Encyclopaedias in Newspapers in British Colonial America and the Early United States

In this article, relying on Readex's electronic database ‘Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690–1876: From Colonies to Nation’, I use the evidence of newspapers to construct a picture of the encyclopaedias most mentioned in British North America and the early United States during the period before 1790. I begin by explaining my methodology and reviewing other approaches to studying the American market for encyclopaedias before 1790. Then, working on the assumption that mentions of encyclopaedias in newspapers roughly represent interest in encyclopaedias, I attempt to quantify Americans’ evolving interest in different encyclopaedias and kinds of encyclopaedias. Lastly, having sketched out the landscape of encyclopaedias in eighteenth-century America, I consider the uses to which they were put. Among other conclusions, I argue that, despite assertions to the contrary by encyclopaedists and their publishers, encyclopaedias functioned less as substitutes for private libraries than as complements to them.