My goal had been to make it robust enough to be handled as part of the circulating collection without unduly sacrificing original components. This repair had retained the section sewing and the boards but replaced the badly degraded leather spine and heavy, brittle end sheets.
Kelly Lawton of Lilly Library had come across a single volume I repaired in the early 2000’s and asked Beth Doyle if it could be used as a model for repair of the remaining numbers in their original bindings. All of humanity appeared to be on the threshold of being totally understood, described, improved, and then perfected, through the logic of Anglo-American institutions and thought…it was the high point of the Enlightenment, doomed to end when the lamps went out all over Europe in the fatal summer of 1914.” Our favorite Encyclopedia Britannica chapter. “The world of the Eleventh Edition was at the zenith of those ‘encyclopedic’ prerequisites, rationality and positivism. But the veneration of this work is more diffuse and more adoring than these particularities account for. People who praise the 11 th Edition Encyclopedia Britannica point to the illustriousness of the contributors, the profusion of beautifully written biographical entries with odd, sometimes questionable details (Pedro I of Portugal disinterred his dead mistress and placed her remains on the throne of the queen, Potemkin died “…in consequence of eating a whole goose in one sitting,” etc., etc…) or the detailed, illustrated accounts of manufactures, engineering, and natural history. Two websites are devoted to 11 th Edition fandom. It is discussed as THE GREAT 11 th EDITION, listed alongside the works of Heidegger, Camus, and Fukuyama as one of the 100 most important non-fiction works of the 20 th Century. Jacobs writes about it in his book The Know-It-All, and Hans Koning, powerhouse of New Left thought, published an eloquent meditation on the world view reflected in its pages. Veneration of this edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica spans beyond libraries and the antiquarian book trade into popular culture. Unlike millions of old reference works in declining bindings, the 11 th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1910, has a following. By Mary Yordy, Senior Conservation Technician 1913 advertisement for the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition from Penny’s Poetry Pages.
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