The 1st edition (1889-1891, 6 volumes) was edited by William Dwight Whitney with Benjamin Eli Smith's assistance. After Whitney's death in 1894 Smith supervised the subsequent editions, including the supplements: The Century cyclopedia of Names (1894) and The Century Atlas (1897). The revised, retitled The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was published in 1911 in 10 volumes .
Editors of the Oxford English Dictionary often relied on The Century Dictionary.