phoebe ayers wrote:
Here's a historical tidbit from a lovely book I'm slowly reading by Robert Collison called "Encyclopedias: their history throughout the ages" (1966) -- he claims that Johann Heinrich Zedler's "Grosses vollstandiges Universal-Lexicon", first pub. in 1731, was the first encyclopedia to include biographies of living people. Not sure, in turn, how he figured this out (extensive historical research, I think) but it's nice to know that living bios have at least as long a pedigree in the modern encyclopedia as philosophical articles (e.g. the "Encyclopedie", first published in 1751) and technical/practical articles (e.g. Chambers' "Cyclopedia", first published in 1728).
Incidentally, if any of you are encyclopedia fans and you find an inexpensive copy of Collison's book, buy it -- it's out of print and difficult to find.
I found 13 copies listed at Abebooks, with the cheapest being for $50.00. It is a British publication so it uses the Encyclopaedia spelling in its title.
Ec