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La Grande Encyclopédie

 

 
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La Grande Encyclopédie
 
 
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La Grande Encyclopédie, inventaire raisonné des sciences, des lettres, et des arts (The Great Encyclopedia: a systematic inventory of science, letters, and the arts) is a 31-volume encyclopedia
Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
 published in France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 from 1886 to 1902 by H. Lamirault, and later by the Société anonyme de la grande encyclopédie.

The general secretaries of its editorial board were Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus
Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus

Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus was a France journalist and politician, unrelated to his contemporary Captain Alfred Dreyfus.After a classical and commercial education he prepared himself for the ?cole Polytechnique, but on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War left his studies to serve as a volunteer....
 and André Berthelot
André Berthelot

Andr? Berthelot was the son of the chemist and politician Marcellin Berthelot and a National Assembly of France of the Seine .He was secretary-general of the Grande Encyclop?die starting with the fourth volume....
.

Major articles are signed and include a bibliography.






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Encyclopedia


La Grande Encyclopédie, inventaire raisonné des sciences, des lettres, et des arts (The Great Encyclopedia: a systematic inventory of science, letters, and the arts) is a 31-volume encyclopedia
Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
 published in France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 from 1886 to 1902 by H. Lamirault, and later by the Société anonyme de la grande encyclopédie.

The general secretaries of its editorial board were Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus
Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus

Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus was a France journalist and politician, unrelated to his contemporary Captain Alfred Dreyfus.After a classical and commercial education he prepared himself for the ?cole Polytechnique, but on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War left his studies to serve as a volunteer....
 and André Berthelot
André Berthelot

Andr? Berthelot was the son of the chemist and politician Marcellin Berthelot and a National Assembly of France of the Seine .He was secretary-general of the Grande Encyclop?die starting with the fourth volume....
.

Major articles are signed and include a bibliography. In its 31 volumes of 1200 pages each, there are about 200,000 articles, 15,000 engraved illustrations and 200 maps.

From the Preface:

Despite numerous attempts, some of which were crowned with success in their time, France still does not have a great encyclopedic work, popular yet up-to-date with the latest progress of science....

The Grande Encyclopedie is a work of high popularization (haute vulgarisation). It presents the current state of modern knowledge, arranging a collection of the human knowledge of our time.

Staying above current disputes, resolute in not becoming a partisan tool, the Grande Encyclopedie has no rule other than the impartiality of science.

...It sets out facts with scrupulous precision, and diverse or contradictory theories with impartiality: it is up to the reader to compare them and reach conclusions.



In the article Encyclopédie:
Since the publication of the Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie

Encyclop?die, ou dictionnaire raisonn? des sciences, des arts et des m?tiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives....
, no comparable work had been published, except in England. In 1882, a group of scholars and men of letters, at the initiative of Camille Dreyfus and the publisher Baer, undertook to fill this lacuna. At first, it was just a matter of an undertaking such as tha of Brockhaus and of Appleton. But soon the plan was enlarged by Mr. Dreyfus, in agreement with the directors, to the scale of a true encyclopedia.


According to the Library of Congress
Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the de facto national library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books....
 catalog record, the individual volumes were published in the following years: 1-2: 1886, 3-4: 1887, 4: 1887, 5-6: 1888, 7-8: 1889, 8: 1889, 9-11: 1890, 12-13: 1891, 14-16: 1892, 17-18: 1893, 19-20: 1894, 21: 1895, 22: 1896, 23: 1898, 24-26: 1899, 27-8: 1900, 29-30: 1901, 31: 1902.

External links


  • A scan of the full text is available at Gallica: . The article title ranges are given in the volume titles; there is no direct way to go to a particular article.
  • (in French)