Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences is considered by manyscholars to be the first true encyclopedia in English. Itwas first published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, long before the great, and better-known, French Encyclopédie was conceived. Chambers explicitly identified the scope and aim of this monumental Cyclopaedia in his lengthy subtitle: Containing the Definitions of the Terms, and Accounts of the Things Signify'd Thereby, in the Several Arts, both Liberal and Mechanical, and the Several Sciences, Human and Divine: the Figures, Kinds, Properties, Productions, Preparations, and Uses, of Things Natural and Artificial; the Rise, Progress, and State of Things Ecclesiastical, Civil, Military, and Commercial: with the Several Systems, Sects, Opinions, etc; among Philosophers, Divines, Mathematicians, Physicians, Antiquaries, Criticks, etc.: The Whole Intended as a Course of Ancient and Modern Learning.
Chambers’ Cyclopaedia was created in a time when books in London were becoming morecommon and affordable for the average citizen. Literacy rates rose, and a popular curiosityabout nature and learning developed. Numerous dictionaries and lexicons, providing convenient summaries and syntheses of the arts and sciences, were published. This was aprecursor to the passion of the late 18th century for making essential knowledge accessible to all with an aim towards social, moral, cultural, scientific, and economic enlightenment. These new publications in ordinary English rapidly replaced the Latin encyclopedias accessible only to university-educated readers. Chambers offered his work as a single volume, an economic and compact form that contained a wealth of information previously found only in many individual publications. He boldly described the Cyclopaedia as ‘the best Book in the universe.’
The Cyclopaedia contains over 20,000 entries, with exquisitely engraved explanatory plates, a lengthy preface, and some twenty-five dense folio pages that explain how the work should be used. Chambers intended a reader to pursue a subject in a logical or systematic fashion, rather than to merely check the meaning of a term. He provided the readers with his ‘View of Knowledge’, a diagram of forty-seven heads representing various arts and sciences, ranging from Meteorology to Poetry. The entries, varied in length, are organized alphabetically with elaborate cross-references. The second edition carried the first significant entry on ‘Book’ in any English dictionary at the time. This entry, one of the longest in the work, offers an impressive historical survey of different kinds of books.
It was said that Chambers himself was given 500 pounds by the group of printers who published the work as a sign of their appreciation. Although 500 pounds in the mid 18th century was considered a fortune, Chambers dedicated the rest of his life compiling and arranging materials for supplementary volumes in order to fill gaps, defects, and omissions thatoccurred in his first volumes. The ‘Supplement’ was not published until many years after Chambers’ sudden death in 1740. Chambers is considered by many modern scholars as a father of the modern encyclopedia. His book does not merely list information about facts and terms of the sciences, but rather it offers one of the last heroic models of how one might travel the circle of arts and sciences without becoming lost.
Cyclopedia is now displayed in Rare Books & Special Collections Library entrance Hall, 3rd floor, Library Building, for one month.