Diderot, Denis and Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Together, 35 volumes. Folio (16 x 10 in; 406 x 255 mm). Half-titles in text vols. 1-7, and in plate, table and supplement vols. Engraved title by B.L. Prevost after C.N. Cochin, large folding tree of knowledge plate in Table vol. 1, folding tables, 3168 plates (i.e. 2,784 engraved plates). Contemporary calf, expertly rebacked to style, gilt spines with raised bands in eight compartments. 

PMM 200; Grolier/Horblit 25b; John Lough, Essays on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert, London, 1968; Norman 637; Richard N. Schwab, W.E. Rex and J. Lough, Inventory of Diderot's Encyclopédie (1984).

Complete set of a landmark of Western intellectual history: the largest publishing venture of the mid-18th century and the very embodiment of the Enlightenment.

"One of Diderot's most frequently expressed aims in the Encyclopédie was to make the reader realize -- despite long-standing prejudices -- that the manual arts were a category of universal knowledge just as noble, valuable, and intellectually respectable as the liberal arts and the sciences ... Everywhere throughout the work, we find expressions of confidence that the practical arts, the spirit of invention, and the improvement of mechanical technology were keys to material progress, which in turn would contribute to intellectual and moral progress and the happiness of mankind ... The Encyclopédie was a historical event, and Diderot's conception of the importance of the arts, artisans, trades, machines and inventions became a landmark in the development of modern Western attitudes towards technology" (Lough).

With over 71,818 entries, the majority of which written by the editors Diderot and d'Alembert and Baron d'Holbach, the Encyclopédie was one of the most ambitious intellectual undertakings of the Enlightenment. Great figures were drawn to the possibilities of such a project, and included Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Buffon, Marmontel, Condorcet, Necker and Turgot.  

This set with the preferred first editions of the plates; that is, without any plate volumes from the less desirable Geneva re-issue.  The collation of sets of the Encyclopédie is notoriously difficult due to the complicated counting of the plates on the lists of plates in each volume, with double, triple or quadruple folding plates counted twice, thrice or more.  The plates in the present set collated complete as per Lough and Schwab.

"A monument in the history of European thought; the acme of the age of reason; a prime motive force in undermining the Ancien régime and in heralding the French Revolution, a permanent source for all aspects of eighteenth-century civilization..." (PMM).