Encyclopédie Méthodique

The Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières ("Methodical Encyclopedia by Order of Subject Matter") was published between 1782 and 1832 by the French publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke, his son-in-law Henri Agasse, and the latter´s wife, Thérèse-Charlotte Agasse. Arranged by disciplines, it was a revised and much expanded version, in roughly 210 to 216 volumes (different sets were bound differently), of the alphabetically arranged Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The full title was L'Encyclopédie méthodique ou par ordre de matières par une société de gens de lettres, de savants et d'artistes; précédée d'un vocabulaire universel, servant de table pour tout l'ouvrage, ornée des portraits de MM. Diderot et d'Alembert, premiers éditeurs de l'Encyclopédie.

Two sets of Diderot's Encyclopédie and its supplements were cut up into articles. Each subject category was entrusted to a specialized editor, whose job was to collect all articles relating to his subject and exclude those belonging to others. Great care was to be taken of those articles that were of a doubtful nature, which were not to be omitted. For certain topics, such as air (which belonged equally to chemistry, physics and medicine), the methodical arrangement had the unexpected effect of breaking up a single article into several parts. Each volume was to have its own introduction, a table of contents, and a history of the Encyclopédie. The whole work was to be linked together by a Vocabulaire universel (Vol. 1 – 4), with references to all locations where each word appears.

The prospectus, issued early in 1782, proposed three editions, each with seven volumes of 250 to 300 plates:

Subscription was priced at:

The livraisons (home-deliveries) were to be in two volumes each, the first (Jurisprudence, Vol. 1; Literature, Vol. 1,) to appear in July 1782, and the whole to be finished by 1787. The number of subscribers, 4072, was so great that the subscription list for the price of 672 livres was closed on April 30. Twenty-five printing offices were employed, and in November 1782, the first livraison (Jurisprudence, Vol. 1; and half volume each of Arts et métiers and Histoire naturelle) was issued.

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