Encyclopaedia Britannica

First edition, first printing of The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

• Sold as a set of 3 volumes.
• Edited by William Smellie (Scottish).
• Engravings by Andrew Bell.
• Printed by Colin Macfarquhar.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences compiled upon a New Plan. In which the Different Sciences and Arts are digested into Distinct Treatises or Systems; and the Various Technical Terms, etc. are explained as they occur in the order of the Alphabet.
• Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, 1771.
• Quarto in half-sheets.
• Half-title to each volume, 159 engraved plates (of 160, lacking plate 112 in 'Midwifery' section').
• viii, 586, [10], 587-697; [4] 1009, [3]; [4], 280, 283-678, 879-953, [1]pp.
• Contemporary calf-backed glazed blue paper boards, 

The first edition of 'the most famous of all encyclopaedias in the English language' (PMM). A landmark Enlightenment text, the Britannica was the brainchild of the Edinburgh-based bookseller and printer, Colin Macfarquhar, and the engraver Andrew Bell. At the time, the city was arguably the intellectual center of Britain, host to many of the nation's leading thinkers from David Hume to Adam Smith, and the gathering place of discussion clubs like The Select Society and The Poker Club where members met to debate advances in the arts and sciences.

Macfarquhar and Bell conceived of the Britannica as a conservative reaction to the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot (published 1751 to 1766), which was widely viewed as heretical, but the key initiative that set the Britannica apart from other earlier encyclopaedias was its layout. Related topics were to be grouped together into longer essays, then organized alphabetically. Previously technical terms had been listed generally in alphabetical order, an approach that the Britannica derided as 'dismembering the sciences' (Preface).

The 28-year-old press-corrector William Smellie was employed to provide the text. The result was originally issued in 100 parts (called 'numbers' and equivalent to thick pamphlets), which were later bound into three volumes. The first number appeared on December 6, 1768 in Edinburgh, priced 6d or 8d on finer paper, with the last issued in 1771.

With two of the three midwifery plates depicting childbirth in clinical detail that so shocked King George III that he commanded that the pages be ripped from every copy. These plates are consequently rarely found (see Kogan, The Great EB: The Story Of The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1958, p.13). The other plates include human anatomy, animals and other natural history subjects, scientific instruments and industrial apparatus, geometrical propositions, and miscellaneous subjects ranging from types of cannon to specimens of shorthand; there are also several plates of music score and a small number of maps. Sets in any state of completeness are rare.