This stimulating volume is based on a 2007 conference entitled ‘Encyclopaedism before the Enlightenment’, which was the lead-off event of a Leverhulme-funded project on ‘Science and Empire in the Roman World’. Twenty-two papers are preceded by an introductory chapter in which Jason König and Greg Woolf explore the central tensions arising in and among the following papers, particularly as relates to the definition of ‘encyclopaedia’, and followed by Harriet Zurndorfer's postscript on Chinese encyclopaedias. With its wide embrace of different production contexts and encyclopaedic types, the volume offers an exemplary demonstration of the value of the comparative approach to the study of literary phenomena.

König and Woolf are the authors of ‘Encyclopaedism in the Roman Empire’ (ch. 2), a substantial essay that covers everything from the essential methodologies of encyclopaedism — excerpting, compiling, arranging, cross-referencing — to historical causation. Metaphors central to the encyclopaedic enterprise are introduced, including ‘library’ and ‘curriculum’. In ‘Encyclopaedism in the Alexandrian library’ (ch. 3), Myrto Hatzimichali illustrates the variety of encyclopaedic projects that arose under the Ptolemaic ‘drive towards comprehensive knowledge’ (82) and, more generally, recontextualization as a key methodology. Mary Beagon's ‘Labores pro bono publico: the burdensome mission of Pliny's Natural History’ (ch. 4) is a rewarding discussion of encyclopaedic rhetoric and its cultural underpinnings in Rome: Pliny emerges from this exercise in élite competition as a culture hero comparable to Aeneas shouldering his shield with its burden of history.

The next three chapters push the boundaries of the encyclopaedic in different ways. In ‘Encyclopaedias of virtue? Collections of sayings and stories about wise men in Greek’ (ch. 5), Teresa Morgan illuminates the concept of encyclopaedism by failing to make a case for the inclusion of her wisdom collections in it. While there is no denying their ‘cultural centrality and importance’ (109), the absence of claims to comprehensivity or systematicity makes me reluctant to see them anywhere on the ‘encyclopaedic spectrum model’ sketched by the editors (3). I am likewise unpersuaded by the encyclopaedic character of the four works considered by Katerina Oikonomopoulou in ‘Plutarch's corpus of quaestiones in the tradition of imperial Greek encyclopaedism’ (ch. 6), but her discussion of reading scenarios sheds welcome light on the rôle of compilations in ‘launching new intellectual pursuits’ (153). An important note first sounded in ch. 6 recurs in the paper by Daniel Harris-McCoy, ‘Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica as fragmentary encyclopaedia’ (ch. 7), namely, the fact that many of the works considered in this volume contain a critique of comprehensiveness and even ‘a predilection for inconclusiveness’ (131). Authorship by committee emerges in Jill Harries’ ‘Encyclopaedias and autocracy: Justinian's Encyclopaedia of Roman law’ (ch. 8), as does closure. The Digest or Pandectae compiled by Tribonian and his committee transformed anything they excluded into non-law for the present and foreseeable future. ‘Late Latin encyclopaedism’ by Marco Formisano (ch. 9) concludes Part I with a discussion of the rhetoric of comprehensive treatises on artes mechanicae, particularly the prioritization of clarity and utility.

The examination of medieval encyclopaedism opens with ‘Byzantine encyclopaedism of the ninth and tenth centuries’ (ch. 10). Paul Magdalino finds the roots of the ‘permanently encyclopaedic’ culture of Byzantium (219) in the resurgence of orthodoxy beginning in 843 c.e. The imperial past was fundamental to the projects Magdalino discusses, and to the Historical Excerpts considered by András Németh in ‘The imperial systematisation of the past in Constantinople: Constantine VII and his Historical Excerpts’ (ch. 11). Németh stresses the rôle of imperial patronage for the vast collaborative project of which this historical encyclopaedia is the largest surviving part. In ‘Ad maiorem Dei gloriam: Joseph Rhakendytès’ synopsis of Byzantine learning’ (ch. 12), Erika Gielen considers a work whose distinctive feature, at least in its aspirations, is unity of knowledge; she situates Rhakendytès’ one-volume synopsis variarum disciplinarum in the revival of learning after the barbarian (i.e., western) occupation of Constantinople from 1204–1261.

The focus then moves west. ‘Shifting horizons: the medieval compilation of knowledge as mirror of a changing world’ (ch. 13) is a wide-ranging and rather uneven chapter in which Elizabeth Keens surveys encyclopaedic works spanning six centuries and draws attention to the rôle of visual aids. One of Keens’ proof texts is the subject of Andy Merrills’ examination of ‘Isidore's Etymologies: on words and things’ (ch. 14); he explains the work's ‘clumsily tessellating’ structures (315) in the context of medieval memorization practices: for a properly ruminative reader, these structures were effective retrieval devices. The teasingly titled ‘Loose giblets: encyclopaedic sensibilities of ordinatio and compilatio in later medieval English literary culture and the sad case of Reginald Pecock’ (ch. 15), by Ian Johnson, emphasizes the rôle of the reader, the arbitrium lectoris (330); the titular ‘sad case’ concerns a compendium that was at odds with contemporary culture.

The first of the papers on the Islamic world, Elias Muhanna's ‘Why was the fourteenth century a century of Arabic encyclopaedism?’ (ch. 16), is a short, clear discussion of the boom in encyclopaedic projects in the ‘rapidly consolidating imperial state’ of the Mamluks (348) after the catastrophic destruction of the libraries of Baghdad in 1258. Muhanna's view of the Mamluk period as innovative, not stagnant, is shared by Maaike van Berkel in ‘Opening up a world of knowledge: Mamluk encyclopaedias and their readers’ (ch. 17). She mentions a number of ‘tools for the reader’ (366), including paratexts such as indices and tables of contents, along with typographical innovations such as rubrication, capitalization and underlining.

The Renaissance is represented by five papers. In ‘Revising Renaissance encyclopaedism’ (ch. 18), Ann Blair argues that ‘printing facilitated encyclopaedism’ (381), as did contemporary consciousness of the ‘loss of ancient learning’ (389) and a ‘general optimism about the value of knowledge’ (397). Daniel Andersson's ‘Philosophy and the Renaissance encyclopaedia: some observations’ (ch. 19) is not about encyclopaedias themselves but about the cultural preconditions for the newly vigorous encyclopaedism of the age. Another chapter with a catchy title is ‘Reading “Pliny's ape” in the Renaissance: the Polyhistor of Caius Julius Solinus in the first century of print’ (ch. 20), in which Paul Dover tackles the issue of tralatician knowledge and the consequent charges of ingratitude or plagiarism, and discusses marginal annotations and maps. Neil Rhodes’ paper ‘Shakespeare's encyclopaedias’ (ch. 21) is more about Shakespeare than about encyclopaedias, but offers a rewarding discussion of the intellectual context that fostered ‘two competing forms of encyclopaedism’ (453). The focus is even tighter in Claire Preston's ‘Big dig: Dugdale's drainage and the dregs of England’ (ch. 22,), an analysis of William Dugdale's fascinating History of Imbanking and Drayning (1662), which leverages the authority of an encyclopaedic work for ‘company propaganda’ (465).

The last two papers have a broader chronological scope. In ‘Irony and encyclopaedic writing before (and after) the Enlightenment’ (ch. 23), William N. West returns to the question of ‘self-subverting encyclopaedias’ (485) and shows that you have to read (rather than mine) the text in order to see it. Finally, Harriet T. Zurndorfer's ‘The passion to collect, select, and protect: fifteen hundred years of the Chinese encyclopaedia’ (ch. 24) offers a quick survey of a large number of compendia large and small, highbrow and lowbrow, showing the adaptability of the form.

The volume has no conclusion, nor is it easy to summarize such a rich collection of papers. The works considered here are variously encyclopaedic, from a single-authored one-volume synopsis of all knowledge to vast compilations by many hands, including one that filled 850,000 pages in five thousand volumes, but each discussion contributes something to the understanding of the concept of encyclopaedism and its motivations. The adjective ‘stimulating’ at the head of this review communicates my sense that the volume expands the range of questions that can be asked of works that fit into the general category of ‘encyclopaedic’.