The Nuttall Encyclopædia: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge is an early 20th-century encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

, edited by Rev. James Wood

James Wood (encyclopedist)

The Reverend James Wood was the editor of The Nuttall Encyclopaedia. According to the title page of the encyclopedia, Wood was also the editor of "Nuttall's Standard Dictionary" and the compiler of "The Nuttall Dictionary of Quotations".-References:...

, first published in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1900 by Frederick Warne & Co

Frederick Warne & Co

Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...

 Ltd.

Description

The Nuttall Encyclopædia is named for Dr. Peter Austin Nuttall (d. 1869), whose works, such as Standard Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (published in 1863), were eventually acquired by Frederick Warne, and would be published for decades to come.

The title page proclaims this encyclopedia to be "a concise and comprehensive dictionary of general knowledge consisting of over 16,000 terse and original articles on nearly all subjects discussed in larger encyclopædias, and specially dealing with such as come under the categories of history, biography, geography, literature, philosophy, religion, science, and art".

The entries or articles in this work are generally very short, and are mostly about individuals and places; while it has entries for fictional characters from Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

' books, the encyclopedia lacks entries for fruit. It often reflects the personal worldview of the author, viewing events from a definite perspective. This can be seen in entries like Dates of Epoch-Making Events

Dates of Epoch-Making Events

Dates of Epoch-Making Events is an entry in The Nuttall Encyclopaedia for its listing of the most important turning points in history, particularly western history. The work's list illustrates western culture's turning points and James Wood's views from the early 20th century...

. As another example, the entry for Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

 presents a British view of an 1899 event:
In 2004, Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

 published a version of the 1907 edition, which is now in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

.

External links

• Project Gutenberg version
• The Nuttall Encyclopædia (1907) Electronic dictionary in EPWING/JIS X 4081 format
• The Nuttall Encyclopædia (1920) at Google Books