Prospectus et mémoires de l’Encyclopédie méthodique, II: 1789–1792 by Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (review)

Begun in 1782 and completed in 1832, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie méthodique is remembered as the only work whose publication spanned the Monarchy, the French Revolution, and the Empire. The story of the Méthodique and its misadventures, of how what began as a revision of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie evolved into a process of continual expansion, is told in part in the documents assembled in this volume, the second of two, edited by Martine Groult. (For the first, see French Studies, 66.4 (2012), 559–60.) The overall impression gained from the various prefaces, letters, and tables published from 1789 to 1792, and presented here as Prospectus et mémoires, is one of an editor perpetually obligated to address his public, repeatedly explaining delays, reassuring subscribers, pleading with authors, justifying costs, warding off potential lawsuits, promising swift completion of the remaining volumes, and underscoring his personal sacrifices in rallying support for what he calls ‘la plus grande et la plus utile des entreprises qui ait jamais été faite depuis qu’on imprime des livres’ (p. 443). Originally conceived as the direct heir of the Encyclopédie, over time the Méthodique would come to be presented as ‘un ouvrage entièrement neuf’ (p. 11), often with reference to the failings of its illustrious predecessor. Geography in the Encyclopédie, for instance, is said to be ‘défectueuse à tous égards’ (p. 170) and its sections on ‘Arts et métiers’ are described as ‘mal traitées’ (p. 260). The greatest flaw in the Encyclopédie, however, according to Panckoucke, was the difficulty in finding what one was looking for — a flaw that was to be remedied in the Méthodique by the inclusion of a ‘Vocabulaire universel’ (p. 291) that would illustrate the relation between different fields. But since this ‘Vocabulaire’, which was to crown the entire work, was in fact never published, one may legitimately wonder, based on Panckoucke’s own statements (‘sans vocabulaire point d’Encyclopédie’, p. 298), as to the coherence of the Méthodique in its final form. (An electronic version of the ‘Vocabulaire’ is planned for the University of Chicago’s ARTFL website; see p. 378.) Equally confusing is the question of the actual number of volumes contained in the Méthodique, which varies from 203 to 212 according to the collection. Lists of the subject dictionaries provided in the final section along with a presentation of the ‘Inventaire de la Bibliothèque Mazarine’ help to explain the discrepancies. Groult’s elegant Introduction to this volume will serve to guide future research, as will her detailed footnotes.