Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des art - Lot 42

Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Genève, chez Pellet, 1777-1778 (volumes I to XXIX and XXI to XXXVI), and Neufchâtel, chez la Société typographique, 1779 (volume XXX). 36 volumes in-4. - Recueil de planches, pour la nouvelle édition du Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, avec leur explication. À Genève, chez Pellet, 1778-1779. 3 volumes in-4. - Total 39 volumes in-4. Enriched copy of the Table analytique et raisonnée des matières contenues dans les XXIX volumes in-quarto du Dictionnaire des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Lyon: Amable Le Roy, 1780-1781. 6 volumes in-4. A total of 45 volumes in-4, glazed tawny racine calf, spines partitioned and decorated with gilded motifs (antique vases, lyre, fleuron) with brown title-pieces and green tomaison-pieces, spines decorated with filets and grecques, yellow edges speckled with red (period binding). The in-4 "new edition" of the Encyclopédie, in a composite copy (as usual), including one volume of the in-4 "third edition" by the same publisher (volume XXX). The Swiss Jean-Léonard Pellet published two concurrent editions in 39 in-4 volumes, one on his own, from 1777 to 1779, and the other in collaboration with the Société typographique de Neuchâtel, from 1778 to 1779. These two Swiss in-4 editions, which recast the articles of the Paris edition and the Supplément, with a few deletions, "were intended to supply a European market, and attest to the contemporary renown of the Encyclopédie [...]. Far from competing with each other, [they] seem to have quickly made common cause, for almost all the copies we find today, clad in strictly contemporary uniform bindings, are made up of volumes from both editions. Apart from the title pages, there are no significant differences between the two series. In fact, they were printed, at least in part, on the same presses" (David Adams, Bibliographie des œuvres de Denis Diderot, Ferney-Voltaire, Centre international d'étude du xviiie siècle, 2000, t. I, G6 and G7). 12 folding tables printed outside the text. Adams counts only 11, and does not mention the one entitled Système figuré des parties de la géographie, which is here facing page 36 of volume XVI. 443 copper-engraved plates hors texte (22 fold-outs, 101 doubles, 320 singles), numbered in series according to an irregular system that includes bis numbers and plates with 2 or 3 numbers. They are collected in all three volumes of the Recueil de planches, except for 3: a portrait-frontispiece of Diderot in volume I, a portrait-frontispiece of d'Alembert in volume II, and a clock plate in volume XXXVI. A rare copy enriched with the table by Pastor Pierre Mouchon, originally published in 1780 by Charles-Joseph Panckoucke in Paris and Marc-Michel Rey in Amsterdam to accompany the original in-folio edition, and reprinted here in in-4 format to accompany the Pellet editions. Handsome set in uniform contemporary bindings, despite the following defects: small wormholes at the lower head of vol. II, snags to covers or spines of vols. IV, XIII, XXIX, XXXI, XXXIII of text, to vol. I of plates and vol. IV of table, spotting on second plate of first vol. of text, some spotting on plate of vol. XV of text, wormholes and spidering on the spine of vol. VI of table; marginal spotting in first vol. of text, in vol. II of plates, and last few pages of vol. II of table.