The visionary pedant: S. T. Coleridge, Abraham Rees, and the encyclopaedia in the Romantic period

The encyclopaedia had a looming presence in the early nineteenth century, yet critical oblivion of the genre has rendered some of the most visible publications of the romantic period virtually invisible to literary historians. Specifically, the New Cyclopaedia (1802-1819), edited by Abraham Rees, and the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana (1818-1845), designed by S.T. Coleridge, constituted distinctive fora for the mounting debates about education and religion which reverberated throughout the century. Rendering the kingdom of knowledge as a construction site, the serial publication of these two works deployed the periodical production of an archive to demonstrate the perpetual development of the intellect. By exploiting the periodicity of serial publication to comment on current dilemmas, the Romantic-era encyclopaedists ultimately established, within the genre, gated communities of erudition, rarified enclaves of free inquiry in reactionary times.