Volume 27, Number 1 · February 7, 1980
Enlightenment on the Market
By J.M. Roberts
The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800
by Robert Darnton
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 642 pp., $20.00
The Encyclopédie may well be the most famous (and is certainly the biggest) of those great books much talked about but little read. Probably it never had many readers: encyclopedias usually do not. But it was much nibbled at, consulted, read in. Though never measured and perhaps exaggerated, its cultural impact has been little questioned by either its detractors or its admirers. For good or ill, the Encyclopédie quickly took its place as a milestone in the history of civilization.
Review, 3469 words
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