BROCKHAUS, Friedrich Arnold, an eminent German publisher, was born in Dortmund, on the 4th May 1772. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native place, and from 1788 to 1793 served an apprenticeship in a mercantile house at Düsseldorf. He then devoted two years at Leipsic to the study of modern languages and literature, after which he set up at Dortmund an emporium for English goods. In 1810 he transferred this business to Arnheim, and in the following year to Amsterdam. In 1805, having given up his first line of trade, he, in conjunction with a friend, began business as a publisher. Two journals projected by him were not suffered by the Government to survive for any length of time, and in 1810 the complications in the affairs of Holland induced him to return homewards. In 1811 he settled at Altenburg. About three years previously he had purchased the copyright of the Conversations-Lexicon, which had been begun in 1796, and in 1810-11 he completed the first edition of this celebrated work. A second edition under his own editorship was begun in 1812, and was received with universal favour. His business expanded rapidly, and in 1817 he removed to Leipsic, where he established a large printinghouse. Among the more extensive of his many literary undertakings were the critical periodicals— Hermes, the Literarische Conversationsblatt (afterwards the Blatter für literarische Unterhaltung), and the Zeitgenossen, and some large historical and bibliographical works, such as Von Raumer’s Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, and Ebert’s Allgem. Bibliographie. Lexicon. The work distinctively associated with his name, and with the publishing house which has been carried on by his sons, is the Conversations-Lexicon, in many ways the completest and best encyclopaedia of its kind, ...