This essay discusses the impact of the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ on the author’s personal life & career as a suicidologist, including his own contribution on “suicide” to the 1973 edition of the encyclopedia. He then uses the fourteen different articles about suicide which have appeared in the encyclopedia since its first publication to review the controversies & debates about suicide that have arisen since 1751. He concludes with some reactions to readers’ letters about the contributions on suicide.