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PUBLISHERS' NOTE ON THE COMPLETED WORK

publication of the Atlas, which is incorporated in the present edition, completed the plan of The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia. As the Cyclopedia of Names grew out of the Dictionary and supplemented it on its encyclopedic side, so the Atlas grew out of the Cyclopedia, and serves as an extension of its geographical material. Each of these works deals with a different part of the great field of words,—common words and names,—while the three, in their unity, constitute a work of reference which practically covers the whole of that field. The two new volumes now issued make the material of the Dictionary and Cyclopedia complete. The total number of words and names defined or otherwise described in the completed work is over 500,000.

The special features of each of these several parts of the book are described in the Prefaces which will be found in the first, ninth, tenth, and eleventh volumes. It need only be said that the definitions of the common words of the language are for the most part stated encyclopedically, with a vast amount of technical, historical, and practical information in addition to a wealth of purely philological material; that the same encyclopedic method is applied to proper names—names of persons, places, characters in fiction, books—in short, of everything to which a name is given; and that in the Atlas geographical names, and much besides, are exhibited with a completeness and serviceableness seldom equaled. Of the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia as a whole, therefore, it may be said that it is in its own field the most complete presentation of human knowledge—scientific, historical, and practical—that exists.

Moreover, the method of distributing this encyclopedic material under a large number of headings, which has been followed throughout, makes each item of this great store of information far more accessible than in works in which a different system is adopted.

The first edition of The Century Dictionary was completed in 1891, that of the Century Cyclopedia of Names in 1894, that of the Atlas in 1897, and that of the two new volumes in 1909. Each of the works published at the earlier dates has been subjected to repeated careful revisions, and the results of this scrutiny are comprised in this edition.