Big Encyclopaedia: DICTIONARY OF GENERAL INFORMATION ON ALL FIELDS OF KNOWLEDGE; Yuzhakov, Sergei N., editor, 22 volumes, Saint-Petersburg, Tovarishestvo „Prosveshenie“, 1900-1909. 24x16 cm. In Russian

All volumes in publisher's semi-leather bindings. Gilded spines. Very good condition. Minor rubbing of the edges of some spines. "The Big Encyclopaedia" is prepared on the basis of the fifth edition of Mayer's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, but is not a mere translation of the German original. The publication is supplemented by numerous original articles on Russian history, culture, social sciences and law. This is its first value. The second significant value of the publication is the comprehensiveness of the translation and material processing under the guidance of one editor-in-chief - the sociologist Sergei Nikolayevich Yuzhakov (1849-1910), in contrast to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary, which outlived two editors-in-chief. "The Big Encyclopaedia" is the only multi-volume complete Russian encyclopaedic edition by a single editor-in-chief. The edition is richly illustrated with lots of colour and black-and-white illustrations, drawings, engravings, maps, applications. From technical point of view it is a masterpiece of printing and book production and contains a lot of lithographic applications as well as steel engravings. The team of authors who prepared materials for the Russian edition included prominent scholars and public figures. Each section was headed by one of the best specialists in the field. " Big Encyclopedia" edited by S. N. Yuzhakov is one of the largest universal encyclopaedias, and it was very popular and respected in Russia at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.