Cyclopaedia: or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences: containing an explication of the terms, and an account of the things signified thereby in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical; and the several sciences, human and divine: The figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and the uses o

London: printed for D. Midwinter, [etc., including 16 additional firms], 1738. The second edition, corrected and amended; with some additions. Text, very good; boards, acceptable. Two volumes folio (420 x 280 mm), continuously signed. Titlepages in red and black. Folded engraved frontispiece and 21 engraved plates, eight of them folding. In contemporary speckled calf over boards, double ruled in gilt, spine in seven compartments, title labels missing, volume numbers applied directly in gold, and gilt tool stamped in remaining compartments. Red speckled edges. Binding scuffed and abraded in places, revealing wood substrate; worn at corners, edges, and at spine ends, joints split, boards held on with later adhesive strips applied to hinges. Frontispiece partially split along fold, with some loss. Text block otherwise strong and entire, with plates clean and intact. Reference ESTC T136232, etc. EXTRA SHIPPING CHARGES WILL APPLY.

The first English encyclopedia, and an undertaking as massive and comprehensive as its subtitle might suggest. The great French Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and d'Alembert originated in a proposal to translate this second edition of Chambers. Indeed, the second edition, published ten years after the first, is copiously enlarged from its original printing, "retouched," Chambers writes in a preface, "and amended in a thousand places." Chambers appears to have been largely self-taught, having apprenticed at a young age to a globe-maker and bookseller. That the Cyclopaedia was the work of a single clerk (albeit one who was ultimately elected to the Royal Society) rather than a committee of doctors makes its scope, detail, and accuracy all the more awesome. The entertainment value of the Cyclopaedia should not be ignored: it has taken us several hours to write this short description, having gotten quite lost in reading the fascinating and lucid articles on, for example, paper and type (a Caslon specimen sheet folds out), on Spinozism, on optics, the Nimethulehites, or on enthusiasm ("a poetic or prophetic rage, or fury, which transports the mind, and raises the imagination, and makes it conceive and express things extraordinary, and surprizing.