Samuel Keimer’s Cyclopaedia (1728–29): The First (Incomplete) General Encyclopedia Launched in the Americas

ABSTRACT: This article examines Samuel Keimer’s unsuccessful effort to publish Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728) in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette . Neither specialists of Benjamin Franklin—Keimer’s sometime apprentice and nemesis—nor the few scholars interested in Keimer in his own right have paid attention to the execution of his project of publishing the Cyclopaedia . As it turns out, the editors of Franklin’s papers are mistaken in characterizing Keimer’s reprint of the Cyclopaedia as a plodding, methodical operation. For better or for worse, it was strategically selective. Furthermore, looking at Keimer’s encyclopedic newspaper more in relation to the history of periodicals and encyclopedias and less as a backdrop to Franklin’s successes allows us to appreciate it in a more sensitive way.