Otto's encyclopedia

Otto's encyclopedia (Czech: Ottova encyklopedie or Ottův slovník naučný), published at the turn of the 20th century, is the largest encyclopedia written in the Czech language. For its scope and the quality of the writing, it is comparable to the greatest world encyclopedias of its time, such as Encyclopædia Britannica.

At the beginning of the 1880s, Jan Otto, a Czech book-seller and publisher, began planning a new general Czech encyclopedia. He was inspired by the first Czech encyclopedia by F. L. Rieger, a fourteen-volume work published between 1860 and 1874, but wanted to go further. For a long time Otto could not find an eligible editor-in-chief until he began to cooperate with Jan Malý, a former co-editor of the Reiger's encyclopedia, who laid down a concept of the new work with a proposed name - Czech national encyclopedia (Národní encyklopedie česká) in 1884. After Malý's death the following year, Otto found a new editor-in-chief, Tomáš Masaryk later the president of Czechoslovakia, and in 1886 the actual work began (Masaryk himself writing the psychology, sociology, philosophy and logic disciplines). The next year, Masaryk got involved in a tempestuous dispute over the authenticity of the allegedly historical Zelenohorský and Královedvorský manuscripts and resigned from the editorship. Otto managed to establish a new editorial group from prominent technicians, theologians and representatives of Czech universities. Their intensive work and the work of their collaborators lead to the publication of the first volume of the encyclopedia, under the name Ottův slovník naučný (Otto's encyclopedia), in January 1888. From that point onwards, the work progressed without major problems and volumes were published regularly until the last (28th) one appeared in 1908.

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