Encyclopedias as a class have tended to be contentious since they first appeared. Diderot [0] & d'Alembert's French work started in reaction to Chambers' 1751 E

Encyclopedias as a class have tended to be contentious since they first appeared. Diderot [0] & d'Alembert's French work started in reaction to Chambers' 1751 English work. After the first volumes appeared, in 1759 their work was suppressed by authorities for being ~~too liberal. (By 1772 they had made 28 volumes.) And they inspired the 1768 English 'answer' by Macfarquhar and Bell which became the Encyclopædia Britannica. [0] Diderot once said: 'Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.' However the certified experts hired to contribute articles in more recent editions were selected, they tended to represent conventional opinion, and articles were kept tame enough to offend noone.