cover image Everything Explained That Is Explainable: On the Creation of the Encyclopædia Britannica’s Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911

Everything Explained That Is Explainable: On the Creation of the Encyclopædia Britannica’s Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911

Denis Boyles. Knopf, $30 (464p) ISBN 978-0-307-26917-1

Boyles (How to Catch a Pig) ventures too deep into minutiae in this painstaking account of the venture behind the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The prime mover behind the 11th edition and central figure in this narrative was Horace Everett Hooper, an American entrepreneur and bookseller, who dreamed of a magnificent edifice of everything worth knowing, published as a single work, that would also be a profitable product. Those twin pursuits fill the book, with the business end taking pride of place over the actual construction of the encyclopedia and its epistemological considerations. Boyles emphasizes Hooper’s long association with the Times of London; Hooper felt that the gravitas of the newspaper brand would strengthen the Encyclopaedia Britannica readership while buoying the bottom line of the declining paper. Boyles also sketches the 11th edition’s editorial staff, focusing on editor-in-chief Hugh Chisolm and senior editor and indexer Janet Hogarth. Boyles certainly comes close to explaining everything there is to know about this publication—or maybe it’s just that by the end of the book, it’s hard to imagine wanting to know anything else. (May)