MacFarquarson, Colin
Colin Macfarquhar,(born 1745?—died April 2, 1793, Edinburgh?, Scot.), Scottish printer, who, with Andrew Bell, founded the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1768.
A printer in Edinburgh and presumably the printer of the Britannica—for the first edition is stated to have been sold at his printing office in Nicolson Street—Macfarquhar remains an obscure figure. Even the dates and places of his birth and death are uncertain. The one certainty about his part in launching the Britannica is that he edited the early volumes of the third edition (1788–97).
Frank A. Kafker, who has written extensively on the history of the encyclopedia notes Macfarquhar's death on 2 April 1793, at the age of forty-eight having basically worked himself to death. Kafker states the third edition was editied by Macfarquhar, " a man of extensive learning despite his limited formal schooling, chose to edit the work himself. Before his death he had completed the first twelve volumes up to the article ‘Mysteries’. George Gleig, who took over after that, recruited such eminent contributors as John Robison and probably John Barclay but Macfarquhar deserves recognition for helping to make this edition an exemplar of the Scottish Enlightenment, the most informative general encyclopaedia in eighteenth-century Britain, and a best-seller with a press run reaching perhaps 13,000 sets."
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Macfarquhar proved to be not only an aggressive businessman but also an exceptionally creative and able one. This can be seen from a history of his most important publication, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the first alphabetically arranged general encyclopaedia published in Scotland. The earliest edition appeared in instalments from 1768 to 1771 and as a three-volume set in 1771.
Macfarquhar and his co-publisher, the engraver Andrew Bell, knew how to market their reference book: they were the first eighteenth-century British publishers to entitle their work an encyclopaedia, a word with selling power thanks to the reputation of the Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert from 1751 to 1772; also they distinguished the Britannica from its competitors by publishing it in quarto rather than in octavo or folio and by featuring long synthesizing articles as well as short ones. In addition they kept costs down by printing the Britannica in Macfarquhar's printing shop and by assigning Bell the engraving of all the copperplates. The two lightened their task by choosing not to edit it themselves and instead selected William Smellie. He copied and abridged so much from other sources that this edition of the Britannica turned out to be undistinguished.
Macfarquhar and Bell then decided on an expanded second edition. In order to raise the capital they formed a syndicate with eight other Scottish publishers. This edition was published in instalments from 1777 to 1784 and in ten quarto volumes with imprints from 1778 to 1783. Bell remained responsible for the engravings and Macfarquhar for at least part of the printing. They named a new editor, James Tytler, who greatly improved the work by including biographies and by providing more depth on many subjects. The wholesale copying from earlier publications continued and caused threatened and actual lawsuits. Macfarquhar and Bell settled these by awarding sets to the aggrieved parties, Samuel Foart Simmons, John Murray, and George Robinson.
The third edition marks the high point of the eighteenth-century editions of the Britannica. Published by Macfarquhar and Bell alone and issued in instalments from 1788 to 1797, and then in eighteen quarto volumes in 1797, it was the first encyclopaedia published in Great Britain to be compiled by more than a handful of contributors. Bell kept on furnishing the engravings and Macfarquhar did some of the printing but this time Macfarquhar, a man of extensive learning despite his limited formal schooling, chose to edit the work himself. Before his death he had completed the first twelve volumes up to the article ‘Mysteries’. George Gleig, who took over after that, recruited such eminent contributors as John Robison and probably John Barclay but Macfarquhar deserves recognition for helping to make this edition an exemplar of the Scottish Enlightenment, the most informative general encyclopaedia in eighteenth-century Britain, and a best-seller with a press run reaching perhaps 13,000 sets. ...
Frank A. Kafker, ‘Macfarquhar, Colin (1744/5–1793)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press,
Andrew Bell,(born 1726, Edinburgh, Scot.—died May 10, 1809, Edinburgh), Scottish engraver, and cofounder, with the printer Colin Macfarquhar, of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Bell was born in Edinburgh and lived there all his life. He began work humbly by “engraving letters, names, and crests on gentlemen’s plate, dog’s collars and so forth.” He was never greatly admired as an engraver, and many of his plates for the first, second, and third editions of the Britannica, and for William Smellie’s translation of the Count de Buffon’s Natural History (1781et seq.), are more highly regarded today than in his own time. How the arrangement between Bell and Macfarquhar to produce an encyclopaedia was made is not known; but it was Bell who wrote to William Smellie to engage his services as compiler of the first edition (1768–71), and his interest in the publication never flagged. He shared proprietorship with Macfarquhar, and in 1793, after Macfarquhar’s death, he became sole proprietor.
F. A. Kafker, ‘The achievement of Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar as the first publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1995), 139–52.
The Encyclopedists as a Group: A Collective Biography of the Authors of the Encyclopédie. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century
EB
...Bell was born in Edinburgh in 1726, his father a baker. He had little formal education and was apprenticed to the engraver Richard Cooper.[1] Bell was a colourful Scot. His height was 4 foot 6; he had crooked legs and an enormous nose that he would sometimes augment with a paper-mache version whenever anyone stared at his natural nose.[2] Bell began work as an engraver of crests, names, etc. on dog collars.[2] Despite his small stature, he deliberately rode the tallest horse available in Edinburgh, dismounting by a ladder to the cheers of onlookers.[2]
Bell produced almost all of the copperplate engravings for the 1st-4th editions of the Britannica: 160 for the 1st, 340 for the 2nd, 542 for the 3rd, and 531 for the 4th. By contrast, the 50 plates of the Supplement to the 3rd edition were engraved by D. Lizars. For the 1st edition, Bell produced three full pages of anatomically accurate depictions of dissected female pelvises and of foetuses in wombs for the midwifery article; these illustrations shocked King George III who commanded that the pages be ripped from every copy....
James Tytler:
...William Smellie was a master printer who’d left school aged 12. In 1765, he received a letter from Bell asking him to take on the formidable task “to prepare the whole work for the press”. They formed the Society of Gentlemen, three- strong, with a vision to create a definitive dictionary of arts and sciences. The first edition of the Britannica was published in instalments between 1768 and 1771, an age when the dodo was still in existence, trial by water could condemn you to death and measles was a killer.
Its pages faithfully recorded that baldness was cured with freshly-cut onions, California was a large country in the West Indies and woman was “female of man”.
Bought by 3000 people, it was successful enough to warrant an updated second edition, but a row between Smellie and the Duke of Buccleuch – a major subscriber – over the inclusion of biographical information led to his resignation. His place was taken by one of the city’s most colourful characters of the times, aviation fanatic James Tytler, the first man to successfully fly a hot air balloon in Great Britain.
He had left university at 15 and his fortunes had already swung from whaling ship surgeon to the debtors’ prison. As editor, he penned 9000 pages – increasing it from three volumes to nine – while hunched over his washerwoman landlady’s upturned washtub.
Tytler was paid a pittance for his efforts and supplemented his meagre income by working with Robert Burns writing lyrics for Scottish ballads and, bizarrely, writing a guide to Edinburgh’s prostitutes which rated their performance, looks and condition of their teeth.
It was while researching the encyclopaedia that he became fascinated with flight. And by 1784 he had made aviation history in his pioneering Grand Edinburgh Fire Balloon, launching himself upwards from a spot at Abbeyhill and soaring to around 40ft before settling, rather unfortunately, in a dung pile in Restalrig.
The encyclopaedia’s fortunes were even more uplifting. By 1830 it was into its seventh edition and had gained wide credibility. There were eminent contributors such as Sir Walter Scott writing about chivalry, drama and romance; George Bernard Shaw on socialism; Leon Trotsky on Lenin. Harry Houdini expounded on the subject of conjuring, Albert Einstein on time and space and Marie Curie on radium.
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Dick, Sanda "Writing is on the wall for city’s book of knowledge" Edinburgh News 2012.