Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World (BENLW) is an ambitious and welcome work, surpassing in both extent and quality all previous scholarly companions for Neo-Latin studies. It contains over 211 alphabetically listed entries. Its coverage is so broad that it is tempting to call it an ‘Encyclopaedia of Later Latin’, due to the fact that many issues not pertaining directly to Renaissance Latin, but rather to Latin in general, are treated here in considerable detail. Nevertheless, the focus of the work is squarely set on the years 1300–1700.

For reasons unknown to this reviewer, several European publishers (Cambridge, Oxford and Brill) almost simultaneously decided to publish large reference volumes on Neo-Latin. Two of these have been one-volume works: Cambridge's A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (ed. V. Moul (2017)) and The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (ed. S. Knight and S. Tilg (2015)). Brill, on the other hand, has produced a two-volume, 1,245 page blockbuster which certainly will not be soon surpassed in either length or comprehensiveness. The ideal reviewer for an encyclopedic work spanning so many specialties is probably impossible to find especially since of the scholars that one might nominate, so many are included in the list of seventy-eight contributors. For the sake of full disclosure: I have had the good fortune of encountering more than a few of the contributors as instructors, mentors and colleagues. Nevertheless, I will endeavour to apprise the work under consideration impartially.

In comparing BENLW to the competing aforementioned texts, the most obvious point of contrast is that of size, which has certain sequelae in scope, diversity of perspectives, depth, readability and price. A single-volume work is within the power of an individual scholar to edit well with resulting advantages of cohesiveness and a uniform style of presentation. The two Brill tomes are divided in their scope: the first, the ‘Macropedia’, is broken into twelve sections which in total contain sixty-six scholarly articles averaging roughly ten pages each. These articles are generally thematic in nature: for example, ‘Early Modern Philosophical Systems’, ‘Neo-Latin Fiction’, ‘Counter-Reformation’. The text proceeds in a clear manner from the linguistic considerations of development, Neo-Latin grammar and vocabulary to the culture of Renaissance presses that printed Neo-Latin works. After two chapters which consider the interplay between Neo-Latin and the vernacular, and Neo-Latin literary in general, the articles in the Macropedia are organized by discipline, genre, location and period. The second volume, the ‘Micropedia’, provides 145 concise synopses of selected topics. The collection in the Micropedia contains articles on geographic regions, periods, genres, authors, specific works and general themes. The articles provide an excellent point of reference for many topics which relate to, or fall under, the umbrella designation of Neo-Latin. However, neither the Micropedia nor BENLW in general can be described as comprehensive in any real sense. The division between the Macropedia and the Micropedia may be a nod (intentional or otherwise) to Jozef Ijsewijn's magnum opus The Companion to Neo-Latin Studies (1977) which also comprised two volumes divided along similar lines.

The element of scope is partly independent of size, but in this BENLW excels previous works; several topics which are absent from, or hardly touched in, other reference works are given major coverage here: pronunciation of Latin, women's education and female authors, botanical Latin and Latin literature after 1700. In addition to these thematic topics, which only BENLW’s Macropedia treats, there are many authors and smaller subjects (absent from other handbooks and companions) which find a home in BENLW’s Micropedia: Pierre Gassendi, Emanuel Swedenborg and even Latin and the Social Media.

BENLW has a plurality of editors (three are listed in the title, but a fourth, Craig Kallendorf, editor-in-chief of the Renaissance Society of America's Texts and Studies Series also signed the editors’ preface). All of these are well-known names to scholars working within the field of Neo-Latin studies. At the front of the first volume there is a touching dedication to Philip Ford, who passed away before the work went to press. Terence said quot homines tot sententiae, but BENLW shows a consistent application of editorial principles and a singular vision for the overarching project. Each of the four editors also made magisterial contributions to the work in the form of individual articles.

Amidst such a wealth of material, any reader could hold an opposing view or attribute importance differently within the various entries. A book review does not provide the framework or space to survey all such possible disagreements in any detail. It is laudable, however, that the editors enlisted two scholars (Money and Sacré) to compose two different entries under the same title: ‘Neo-Latin Verse in the Twilight Years’. Likewise, the important articles on ‘Latin’ and ‘Philosophy’ were allowed their own space, and philosophical schools their own articles, written by five first-rate contributors. The importance of ‘Conversational Latin’ in the history of Neo-Latin was given its due with two separate articles divided by the chronological terminus of 1650. It suffices to observe that I have not spotted any grievous omissions.

There are two other aspects of BENLW especially worthy of mention: first, the style of the work is simple, precise and a pleasure to read. With the exception of titles and the completely obvious, all Latin is translated in-line or in the footnotes; this renders BENLW useful to those scholars of Renaissance literature and comparative literature or history who would otherwise be overwhelmed by the amount of Latin needed to comprehend any of the better articles. The second characteristic is the quality of the contributors, the overwhelming majority of whom are eminent scholars within Neo-Latin studies or a coterminous field. In a work as large as this, with a legion of contributing authors, it would be unfair to single out only a few for excellence (or for failures). There are, however, many particularly meritorious entries in both the volumes, and only a few that genuinely disappoint. The under-representation of some important subjects and genres, such as drama (to which only one article is explicitly dedicated), will certainly disappoint some readers, but the editorial decisions are respectable. Certainly, readers with expertise in areas not familiar to me may find some examples of errors which this reviewer did not notice; it suffices to say that problems of various types appear but do not abound. In fact, the overall quality of the articles is very high in terms of scholarship, clarity and usefulness to readers, including introductory readers. Unlike other encyclopaedias, this work (especially the Macropedia) can easily be read cover to cover.

The first tome is capped not by indices, which appear only at the end of the second volume, but by twenty pages of illustrations, figures and graphics. These high quality reproductions do much to enhance the discussion of Neo-Latin printers and the visual arts. The indices are printed clearly, properly organized, and stood-up flawlessly to thorough spot-checking.

For many users, reading an encyclopaedia article is primarily a way of getting a preliminary orientation to a topic, and the next step is to follow up the bibliographical references. Unfortunately, too many of the articles in BENLW have scant bibliographic information (sometimes as few as two works are listed under ‘Further Reading’), which leaves obvious lacunae. This is a great disappointment that could easily have been addressed by the editors prior to publication. Similarly, while the footnoting conventions and criteria are uniformly followed, the actual amount of footnoting differs a great deal among the contributors. The editors did an excellent job of removing typos (in English and in Latin), applying a consistent system of punctuation and citation throughout, and improving the readability of the contributions. The typesetting, however, leaves much to be desired. In an attempt to fit as many words on a page as possible, it frequently occurs that hardly any space remains between words such that a single line in a column appears almost as a single word. For those of us who have worked in Neo-Latin palaeography this is not a problem — but it is an avoidable nuisance that slows the reader.

None of these criticisms, however, detracts from my admiration for this publication. Among the several large reference works on Neo-Latin which have been published in the past several years, BENLW is not only the most common and most recent, it is also admirably up-to-date. This is now the definitive and indispensable scholarly reference publication on all subjects germane to Neo-Latin and its literature. BENLW’s price of US$505.00 will not allow many individual scholars to buy it; and in these days when many university libraries have undergone severe budget cuts, they too may hesitate at the cost — but price notwithstanding, every library should get hold of this publication.