James Tytler

author

James Tytler

1745–1804

Best known for editing the second edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was also a restless all-rounder whose life took in medicine, journalism, poetry, invention, and one of Britain’s earliest balloon flights.

1 Audiobook

A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever With an Appendix, containing histories of the plague at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War; at Constantinople in the time of Justinian; at London in 1665; at Marseilles in 1720

A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever With an Appendix, containing histories of the plague at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War; at Constantinople in the time of Justinian; at London in 1665; at Marseilles in 1720

by James Tytler

About the author

Born in Scotland in 1745, James Tytler studied at Aberdeen before training in medicine and working as an apothecary and surgeon. He became a prolific writer and compiler, producing a wide range of work for publishers at a time when steady literary income was hard to find.

Tytler is most closely linked with the second edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he edited and expanded on a remarkable scale. His career ranged far beyond reference books, though: he translated, wrote essays and verse, and earned the nickname “Balloon Tytler” after becoming the first person in Britain to make a manned ascent in a hot air balloon in 1784.

His later years were troubled, and he eventually emigrated to the United States, where he died in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. What remains especially striking is the sheer range of his pursuits: encyclopedist, experimenter, and man of letters all at once.