The Encyclopedie was published under the direction of Diderot from 1751 onward with thousands of articles written by the most prominent philosophers and scientists of the time. These great minds collaborated in the goal of assembling and disseminating the fruits of accumulated knowledge and learning. This massive reference work for the arts and sciences, served to propagate Enlightened ideas. Read a full description of this work and Diderot at Wikipedia.com.

Great set of text and plates (34 leaves) from the first edition of this enormously influential work. The plates form a series of illustrations on the languages of the world. Seventeen text pages precede the 25 engraved plates that cover the alphabets, including Arabic, Ethiopian, Egyptian, Anglo-Saxon, Russian, Greek, Persian, Japanese, Chinese and several others. The Encyclopédie was published under the direction of Diderot with articles written by the most prominent philosophers of the time. These great minds collaborated in the goal of assembling and disseminating the fruits of accumulated knowledge and learning. Containing 72,000 articles written by more than 140 contributors, it was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences that served to propagate Enlightened ideas. Due to problems of censorship, the first edition was issued over a period of 21 years, in an original printing of approximately 4,000 copies.

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Condition: A

Mostly clean and bright with a couple of spots of foxing on a few pages. Plate XX has light toning and a few plates have a light damp stain in the top margin.