Collier's New Encyclopedia

A complete general encyclopedia of 1921 — the world as it was understood just after the Great War, from Aachen to Zwingli, across twelve volumes and six thousand pages.

About the Book

1921Published
Collier & SonAuthor
20470Entries

Collier's New Encyclopedia was one of the standard American general encyclopedias of its day. This edition dates from 1921, which makes it a snapshot of the moment just after the First World War: the new borders, the new technologies, and the confident summaries of a world that had just been rearranged.

All twelve volumes are presented here as a single work. Substantial articles have a page to themselves; the short gazetteer entries are gathered into alphabetical runs, as they were on the printed page.

This digital edition is built from a dual-engine OCR of every volume, reconciled page by page — 6,106 pages in all.

This site reproduces the complete text of the original 1921 edition, digitized page by page from the original printing. The book is in the public domain.

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.