good article on "Children's Encyclopaedia" editor Arthur Mee--

"Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia is nothing like an encyclopaedia, or, rather, it is perhaps the prime and supreme encyclopaedia - an encyclical. There is no A-Z arrangement; indeed, there often appears to be no conscious arrangement to it at all; the material simply circles and circulates in and around itself, a vast labyrinth of facts, fancies, niceties, delicacies and wonderful minutiae. There are stories, and diagrams, and illustrations, and articles about animals, and history, and biography, and biology, and "Great Thoughts", and "Things to Do and Make", and "Plain Answers to the Questions of the Children of the World" such as "Why do I laugh and cry?" (Answer: "You laugh and cry because you are 'made that way'.") In any given issue you might find advice on how to keep a hedgehog as a pet, or how to make a fiddle from a cigar box, and examples of "The Jolly Pictures the Cave Men Made", and an essay on "How to Feel the Pressure of the Air", and musings and ruminations on Chaucer, Michelangelo and the meaning of beauty, distance and courage ("The Great Words that Stir the Hearts and Minds of All Mankind")..."