On April 15, 1952, the Encyclopaedia Britannica Corporation hosted a celebratory banquet in New York City's luxury Waldorf Astoria Hotel situated on the prestigious Park Avenue in the heart of midtown Manahattan.
Noteworthy invitees included Connecticut Senator William Benton; Hollywood film "Code" enforcer Will H. Hays, prominent businessmen Alfred Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, Jr., and Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Dinner speakers were the University of Chicago's Chancellor, Lawrence Kimpton, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins, Professor Mortimer J. Adler, and Senator Benton. Attendees included Jacques Barzun, Scott Buchanan, William Gorman, Richard McKeon, and Mark van Doren.
The publisher announced the publication of the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World. Attendees feasted on prime rib and inspected "Founders Editions" of the set's two-volume Syntopicon and introductory volume, The Great Conversation. Subscribers had earned a $500 each, to get the set published.
The editorial board was not in the hope of achieving a "universal swindle" (selling art as trinkets), or to effect the "abolition of the individual" in favour of the "mass man," but for the practical purpose of instilling intellectual virtues by a thorough exploration of the history of Western ideas. The most important thing was to democratize the great books idea, and that meant maximizing accessibility to the great books for readers o varying intellectual backgrounds.
Source: Tim Lacy, "The Lovejovian roots of Adler's philosophy of history: authority, democracy, irony, and paradox in Britannica's Great Books of the Western World," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 71, No. 1, Jan. 2010, pp. 113-137.
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