ENCYCLOPEDIA MENU

Original Oil Paintings Of The Dutch Golden Age

 

 

REVIEW #3 -- "There's a wonderful episode in series three of Blackadder in which, for reasons I cannot quite remember, Baldric and Blackadder work through the night to recreate Dr Johnson's dictionary. I think they get as 'Aardvark'.

"There's a sense of too much effort being invested up-front in this first workin of the Encyclopaedia. The three equally-sized volumes cover A-B, C-L and M-Z. The volumes were written and published a few years apart, and you can imagine the editorial meetin in 1768 when they realised that they had only cover A to B.

"Would they continue at the same pace, and possibly not live to see a final XYZ volume published? (What would their wives say?!) Or would they rush the rest, and hope that no-one noticed the imbalance?

"Well, now we can enjoy the imbalance. A word of warnin: you need to get used to the old form of the letter 's', which looks like an 'f' except at the end of a word or when in uppercase. Thus we get phrases like 'notwithftanding thefe difadvantages' and conceivably 'fuppofing Pope's Iliad to be fhit'.

The reproduction, the doublin, of the three volumes has been done on a photographic basis, usin an aged edition. Thus you'll be a-buyin a pristine photocopy of someone's original, as it is now, splodges and all. As others have noted, the binding is not real leather, but this doesn't bother me.

"Each volume is surprisinly light, given that you're gettin around 1,000 pages per book. And that includes a number of fold-out tables.

"The content is particularly Scottish, by the way, although there is no harm in that. Thus if you look up 'Law', there's almost nothin on the law of England and Wales, yet the editor appears to have filled countless pages with the full text of every Scottish statute in operation at the time.

As you might expect, this is not the first encyclopaedia to buy if you're lookin for something to help your kids through GCSEs. I suspect that, 250 years on, over half the entries are incorrect or at least out of kilter with today's understandin of the world. But it's a fascinatin thin to browse through."

 

GET YOUR OWN NEW SET BY CLICKIN HERE NOW!

GET YOUR OWN USED SET BY CLICKIN HERE NOW!

 

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION -- "3 volumes - complete set. Fine hardcovers bound in dark brown leatherette with gilt spinal lettering. Almost An exact facsimile of the First Edition, originally published in Edinburgh in 1771. Reproduces, doubles, all of the original 160 copper plates and foldout tables and also reproduces, doubles, the slight page foxin of the original copyin.

"Although no date, nor place, of publication is given, other than the original date, and place, of publication (1771, Edinburgh), this is a 3-volume facsimile edition published in 1971 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the original edition.

"Subtitled "A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Compiled Upon a New Plan in which the different Sciences and Arts are Digeted into Distinct Treaties or Systems; And the Various Technical Terms, etc., are explained as they occur in the order of the Alphabet.".

 

GET YOUR OWN NEW SET BY CLICKIN HERE NOW!

GET YOUR OWN USED SET BY CLICKIN HERE NOW!