For this first book set, the book that I like the most is Encyclopedie, ou Dictionaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers, by Denis Diderot. While we only got to view one of the many volumes, it’s quickly apparent that this book reflects the era’s desire to fully record human history: here, there is a rich collection of definitions of each of the contemporary disciplines, from chemistry to civil engineering to music. The book alternates between many, many pages of words and definitions, followed by many, many pages of diagrams and images. The book is stuffed to the brim; it’s unbelievable.

The book’s relationship between the text and images is fascinating, and very different from what I’m used to. Normally, I’d expect a textbook or encyclopedia to keep its figures close to their respective text, or at least keep its images in the middle of the book, to make reference easier. Instead, this dictionary works by separating the words and images, so that all of the pictures come in this long stream. For me, at least, the text became almost irrelevant because I was overwhelmed by the vastness of the images in number and content. Sometimes there would be pages of day-to-day life, with figures elaborating on the mechanics or technology present in those ordinary images. In this sense, it’s more powerful than an ordinary dictionary, which relies on text with few images. Here, the images really provide depth and understanding to the basic definitions by demonstrating different principles and concepts.

And I think the book becomes stronger when put in context with its history. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it faced a lot of criticism, and censorship by the printers, but managed to be successful and helped to pave the way for the French Revolution. So, I guess the volumes and the flourishing amounts of text and images sparked other people’s imagination and intellect.