Since the inception of printing in Europe in the fifteenth century, encyclopedias have become popular and widespread all over the continent. During the eighteenth century, dictionaries and other knowledge-communicating books constituted a major part of the book market, thereby defining everyday knowledge, including information about the entire world that was cultivated by periodicals and travel logs. Encyclopedias, from the very beginning, have been a varied genre owing to the assorted knowledge produced for different books, which depends on the subject, the target audience, the scope, and the price. General encyclopedias could amount to several volumes, sometimes more than ten, while more specific dictionaries usually comprised only one or two volumes. During the eighteenth century, many encyclopedic works were adapted for different audiences, resulting in many books being translated. This distribution of encyclopedias helped to build the European culture of knowledge we witness today, in which encyclopedias are still a major source of information.

Since the inception of printing in Europe in the fifteenth century, encyclopedias have become popular and widespread all over the continent. During the eighteenth century, dictionaries and other knowledge-communicating books constituted a major part of the book market, thereby defining everyday knowledge, including information about the entire world that was cultivated by periodicals and travel logs. Encyclopedias, from the very beginning, have been a varied genre owing to the assorted knowledge produced for different books, which depends on the subject, the target audience, the scope, and the price. General encyclopedias could amount to several volumes, sometimes more than ten, while more specific dictionaries usually comprised only one or two volumes. During the eighteenth century, many encyclopedic works were adapted for different audiences, resulting in many books being translated. This distribution of encyclopedias helped to build the European culture of knowledge we witness today, in which encyclopedias are still a major source of information.