This volume of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica spans subjects alphabetically from Lord George Gordon to Grasses, presenting a vast compilation of historical biographies, geographical surveys, and scientific studies. Among the notable historical figures examined is Lord George Gordon, whose turbulent life, association with the Protestant associations, and instigation of the catastrophic London riots of seventeen-eighty are detailed with contemporary sources and legal analysis. The volume also records the career of the Scottish painter Sir John Watson Gordon, tracing his artistic evolution under the influence of Henry Raeburn and his eventual presidency of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Religious history and theological controversy receive substantial attention through the extensive biography and intellectual development of Charles Gore, whose leadership in the Oxford Movement and attempts to reconcile Christian dogma with modern critical thought generated widespread theological debate. In a similar vein of adventurous enterprise, the volume documents the exploits of the Scottish traveller and sportsman Roualeyne George Gordon-Cumming, known as the lion hunter, whose explorations in South Africa and extensive natural history collections provided early authentic insights into the fauna and geography of Bechuanaland and the Limpopo valley.
Military history is prominently represented by the career of Patrick Gordon, the Scottish soldier of fortune who rose to become a trusted general under the Russian tsar Peter the Great, playing a decisive role in the suppression of the Streltsi and the modernization of the Russian military. Geographical entries cover numerous locations, including the French colonial island of Goree off the west coast of Africa, the historic town of Gorz and Gradisca with its complex ethnic composition of Slovenes and Italians, and the ancient Cretan city of Gortyna with its monumental legal inscriptions.
The volume also explores biographical sketches of literary figures such as the Hebrew poet and novelist Leon Gordon, whose writings stimulated the modern cultural revival among Russian Jews, and the English novelist Catherine Gore, whose prolific works faithfully depicted the fashionable society of the nineteenth-century upper classes. Extensive botanical and zoological articles are devoted to the gorilla, detailing its physical characteristics and habitat in the equatorial forests of West Africa, and to grasses, encompassing their classification, agricultural value, and ecological distribution. Throughout the collection, the articles reflect the rigorous scholarship, empirical observation, and encyclopedic breadth characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century academic traditions.
