DIDEROT Denis and Jean Le Rond d'ALEMBERT. Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de Lettres. Paris, Neuchâtel, 1751-1780; 35 vol. in-folio, contemporary bindings in marbled calf, spines decorated with gilt designs. COMPLETE FIRST EDITION OF THE "ENCYCLOPEDIA". DETAIL: Text, 17 volumes; plates, 11 volumes. These 28 volumes published by Diderot; in addition: 5 volumes of Supplements (including one of plates) and 2 of Tables, the latter volumes published from 1776 to 1780 by the publisher Panckoucke. Born from an abandoned project of translation of the English Cyclopædia of Ephraim Chambers (1727), the Encyclopédie conducted is animated by Diderot and d'Alembert did not take long to become an entirely new original work. Diderot had conceived it as a "Dictionnaire raisonné des connaissances humaines", and it is now accepted that it was the greatest printing enterprise ever undertaken in the service of French thought and technology. His enthusiasm and tireless activity were to attract little by little two hundred collaborators from different backgrounds, writers, scholars, thinkers, economists such as Buffon, Condillac, Grimm, Helvétius, d'Holbach, Marmontel, Montesquieu, Quesnay, Rousseau, Turgot, Voltaire THE ILLUSTRATION COMPRISES 3129 ENGRAVED PLATES, remarkable for their documentary interest and very pretty for the most part. They show some of the earliest representations of industries, crafts and trades. Some engravings show the interiors of shops or workshops, others the tools and instruments of the professions. The collection does include the late Cochin frontispiece, which Diderot enthusiastically described in the Salon of 1763. It is here in its first state before the addition of the printing press. The first volumes, barely published (1751-1752), caused violent upheavals in the Parliament, the Church and the ministries, to the point that the suspension and suppression of the Encyclopaedia were obtained on several occasions. In 1759, after an attempt on the life of Louis XV, censorship was tightened and a law was passed stating that "Any author or printer of seditious works is liable to the death penalty", and in the same year the Pope condemned the Encyclopédie. However, in the meantime, the government, enlightened by high-ranking figures such as Mme de Pompadour, the Marquis d'Argenson and Malesherbes (director of the Librairie) decided to secretly support the publication while seeming to disapprove of it. The titles bear the fictitious address of Neuchâtel as the place of printing, while Diderot continued to print in Paris. When Malesherbes had to come and seize the material, he discreetly warned Diderot the day before and only removed the day before and only took away the junk. This adventure lasted thirty years, punctuated by vicissitudes whose account has filled volumes. Barely finished (1780) seven reprints or counterfeits flourished throughout Europe, contributing even more to the dissemination of French civilization and the spread of new ideas. The Encyclopedia, by its innovative tendencies, perhaps prepared the French Revolution. It certainly gave birth to industrial civilization and laid the foundations for the greatest scientific discoveries. EXCEPTIONAL EXAMPLE, complete with the frontispiece by Charles-Nicolas Cochin in the first printing and all the required plates, in uniform contemporary bindings preserved without defect, some of the headpieces having been previously repaired. Staining to the upper margin of volume 1 of the plates over a quarter of the volume