In 1908, journalist Arthur Mee (1875-1943) launched his Children’s Encyclopedia series, which became one of the most beloved and successful works for children in the Anglophone world. Under its first title, The Children’s Encyclopaedia, the series sold 1.5 million sets across the British Empire, becoming a fixture in both home and school libraries. The American edition of the encyclopedia, The Book of Knowledge, sold a further 3.5 million sets. Subsequent editions sold additional copies under various names, including The New Children’s Encyclopaedia (1910-1911), the Children’s Magazine (1911-1913), and the long-running Children’s Newspaper (1919-1964).

The contents of Mee’s encyclopedic volumes ranged across many subjects of knowledge from gardening, natural science, and engineering to history, poetry, and literature. Colonialist themes feature prominently throughout the series, especially in the geography and biography sections. Mee aimed for the encyclopedia to “build up the men and women who will rule our Empire in the years to come.” In its pages, he also promoted an organization for boys and girls that he dubbed The League of the Helping Hand, which he hoped would build bonds of youthful friendship throughout and beyond the British Empire. While Mee wrote many of the entries, numerous other attributed or unattributed authors also contributed pieces.

Mee’s role as chief editor ensured that his biography and personality shaped the editorial outlook of The Children’s Encyclopaedia. He was born in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire in 1875 to a family of lacemakers whose social status stood precariously between the working and the lower middle classes. His upbringing was deeply influenced by his father’s activist liberal politics and nonconformist Baptist religion. Mee moved to London in 1897, where he married and became a successful journalist. In the debates of early twentieth century Britain, he described his politics as liberal or radical. His religious upbringing ensured that The Children’s Encyclopedia reflected a nonconformist Protestant worldview. Mee was also a staunch colonialist. Positive views of the British Empire pervade his life and work; he consistently held that British power was a tool of humanitarianism and progress in the broader world. Like most imperialists of his generation, however, his views of empire and indigenous peoples were influenced by Social Darwinism, eugenics, and cultural racism. By the time Mee died in 1943, his encyclopedia series had made him a well-known childhood figure for generations of children in the English-speaking world.

by David Brandon Dennis and John Woitkowitz, Series Editors