Short answers, pulled from the story.
Abraham Rees (1743-1825) was a Welsh nonconformist minister and the compiler of Rees's Cyclopaedia, a forty-five-volume universal dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature completed in August 1820. He also served for decades as pastor of the Old Jewry congregation in London and was a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Rees's Cyclopaedia runs to forty-five volumes, including six volumes of plates. The first part appeared on the 2nd of January 1802, and the work was completed in August 1820 after eighteen years of publication at irregular intervals.
Rees was born in Llanbrynmair, Montgomeryshire. He was educated for the ministry at Coward's Academy in Wellclose Square, near London, entering in 1759 under David Jennings.
Rees re-edited Chambers's original 1728 Cyclopaedia in 1778, then issued an expanded four-volume edition in 1781-86 that incorporated a supplement and new material. This work led to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1786, and later to the much larger project that became Rees's Cyclopaedia.
Rees was buried in Bunhill Fields on the 18th of June 1825, nine days after his death at his residence in Artillery Place, Finsbury. The pall was borne by six ministers of the three denominations of Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists.
The botanical articles were generally contributed by Sir James Edward Smith, and the music articles by Charles Burney. Rees himself paid particular attention to English biography throughout the work.