Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 62 (2025) REVIEWS  Linn Holmberg and Maria Simonsen, eds., Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700   2000: Exploring Unfinished, Unpublished, Unsuccessful Encyclopedic Projects, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 330 p., $109.96 (e-book) e-ISBN 9783030643003 Review by MICHAELA MORROW University of Alberta  Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700  2000, edited by Linn Holmberg and Maria Simonsen, presents case studies of unfinished encyclopedia projects from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Specifically, the anthology examines how political, cultural, and technological changes contribute to a project  s   strandedness.   Additionally, it explores how understanding why a project fails allows book historians to gain greater insights into publishing processes. The work is divided into three parts: the first part positions encyclopedias within the larger field of print history as projects particularly prone to fail or become   stranded,   while the second and third parts are divided between early and modern case studies of stranded encyclopedic projects. Part one delves into the theme of strandedness, defined as   the noncommunicated, the unpublished, the unfinished, the incomplete, the interrupted, the unsuccessfully disseminated, and the no-longer-updated   projects in book and print history (5). Strandedness, as studied throughout the anthology, provides insight into the cultural, sociopolitical, and technological reasons publishing projects may fail    or, alternatively, how failed projects may provide hidden blueprints for successful ones. Much like Robert Darnton, whom the anthology indeed cites as an inspiration, the scholars here look not at the end result of publishing endeavours but  Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700    2000 - 2 https://doi.org/10.33137/pbsc.v62i1.44428  at the endeavours themselves; they essentially explore why encyclopedias, as continuous and complex projects, so often become stranded. Encyclopedic projects are introduced as emblematic of the challenges that all potential publications face due to the number of contributors, as well as the research and time needed to put together a single encyclopedia. While the anthology focuses primarily on encyclopedic projects, the first part closes with the argument that strandedness may be a useful concept to apply to other forms of published knowledge. Part two presents a set of case studies on failed encyclopedic efforts in Europe from the eighteenth century. The featured studies examine how issues of translation, local culture, and ever-emerging knowledges affected the completion of encyclopedias during the crucial period of the Enlightenment, when the encyclopedic genre came to flourish. Examples include Annelie Grosse  s chapter on how Samuel Forney  s contributions to the seminal Encyclopédie were derived from his own failed projects, as well as Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink  s chapter on how André Morellet  s stranded Nouveau dictionnaire de commerce contributed to the data compilation methodologies of later French encyclopedias. Both studies examine how successful encyclopedias contain fragments of stranded ones within; these chapters, in particular, focus on how the interplay of politics, social standing, and personal goals of encyclopedia contributors is essential to the publishing process. The following chapters focus on encyclopedias made for specific professions and localities, such as mining encyclopedias in Sweden and medicinal encyclopedias in Spain, to further the study of how intended audiences and local reading cultures may affect the stranding of a project. Notably, Clorinda Donato  s chapter on Italian encyclopedias explores how concepts of cultural superiority between France and Italy affected encyclopedias intended for a lower socioeconomic reading class in Italy. These chapters on creators, compilers, and audiences within the long eighteenth century highlight how encyclopedias served as sites of intercultural exchange and tension in an era during which transnational publishing flourished.  Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 62 (2025)  Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700    2000 - 3 https://doi.org/10.33137/pbsc.v62i1.44428  Part three moves into the modern age and across the seas, examining a range of encyclopedic projects that were stranded due to the emerging politics and technologies of the twentieth century and beyond. This final section delves further into the complex intersections between publishing processes and technology, readership, and nationalism. For example, Ana Maria Alfonso-Goldfarb et al. explore how regimes, national identity crises, and modernist literary movements all contributed to several failed Brazilian encyclopedia projects, emphasizing that Brazil has yet to create a completed encyclopedia of its own. Maria Simonsen  s compelling chapter on Danish encyclopedias chronologically traces changing publishing practices, market demands, and new printing and digital technologies. Simonsen examines the life of a single encyclopedia over its transition to different printing and digital formats, exploring how the same text can ultimately become stranded in a new format even after initial success in a previous one. To illustrate how the role of the encyclopedia evolved from the nineteenth century and beyond, the essays in part three provide excellent examples of how strandedness might be understood in modern publishing contexts while also drawing on sociopolitical factors, intended audiences, and the new printing processes (introduced in parts one and two). The study  s timeline extends to the earliest days of the World Wide Web, which may explain why Simonsen is, unfortunately, the only contributor who delves into online encyclopedias. This review author would like to see explorations of strandedness in the digital realm appear in future scholarship. Overall, Stranded Encyclopedias offers new perspectives on the value of failure to print history through a range of insightful case studies. Many of the presented case studies describe the historiographical and archival research techniques used and provide compelling arguments for why stranded encyclopedias can be valuable historical objects of study. The anthology successfully argues that encyclopedic projects, due to their nature as collaborative and ever-expanding forms of knowledge, are useful for portraying the sociopolitical factors that affect all forms of publishing. The chapters within would provide practical readings for classes and  Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 62 (2025)  Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700    2000 - 4 https://doi.org/10.33137/pbsc.v62i1.44428  lectures on knowledge dissemination, local versus generalized knowledge, and publishing history. Copyright © 2025 Michaela Morrow. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 62 (2025)