This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, published in its first edition in 1882, was a large-scale economic study by the historian William Cunningham (1849-1919). The ambitious work ultimately grew to encompass two volumes, divided into three parts, and reissued over a period of more than forty years in several revised and expanded editions. This book contains the 1907 fourth edition of the second part of Volume II, dealing with laissez faire in commerce. It covers the period of economic history from about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the middle of the nineteenth century.