ARTFL Encyclopédie - Robert Morrissey, General Editor; Glenn Roe, Assoc. Editor

The following observations compare the "Compact Edition" of the Encyclopédie issued by Pergamon Press (New York, 1969) against the criteria for a good copy of the first edition as established by Richard Schwab in volume I of his Inventory of Diderot's Encyclopédie (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, volume 80, 1971). This comparison demonstrates that the microprint reproduction may be used for the imaging component of the ARTFL Encyclopédie project with little or no loss in accuracy. The microprint edition seems to be taken from a good copy of the first edition.

The microfiche version, issued by IDC (the Netherlands), has been certified for us by Schwab as a good copy and has been used for the machine-readable text component of the project. The imaging experiments completed using these microfiche have, however, proved unsatisfactory and have led us to seek an alternative solution. We believe that even though slight differences exist between the two copies (as must inevitably be the case for eighteenth-century editions), the microprint version will serve well for the imaging component until technological improvements make it possible to digitize images from the microfiche version. The microprint version has all the characteristics of a fine first edition as described by Schwab, with the exception of several peculiarities in the first volume as listed below.

Text volumes.

Distinction between Paris edition and Geneva and "Riverside" editions

Throughout the seventeen volumes of text, the microprint meets all the general criteria for the Paris edition:

• Variations in the accents on title pages
• Ornaments, particularly the capital letters engraved by Papillon
• Errors in pagination (corrected by the editor of the mircroprint edition, but still obvious)
• Six-pointed asterisks (as opposed to five-pointed asterisks in the Geneva edition)

The microprint resembles the Geneva edition in one peculiarity, however: this is the final page (914) of volume I. The microprint edition appears to have a "9" written over the original "7" in the page number, and there is an editor's indication with the "pointing hand" sign near the bottom of the page. There is no "errata" section for this volume. Furthermore, the errors indicated in the "errata" have been corrected in the text. The variation in the collophon on page 914 also corresponds to the Geneva edition. The signatures of the gatherings, on the other hand, correspond to the Paris edition. These details would suggest that volume I of the microprint edition perhaps represents a late state of the first edition, with certain corrections already incorporated in the text, rather than a volume from the Geneva printing.

The "errata" sections in the microprint edition present several other variants, but generally correspond to those in the first Paris edition. In volume III, the "errata" has been moved from the end of the volume (p. [906]) to page xvj (but this appears to result from a "cut and paste" operation by the editors). At the end of volume VI, there are two "errata" sections: pages [927-928], "ERRATA" (for volumes III-VI) correspond to the Paris edition; in addition, however, there is an "ERRATA pour le Sixieme Tome." that Schwab includes in his description of the Geneva edition. (In the microprint edition, however, these pages are not numbered; Schwab indicates that in the Geneva edition the pages are numbered 927-928.)

The Second and Third Paris Editions

It might seem that the corrections in the text of the first volume indicate that the microprint edition reproduces a copy of the second or third Paris edition. As Schwab indicates (page 82), "In several cases, small, manageable errors noted in the errata pages are corrected in the texts of the two later editions." At the same time, however, a passage in the article "Amour des Sciences et des Lettres", p. 368b, remains unchanged (as in first edition) and the article attributions that were confused in the second and third editions all correspond to the first edition. Signatures, particularly with regard to asterisks indicating the cancellans, also conform with the first edition.

Therefore, we conclude that the microprint edition reproduces a copy of the first Paris edition, different in only minor respects from Schwab's description. This reproduction is clearly not the same as the one issued by Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart, which Schwab (p. 61) identifies as a mixed set including volumes from the Geneva edition for text volumes VI, VIII, and XII, and plate volumes I, X, and XI. This Pergamon Press microprint edition also includes the collophons that Schwab indicates as missing in the Frommann version. [This has subsequently been substantiated by information obtained from WORLDCAT. The Frommann Verlag is listed as a 35 volume set. Listings for this edition are distinct from those for the Pergamon Press edition.]

Plate volumes.

In following indications from volume VII, "Inventory of the plates, with a study of the contributors to the Encyclopédie by John Lough", of the Schwab Inventory (Studies on Voltaire, volume 223, 1984), we conclude that the microprint edition also reproduces a good copy of the plate volumes from the Paris edition.

The eleven volumes of plates correspond in all respects to the Paris edition, including the following general characteristics:

• Title page configuration and engraving
• Absence of numbered "lower margin binders' instructions"
• All images appear in correct orientation (none reversed)
• Plates in the earlier volumes are signed by a variety of engravers (Bénard signs virtually all of the Geneva plates)