His father was a Baptist deacon, and young Arthur became a journalist by way of the trade of typesetter. He was devoted to Empire and Gospel, but he also embraced the evolutionary science of Darwin and Huxley, so he was no wilful obscurantist. His Children's Encyclopaedia first appeared in serial form in 1908 and was bound into eight volumes in 1910. Mee believed in eugenics. He reckoned that intelligence was linked to the shape of the skull in relation to the face.
Dogs have the face out front and the brain box behind - they are dumb.
European humans have the brain box on top of the face - we are smart. About 60 million sets of Mee's encyclopaedia had been sold by 1950, so that's a lot of kiddies thinking that we should be kind to African and Australian natives because they fall somewhere between dogs and us on the evolutionary scale. And the word sex does not appear in the encyclopaedia's index. Happy birthday Arthur. The Age Company Ltd 2000.