Stranded Encyclopedias in Eighteenth-Century Sweden: Exploring the Rise of Alphabetical Encyclopedism

Abstract

AbstractFor a long time, histories of the rise of the modern encyclopedia were mainly histories of publications: chronologies of large-scale, alphabetically organized reference works, successfully completed in one country after another, from the late 1600s onwards. Since none of the Scandinavian countries managed to publish general encyclopedias in the eighteenth century, researchers assumed that encyclopedic practice “reached” the northern periphery at a later date. However, the geographical expansion of a literary practice and the history of its most successful, printed outcomes do not necessarily share the same milestones. In this chapter, Linn Holmberg explores a number of stranded encyclopedias in eighteenth-century Sweden, detected partly through the periodical press, partly through archival research. The first part examines glimpses of encyclopedic projects seen through the journal Lärda tidningar (1745–1773). The second part reconstructs the encyclopedic efforts of two officials of the Swedish Bureau of Mines, who worked on an encyclopedia of mining and metallurgy for almost forty years (c. 1743–1787). By examining the motivations and circumstances underpinning the initiation, abandonment, and transformations of these projects, the study aspires to produce new insights into the early formation of alphabetical encyclopedic practice in eighteenth-century Sweden.