André François le Breton (2 September 1708 – 5 October 1779) was a French

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

. He was one of the four publishers of the ''

Encyclopédie , better known as ''Encyclopédie'' (), was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis ...

'' of

Diderot Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during t ...

and

d'Alembert Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert ( ; ; 16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanics, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was, together with Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the ''E ...

, along with Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, and Antoine-Claude Briasson. Le Breton contributed some articles to the ''Encyclopédie'' (see

External links An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a web page to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. It is the opposite of an external link, a link that directs a user to content that is outside its d ...

, below), but acted primarily as publisher and editor, often against Diderot's will. In 1745, le Breton set out to publish a translation of

Ephraim Chambers Ephraim Chambers ( – 15 May 1740) was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the '' Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences''. Chambers' ''Cyclopædia'' is known as the original source ...

' '' Cyclopaedia'' of 1728. He initially chose

Jean Paul de Gua de Malves Jean Paul de Gua de Malves (1713, Malves-en-Minervois (Aude) – June 2, 1785, Paris) was a French mathematician who published in 1740 a work on analytical geometry in which he applied it, without the aid of differential calculus, to find the tang ...

as his editor, but he tired of the job after two years, and in 1747, the editorship went to

. For a more detailed account, see ''

''. With the assistance of his foreman Louis-Claude Brullé, le Breton would occasionally censor articles in order to make them less radical, frequently drawing the ire of Diderot. For example, le Breton did not included a portion of Diderot's article "Menance" that indirectly attacked Joly de Fleury, the French police commissioner.Frankel, Charles. "The Censoring of Diderot's Encyclopedie and the Re-Established Text by Douglas H. Gordon, Norman L. Torrey". ''The Journal of Philosophy''. 44: 721–723. Le Breton also censored Diderot by changing certain words to distort the meaning of the article. Diderot wrote le Breton a furious letter, in 1764, accusing him of having "massacred" the work and reduced it to a "hodge-podge of insipid clippings". According to Friedrich Melchior Grimm, writing in 1777, "The entire extent of the injury done by this unexampled, murderous, and infamous depredation will never be known, since the perpetrators of the crime burned the manuscript as soon as it was printed and left the evil without remedy." This claim has proved not to be true for, unknown to Grimm, le Breton had kept copies of the page proofs. This collection of final proofs totaled 318 pages. The collection of proofs is known as the "18th volume" of the ''Enclyopédie''. In the 20th century, these proofs were used to reveal the extent of le Breton's censorship, which was most prominent in the articles "Sarrasins ou Arabes" and "Pyrrhoniene philosophie." In addition, le Breton excluded three of Diderot's articles titled, "Sectes du Christianisme" and "Tolérance" as well as the subarticle "Théologie Scholastique". In the latter case, le Breton edited Diderot's original article to be less favorable towards

Pierre Bayle Pierre Bayle (; 18 November 1647 – 28 December 1706) was a French philosopher, author, and lexicographer. He is best known for his '' Historical and Critical Dictionary'', whose publication began in 1697. Many of the more controversial ideas ...

, a 17th-century

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

whose views were deemed unacceptable. Bayle's views were deemed unacceptable because he was critical of the Church and its use of violence.

References

*Gordon, Douglas and Torrey, Norman, ''The censoring of Diderot's "Encyclopédie" and the re-established text.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 1947. *Wilson, Arthur M., ''An Unpublished Letter of Diderot, December 28, 1769.'' Modern Language Notes, Vol. 67, No. 7. (Nov., 1952), pp. 439–443. *Kafker, Frank A., ''The Recruitment of the Encyclopedists.'' Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4. (Summer, 1973), pp. 452–461.

External links

Encre noire
the

article written by le Breton (in French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Le Breton Publishers (people) from Paris Printers from Paris 1708 births 1779 deaths Contributors to the Encyclopédie (1751–1772) Denis Diderot

See also

References

External links