Charles-Joseph Panckoucke Issues the Prospectus for a Monumental European Encyclopedia

In December 1781 publisher and writer Charles-Joseph Panckoucke issued Encyclopédie méthodique, ou par ordre de matières par une société de gens de lettres, de savans et d'artistes; précédée d'un Vocabulaire universel, servant de table pour tout l'ouvrage, orné des portraits de MM. Diderot & d'Alembert, premiers editeurs de l'Encyclopédie ; publiée en deux formats: in-4°. à trois colonnes, quarante-deux volumes de discours & sept volumes de planches; et in-8°. à deux colonnes, en quatre-vingt-quatre volumes de discours & sept volumes de planches ; imprimée sur papier grand-raisin; caractère, formats, justification & papier pareils au présent prospectus; proposée par souscription, au même prix de six cens soixante-douze livres pour chaque édition.

This 80-page work was the separate edition of the complete prospectus to Panckoucke’s monumental Encyclopédie méthodique (1782-1832). Panckoucke intended this Encyclopédie to eclipse that of Diderot and d’Alembert; it represents “the grandest gamble in the competition for the Encyclopédie market of the Old Regime” (Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, p. 395). Panckoucke made the shortcomings of the original Encyclopédie the central theme of his campaign to promote the Méthodique. He opened his first [i.e., this] prospectus with a quotation from Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, which damned Diderot’s work with faint praise as a “succès, malgré ses défauts” (Panckoucke’s italics).“M. de Voltaire désirait ardemment une nouvelle édition de l’Encycloplédie, où les fautes de la première fussent corrigées,” the prospectus explained. . . . If Voltaire’s endorsement were not persuasive enough—and who would not be impressed by a pronouncement of the great man, whose prestige was then at a peak?—those who hesitated to subscribe could consider the advice of Diderot himself, whose memoir about the faults of his Encyclopédie could be read as propaganda for Panckoucke’s. . . . The prospectus of the Méthodique quoted Diderot’s criticisms at length and showed how Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie would meet them, point by point" (Darnton, pp. 417-18).

Panckoucke’s published the prospectus  in pamphlet form as above, in an abridged version in the Mercure de France (Dec. 8, 1781), a periodical that he published, and as part of the first volume of the Beaux-Arts section in the Encyclopédie méthodique. When we checked OCLC located four copies of the separate pamphlet.

Within a few years of issuing the prospectus Pancoucke signed up more than 4000 subscribers to the encyclopedia. Notably Panckoucke announced that he would be publishing the Encyclopédie methodique in both quarto and octavo formats. In October 1782 when I revised this entry I was unaware that any volumes of the encyclopedia were issued in octavo format.