Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is the company known for publishing the Encyclopædia Britannica, the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia. The company also owns the American dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster. Originally founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, and historically British, the company is now based in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
The Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for 'British Encyclopaedia') is a general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published since 1768, and after several ownership changes is currently owned by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia at the website Britannica.com.
Printed for 245 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, in weekly instalments that came together to form three volumes. At first, the encyclopaedia, from edition to edition, grew quickly in size. The second edition was extended to 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810), the Britannica had expanded to 20 volumes. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, its size (at least in terms of total word length) has remained roughly steady, at about 40 million words.
Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in 54 volumes.
The original editors had three criteria for including a book in the series drawn from Western Civilization: the book must be relevant to contemporary matters, and not only important in its historical context; it must be rewarding to re-read repeatedly with respect to liberal education; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas", relevant to at least 25 of the 102 "Great Ideas" as identified by the editor of the series's comprehensive index, the Syntopicon, to which they belonged. The books were chosen not on the basis of ethnic and cultural inclusiveness (historical influence being seen as sufficient for inclusion), nor on whether the editors agreed with the authors' views.