THE ONE INDISPENSABLE WORK OF REFERENCE 



Gottingen, Vienna, Kioto; and in America, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, 

 Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Toronto and many 

 more; universities and centres of research everywhere gave their ablest 

 minds to the preparation of a new and comprehensive summary of all that is 

 known, a restatement, in the light of developments to 1910-1911, of the 

 knowledge acquired by mankind through 6,000 years of progress. 



This cosmopolitan body of contributors includes: members 

 of the staffs of institutions of learning, fellows of the Royal 

 Society, Presidents and Secretaries of other learned societies 

 throughout the world, staffs of the great museums, national 

 collections and libraries, of observatories, laboratories and 

 surveys, ministers, diplomats and government officials, 

 theologians, lawyers, physicians and surgeons, engineers 

 and architects, business men and manufacturers, naval and military officers, 

 historians and archaeologists, sociologists and economists, geographers and 

 explorers, biologists and agriculturists, mathematicians, physicists and 

 chemists, geologists, astronomers and meteorologists. 



To secure the greatest possible efficiency for this work in 

 actual service, an entirely new plan was applied to its publi- 

 cation. It was not produced, as is the usual custom for 

 large works, a volume or a few volumes at a time (fourteen 

 years elapsed, for example, between the publication of the 

 first volume and the publication of the last volume of an 

 earlier edition, the Ninth, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica). 

 The Eleventh Edition was written and published as a complete whole. Under 

 the constant direction and supervision of an expert editorial staff of 64 mem- 

 bers, with headquarters in London and New York, the 1,500 contributors 

 throughout the world worked simultaneously at the contents of the whole 

 28 volumes of text from A to Z. 



The whole of the manuscript was in the hands of the editor 

 for revision and correction before a single page went to the 

 printer. Eight years were required to produce the work on 

 this new plan and an outlay of $1,500,000 (an expenditure on 

 a single work never equalled in the history of publishing) 

 before a copy was offered for sale. The result is a more 

 harmonious, more complete, up-to-date and unified work, 

 free from inconsistencies, repetitions and similar faults to a degree impossible 

 under a less expensive plan. All the volumes from the first to the last are 

 equally up-to-date. 



" By the best authorities and expressed in a literary form which makes details 

 and discussions alike intelligible." The Times, London. 



