Iakov D. Aisen

The article is concerned with the results of the comparative study of Russian and British encyclopaedias of the 19th century. The aim of the study is to reveal the peculiarities of the historical development of Russian and British encyclopaedias in relation to each other and to specify the features of similarities and differences in the structure of encyclopaedic articles in these editions. If the main task for the Russian encyclopaedia of that period was to create a predominantly national edition, the British encyclopaedists were primarily concerned with providing the reader with information on current events, the latest achievements of science and technology in the world. It was found that at the beginning of this century British encyclopaedias developed more actively than Russian encyclopaedias and that the development of British encyclopaedias, unlike the Russian ones, was significantly influenced by the commercialisation of book publishing and serious competition between publishers. In general, more encyclopaedias were published in Britain (especially in the first quarter of the century) than in Russia, and at the same time, unlike Russia, not only alphabetical but also systematic (thematic) encyclopaedias were published in Britain. The comparison of encyclopaedic articles in Russian and British editions showed that the encyclopaedias of both countries used similar types of articles (review article, reference article, explanatory article, crossreference article), and the indication/non-indication of the authorship of the article is not nationally conditioned. Unlike British encyclopaedias, Russian encyclopaedias usually indicate that the material, or part of it, is translated or borrowed. A comparison of the articles in Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary and the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica shows that by the end of the century had been developed a model of a personalia-article that was used by both Russian and British editors: the headword is an individual or group anthroponym, the choice of which is nationally specific; the information is presented in a referential way; the article oft en has an evaluative modality. The headwords of the articles on mythonyms, which are somewhat fewer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica than in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary, represent in both encyclopaedias the names of several spheres of onomastic space. The similarity of Russian and British encyclopaedias of the 19th century is due to the fact that their Russian and British compilers followed the already established rules of selection and compilation of encyclopaedic articles. The differences found can be explained by the cultural and national traditions of Russia and Great Britain.