The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) is known as the "scholar's edition" and represents in many ways the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century.
It is truly a scholar's edition. Many articles were written by the best-known scholars of the age, such as Edmund Gosse, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Muir, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and William Michael Rosetti, as well as many other names less known 90 years later. And, many of these articles are still of value and interest to modern readers and scholars.
The Eleventh Edition was a major reorganization and rewriting of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was first published in three volumes in 1768. The Eleventh Edition formed the basis for every edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica up until 1974, when the completely new Fifteenth Edition based on modern principles of information presentation was published.
The 1911 edition is no longer protected by copyright, and the modern publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have generously made it publicly available at 1911encyclopedia.org.
See Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica for information using the Eleventh Edition as a source for new articles for the Wikipedia.
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