Perla, George A., and Richard N. Schwab.
“The Authorship of Unsigned Articles in the Encyclopédie.”
Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 4, no. 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), 1971, pp. 447–57. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2737715.
This article is divided into two parts, the first by Perla as a response to a two-part article by Schwab titled “The Diderot Problem, the Starred Articles and the Question of Attribution in the Encyclopédie”, and the second Schwab’s response to Perla. Perla’s goal is to un-attach articles, specifically those of geography, from Diderot that Schwab had determined were authored by him. Looking at the use of the asterisk, a symbol that Diderot was the author, Perla remarks that Diderot’s explicit authorship on geographical articles declines after Volume II and claims that a new author came about. This author, Perla asserts, is Edmé Mallet, who wrote articles in a wide variety of categories before he ceased contributing and she provides evidence both against Schwab’s claims and for her own. Schwab’s response includes an acknowledgment of, and agreement with Perla’s findings and that Mallet should be included on a list of highly potential authors; however, he is not willing to completely discredit Diderot. He also provides a few updates to his previous articles based on new information he did not have access to and that weren’t published in time.
Basic Information
Country of Publication: United States
Language: English
Decade: 1970s
Main Classification: Authorship
Related Sources
*In Progress*
Notes
None
Updates
7/14/2020: Created page.