A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) as "the Best Book in the Universe "

This article considers Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (2 Vols., 1728) as a work that responded to anxieties about information overload. Chambers drew on Renaissance ideas about summarizing and organizing knowledge—in particular, the humanist practice of keeping a commonplace book. By completing an alphabetical dictionary with due deference to categories, or Heads, he not only offered a convenient summary of knowledge but retained the notion of an encyclopedic circle of arts and sciences. The article also relates this concept of authorial design to debates surrounding the 1710 copyright Statute in England.