Francis Lieber completes his English-language translation of…

Francis Lieber completes his English-language translation of the Brockhaus encyclopediain 1833, thus giving birth to the Encyclopedia Americana, the first general encyclopedia to bear an American imprint.

Its title, in full, is "Encyclopædia Americana. A popular dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, history, politics and biography, brought down to the present time; including a copious collection of original articles in American biography; on the basis of the 7th ed. of the German Conversations-Lexicon.”

Lieber, a German-American jurist and political philosopher, had begun production in 1829 of an English-language adaptation of the seventh edition of Brockhaus’ “Konversations-Lexikon,” although with significant added and rewritten material.

Like the Brockhaus encyclopedia, Lieber’s translation is written in an accessible style and intended for general (rather than scholarly) use.