Author: Denis Diderot & Jean D’Alember

Publisher/Date: Biblioteque de l’Image (2002 reprint) The original L’Encyclopedie was published in France in the mid-1700s.Text is in French.

Format/Condition: NEW softcover is in fine condition. Profusely illustrated with full page reproductions of the engravings [b/w]; The text of the descriptions to the plates is in French. Measures 9 × 11 ½. Unpaignated. Printed on a very beautiful paper natural ivory.

Description: This book is one of 40 theme volumes selected to reproduce the superb original editions of the time. Today it is hard to imagine the tapestry makers in their shops with their tools making tapestries and textiles for wall hangings, carpets, or for armchairs and other pieces of furniture. This book consists of primarly illustrations of the trade: materials, looms, tools, spinning wheels, chairs and settees, and the tapestry maker at work. The only text of the many full page illustrations is in French. An excellent source of clip art.

For an authoritative look at the the conditions of existence of the men and women in the mid-1700s, their trades, their activities, their tools, the Diderot Encyclopaedia is the most reliable and the richest documentary source we have today. These works which, by their scarcity and their value, were a long time with the only range of the scholars and the bibliophiles, are from now on accessible to all!

Under the direction of Diderot, over 140 of the greatest minds of pre-Revolution France—including Voltaire, D’Alembert and Rousseau—contributed the tens of thousands of articles . One of the great features of his magnum opus was its thousands of meticulously rendered plates, laying bare the mysteries of astronomy, tanning, fort-building, printing, metal-founding, ceramics, goldsmithing, and the many other technologies of the world on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. These magnificent illustrations of the arts, sciences, and trades are reproduced here in 40 large-format volumes, which we have imported, on an exclusive basis, from France. Most of each volume is comprised of plates, which are facsimiles of the original edition. The only text of the the facsimile descriptions of what is on the plates, is at the beginning of the book and is in French.

Enduring a quarter-century of attacks by Jesuit authorities, jail, suppressions by the government, and the desertion of his editorial partner Jean d’Alembert, Denis Diderot managed nonetheless to produce this Encyclopedia—a virtual treatise on the state of human affairs in the western world in the mid-18th century. Censorship of various articles deemed treacherous or heretical meant the publication was to proceed sporadically. The second volume was ordered to be burnt within days of its release in 1752, and five years later the death penalty was proscribed for authors penning seditious text and those publishers responsible for its dissemination.