Abraham Rees

Abraham Rees (1743-1825) was a Presbyterian minister and encyclopaedist. His father was an Independent minister in Glamorgan, Wales. After his initial education in Wales, Rees came to London in 1759 to study for the ministry in London under David Jennings at Coward’s Academy for dissenting ministers. He began teaching at the academy in 1762 and continued as a tutor, after the academy’s move to Hoxton, until 1785. From 1786 to 1792 he was tutor in Hebrew and mathematics at New College, Hackney, and was now recognized as a leader among the rational dissenters in London. Rees preached regularly in Presbyterian congregations in London between 1768 and 1783, when he became pastor of the congregation meeting in the Old Jewry. A chapel was later built in Jewin Street, Rees continuing as pastor of the congregation until his death in 1825. His primary literary achievement was his new edition of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (originally 1728), which he republished in 1778 in one folio volume. The volume led to his election to the Royal Society in 1786, and later the Linnean Society, American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society of Literature. He eventually expanded the Cyclopaedia into what became known as Rees’s Cyclopaedia, or, Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences (1802-20), eventually reaching 39 volumes and more than 39 million words, with the help of more than 100 contributors.