Encyclopédie

The Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, was a major encyclopedia of the French Enlightenment. It appeared in installments between 1751 and 1772 and eventually filled seventeen volumes of text and eleven of plates. Hundreds of contributors wrote for it, including Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu, and it set out to gather human knowledge in the sciences, arts and trades, with detailed illustrations of crafts. Its rational and critical approach to religion and government led the Church and the French authorities to condemn it, and its royal permission was withdrawn in 1759. Diderot nevertheless carried the work to completion, and the Encyclopédie became a symbol of Enlightenment thought.

Open on the timeline