Pears' Cyclopaedia was a one-volume encyclopaedia published in the United Kingdom. Pears' Soap launched the original Pears' Shilling Cyclopaedia in December 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The first edition contained an English dictionary, a medical dictionary, a gazetteer and atlas, desk information and a compendium of general knowledge entitled "A Mass of Curious and Useful Information and Things that everyone ought to know in Commerce, History, Science, Religion, Literature and the other Topics of Ordinary Conversation". Source: Wikipedia (en)