Encyclopædia Britannica occupies a special place in the annals of publishing and the history of the West. Although its full influence, like that of any great work of literature, is ultimately immeasurable in concrete terms (the number of units sold is never the best barometer), its larger social and cultural impact—as a reference work, a spark to learning, a symbol of aspiration, a recorder of evolving knowledge, and a mirror of our changing times—has been extraordinary.
The Whole-Set Club
Reading an entire Britannica print set has been a goal of bibliophiles and self-learners for centuries, and some of the hearty souls who have accomplished this feat are detailed here.
George Bernard Shaw, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, was particularly fond of Britannica’s twenty-four-volume ninth edition (1875–89). He claimed to have read the entire set during visits to the British Museum, skipping only Britannica’s lengthy science articles.
C.S. Forester (1899–1966) is best known for his popular Horatio Hornblower seafaring novels (1937–67) and for his 1935 story The African Queen, the classic 1951 film version of which was directed by John Huston and starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. But he also enjoys a special seat in the “whole-set club,” one not many readers have ever occupied: he read his set of Britannica three times! This may seem like an impossible feat, but Forester was one of those rare birds with a photographic memory who could read four thousand words per minute. “He read the Encyclopædia Britannica for bedside reading,” remembered his son.
George Forman Goodyear was a prominent man of many talents in Buffalo, New York, whose obituary in 2002 listed “lawyer, chemist, Buffalo television pioneer, school board president, mayoral candidate, cultural leader, and philanthropist.” The article also noted his insatiable thirst for knowledge, which led him to read the entire twenty-four-volume set of Britannica’s fourteenth edition (1929–73). He began reading his set while a student at Harvard Law School in 1929 and continued reading at a pace of a thousand pages a year, finally finishing his feat twenty-two years later.