---
title: "Encyclopédie"
chunk: 2/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The work consisted of 28 volumes, with approximately 71,818 articles and 2,784 plates of illustrations (the exact numbers depend on one's definition of an "article" and a "plate"). The first seventeen volumes were published between 1751 and 1765; eleven volumes of plates were finished by 1772. The first edition had a pressrun of 4,225 copies, well above the average pressrun for French books at the time, which was around 2000 copies., and it earned the four publishers profits of more than two million livres. Because of its sometimes radical contents, the Encyclopédie stirred up controversy in conservative circles, and after the publication of the second volume, it was briefly suspended by a royal edict of 1752 accusing it of "destroying royal authority, fomenting a spirit of independence and revolt, and ... laying the groundwork for error, for the corruption of morals, and for irreligion and atheism."
In 1759, following the publication of the seventh volume, on the initiative of the Parlement of Paris, the French government suspended the encyclopedia's privilege. Nevertheless, work continued "in secret," partially because the project had highly placed supporters, including the minister Malesherbes and the royal mistress Madame de Pompadour. French authorities deliberately ignored the continuation of the work, thinking the official ban was sufficient to appease the church and other enemies of the project.
During this period, Diderot and the publishers changed and apparently falsified the encyclopedia's imprint. The title pages of volumes 1 through 7, published between 1751 and 1757, claimed Paris as the place of publication. However, the title pages of volumes 8 through 17, published together in 1765, show Neufchastel as the place of publication. Neuchâtel was safely across the French border in what is now part of Switzerland but which was then an independent principality, where production of the Encyclopédie would have been secure from interference by the French state. Meanwhile, the actual production of volumes 8 through 17 quietly continued, presumably in Paris, but perhaps somewhere else. To minimize publicity, the French government seems to have stipulated that the final volumes be released at the same time. The volumes were apparently finished in the summer of 1765, allowing delivery to begin by the end of the year.
The Encyclopédie also appeared in other formats and editions. Two were published (in French) in the Italian cities of Lucca and Leghorn. Two others were published in the smaller formats of quarto and octavo, which allowed the price of the set to be brought within range of the upper middle class. While too original to count as a re-edition, the so-called Yverdon Encyclopédie (1770–80), published in the Swiss town of Yverdon, was inspired by and borrowed extensively from the Encyclopédie.
In 1775, the publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke obtained the rights to the work. He issued five volumes of supplementary material and a two-volume index from 1776 to 1780. Some scholars include these seven "extra" volumes as part of the first full issue of the Encyclopédie, for a total of 35 volumes, although they were not written or edited by the original authors.
From 1782 to 1832, Panckoucke and his successors published a greatly expanded edition of the work in some 166 volumes as the Encyclopédie méthodique. This enormous work, organized in thematic sub-series, occupied a thousand workers in production and 2,250 contributors.

== Contributors ==
Since the objective of the editors of the Encyclopédie was to gather knowledge from myriad specialties, Diderot and D'Alembert knew they would need various contributors to help them with their project. In the end, more than 140 people contributed at least one article. (For a detailed list, see Encyclopédistes.) Many of the philosophes (intellectuals of the French Enlightenment) contributed to the Encyclopédie, including Diderot himself, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The most prolific contributor was Louis de Jaucourt, who wrote 17,266 articles between 1759 and 1765, or about eight per day, representing a full 25% of the Encyclopédie. Especially after D'Alembert's resignation as co-editor, Jaucourt became a sort of unofficial second editor.
The publication of the Encyclopédie created opportunities for contributors to share their ideas and interests. In particular, social gatherings at the Parisian home of d'Holbach brought together a minority of contributors on a regular basis. Still, as Frank Kafker has argued, the contributors were not a unified group: