Britain absorbed into its empire a number of the former French and Dutch colonies around the world; Romanticism came to the fore; evangelical Christianity flourished with the efforts of William Wilberforce; and factory manufacture burgeoned.

With this background, philosophical radicalism was suspect in Britain, and aspects of the Cyclopædia were thought to be distinctly subversive and attracted the hostility of the Loyalist press.

Scientific theorising about the atomic system, geological succession, and earth origins; natural history (botany, entomology, ornithology and zoology); and developments in technology, particularly in textiles manufacture, are all reflected in the Cyclopædia.

Only one set of the work in half-volumes (which also has some of the paper wrappers) is known to survive, in the library of the Natural History Museum, London.

These reviews complained about its supposed antireligious aspects and radical standpoints attributed to its editor and contributors, and cited lack of article balance, confusing alphabetisation, and cross-references to then-unpublished volumes.

The Quarterly Review[5] commented, "Rees is the most extensive cyclopædia in English with many excellent articles it has generally been condemned as on the whole too diffuse and too commonplace."

They addressed this partially with an appendix in the last volume, and also by inventing contorted new subject titles in the main work ("Cotton Manufacture", Vol.

The Rees Project was instigated by June Zimmerman Fullmer (1920–2000), a professor at Ohio State University, an authority on Humphry Davy and the chemistry of the early 19th century.

After tapping the invisible college[7][8] of scholars who knew of Rees, she convened a summer 1986 meeting in London, following which she wrote a proposal[9] to the American Foundation for the Humanities for funding to the project, setting out the object of producing a printed concordance to the contents of the Cyclopædia.

[10] Since the Cyclopædia was produced serially, with a few sheets being printed each week, only a small part of Strahan's men and equipment would have ever been used on it at any one time.

The work was printed on demy paper and folded to quarto format, with an uncropped size of 11+1⁄4 by 8+3⁄4 inches (290 by 220 mm).

A limited number were advertised in the prospectus as being produced on royal paper, which when folded gave a format of 12+1⁄4 by 10 inches (310 by 250 mm).

The typefounder is unknown, but the article on "Printing" in Volume 28 had, bound with the text, specimens of type cast by Fry and Steele of London and Alexander Wilson of Glasgow.

Most sets of Rees today are bound in calf, with two parts to the volume, but the quality of the leather used has meant that in many cases the hinges have rotted and the covers loosened, necessitating rebinding.

The publication of Rees followed the common system of a number of booksellers banding together to share the cost and eventual profit: the conger (syndicate).

No records of the publication survive, since the papers of Longmans were destroyed when their premises in Paternoster Row, London, were burnt out in the Blitz on the night of 29–30 December 1940.

The primary publishers of this set were the consortium of Longman, Hurst, Rees (who by then apparently held an equity share), Orme, and Brown, of Paternoster Row.

Botanical historian Benjamin Daydon Jackson, unaware of this list, attempted to compile a list based on contemporaneous advertisements in the trade press, on dates appearing on the plates (having assumed that the plates were issued at the same time as the accompanying texts), and some guesswork.

The reference is cited by volume or half-volume details with accurate date between 1802 and 1820, article title, and then the gathering's identifier, the page, and the column, separated by colons.

Thus, a small example covering biography: Other sources cited include the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and similar scientific publications, commentaries relating to biblical scholarship and accounts of travels.

John Landseer wrote 4 articles on schools of European engraving totalling over 600 columns (460,000 words).

Rees's Cyclopaedia has 3789 biographical articles half a page (350 words) and longer, as well as numerous briefer ones.

Benjamin Heath Malkin, and Thomas Rees are noted as having written biographical articles, but there is no information about which.

He was greatly interested in the mathematics of sound, and the schemes of temperamant used in tuning musical instruments then, and published much about it in contemporary periodicals.

He contributed numerous drawings for the illustrations of mostly technological and scientific topics in Rees, and would have written the descriptions of them.

The procedure would have been for Farey to make the drawing first, after usually inspecting and measuring the object, then write the description of it, with the key letters, which were then engraved on the plate for final printing.

They were specialists in their fields, covering science, technology, medicine, manufacturing, agriculture, banking and transportation, as well as the arts and humanities.

Amongst the eminent writers engaged by Rees were Lant Carpenter (1780–1870) on education, mental and moral philosophy; Tiberius Cavallo (1799–1809) on electricity and magnetism; John Flaxman (1755–1826) on sculpture; Luke Howard (1772–1867) on meteorology; John Landseer (1769–1852) on engraving; Sir William Lawrence, (1783–1867) on human and comparative anatomy; Sir James Edward Smith (1759–1828) on botany; David Mushet on metallurgy and chemistry; Rev.

The majority appear in the Dictionary of National Biography, and in sources listed in the British Biographical Index, but these accounts rarely record an involvement with the Cyclopædia.

[16] The religious content of the first volumes was re-written to reflect American sensibilities by Bishop William White, an Episcopalian, and Ashbel Green a Presbyterian.