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The Encyclopedie Methodique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George B. Watts
George B. Watts*
Affiliation:
Davidson College, Davidson, N.C.
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Extract

Even before he had brought to completion the great thirty-five-volume Encyclopédie—by the publication in 1776-77 of its Supplément in five volumes, and in 1780 of Pastor Mouchon's Table analytique et raisonnée in two volumes—a now relatively forgotten Parisian bookseller, publisher, author, and translator, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, had already begun preparations to put out a new Encyclopédie, to be called the Encyclopédie méthodique, ou par ordre de matières. Unlike Diderot's original, this Encyclopédie was to be composed of a collection of individual “dictionaries,” each one dealing with a different subject. Although the entrepreneur was aware from the start of the magnitude of the task, he could not foresee the many difficulties and delays which were to beset the undertaking before it was to be finally completed by his daughter, fifty years later, as “la collection la plus vaste qu'ait jamais produite la librairie française.”

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1958 , pp. 348 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

Note 1 in page 348 Jacques C. Brunet, Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur de livres (Paris, 1861), p. 104. To conserve space the following abbreviations will be used in the notes within the text and in the footnotes: AL, Année littéraire; CL, Baron Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique …, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1812); EM, Encyclopédie méthodique; JS, Journal des Sçavans; MerF, Mercure de France; MS, Louis Petit de Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets … (London, 1777-89).

Note 2 in page 348 Ettore Levi-Malvano, “Les éditions toscanes de l'Encyclopédie,” RLC, iii (April-June 1923), 213-256.

Note 3 in page 348 George B. Watts, “The Swiss Editions of the Encyclopédie,” Harvard Lib. Bull., ix (Spring 1955), 213-235.

Note 4 in page 348 In May 1781 Panckoucke announced in JS the completion of a 2-volume quarto Dictionnaire raisonné de physique by M. Brisson, which had been prepared for the EM, on which “plusieurs savants” had been occupied “depuis quelque temps.”

Note 5 in page 348 Diderot et l'encyclopédie (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1951), p. 115.

Note 6 in page 348 BN Imprimés, ? 11857.

Note 7 in page 349 MerF, 8 April 1782, p. 46, gives date of second prospectus as 6 April 1782. In MerF of 10 Aug. 1782, p. 90, Panckoucke said that the “dernier” prospectus was published 1 May.

Note 8 in page 350 Louis Gabriel Michaud, Biographie universelle (Vives, 1842-65), xxxii, 63.

Note 9 in page 350 CL, xii (May 1782), 416, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th éd., viii, 430.

Note 10 in page 353 Il Seminario di Padova (Tipografia del Seminario, 1911), pp. 417–118, and Levi-Malvano, p. 255.

Note 11 in page 353 The following may be consulted in Madrid, according to a letter to me from Justo Garcia Morales of 15 April 1953: Arles académicas, i; Historia natural, I, ii; Diccionario de gramâtica y literatura, i; Arte miiitar, i, II; Geografia moderna, i, ii, iii; Fâbrkas, artes y oficios, i, ii; Colección de estampas, i.

Note 12 in page 355 EM, Histoire, ?, 1-2. Abbé Bergier's Dictionnaire de théologie, Extrait de l'encyclopédie méthodique, Edition augmentée de tous les articles renvoyés aux autres parties de l'encyclopédie was published in Liège in 8 vols, by the Société Typographique in 1789-92.

Note 13 in page 357 EM, Mathématiques, iii, and Histoire, ?, 16.

Note 14 in page 358 EM, Manufactures, arts et métiers, viii, 14-15. 15 Supplement to MerF, No. 6, 6 Jan. 1793, p. 1.

Note 16 in page 359 EM, Agriculture, vii (“avertissement”).

Note 17 in page 359 MerF, 11 Jan., 19 April, 31 Oct. 1794.

Note 18 in page 359 EM, Géographie physique, IV (“notice”).

Note 19 in page 359 EM, Histoire naturelle, crustacêês, arachnides, et des insectes, I, 1 (“avertissement de l'éditeur”).