subject of Falcons are discussed. There is an article concerning the Merlin Falcon which stresses that the Merlin Falcon has been observed to be aggressive and willing to take on a man, as well as a bird of twice its size. Such an elaboration seems a true field tested one. There is no such elaboration concerning the Merlin Falcon (of this magnitude) within the eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In conclusion to this review of "Everything Explained That is Explainable", I think the author (Denis Boyles) did a fantastic job on this book and I would be delighted to meet him in person at a conference event.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews