Dictionnaire universel

The Dictionnaire universel, contenant generalement tous les mots françois (originally Dictionaire universel) was an encyclopedia compiled by Antoine Furetière and published posthumously in 1690.

At the time of its founding, the Académie française had been entrusted with the task of producing a complete dictionary of the French language. At first, Furetière participated in the collaborative project with enthusiasm, but he eventually grew frustrated with his colleagues' approach and slow progress and began work on his own dictionary, probably around 1676-78. In 1684 he published a sample of articles from his proposed dictionary under the title Essais d'un Dictionnaire universel. The work was reprinted in 1685 and 1687.

When members of the academy heard that Furetière was about to publish his dictionary, they interfered, alleging that he had stolen their material and violated the monopoly they had held on French dictionaries since 1674. In 1685, after fierce recriminations on both sides, Furetière was expelled from the academy, and the French government revoked his permission to publish the dictionary. In 1690, the Dictionaire universel was published posthumously in the Netherlands with a preface by Pierre Bayle, who had helped arrange for the work's publication.

Unlike the academy's dictionary, finally published in 1694, Furetière's Dictionnaire included specialized technical and scientific vocabulary. It was also an encyclopedia of sorts in dealing with things as well as words. Despite having been banned in France, it was a commercial success and exerted an enormous influence on eighteenth-century French dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Furetière's Dictionnaire continued to be edited and republished through 1727. The second edition (1701) and the third edition (1708) were revised and improved by the Protestant jurist Henri Basnage de Beauval (1656–1710). A fourth edition, edited by Jean-Baptiste Brutel de la Rivière, appeared in 1727.

• 1690 : Dictionaire universel. The Hague and Rotterdam: Arnoud et Reinier Leers. First edition. 3 volumes. Preface by Pierre Bayle. Posthumous publication.
• 1691 : Dictionaire universel. The Hague & Rotterdam: Arnoud et Reinier Leers. Reprint of first edition in 2 volumes.
• 1701 : Dictionnaire universel. The Hague & Rotterdam: Arnoud et Reinier Leers. Second edition. 3 volumes. Edited by Henri Basnage de Beauval.
• 1702 : Dictionnaire universel. The Hague & Rotterdam: Arnoud et Reinier Leers. Reprint of second edition in 2 volumes.
• 1708 : Dictionnaire universel. Rotterdam: Reinier Leers. Third edition. 3 volumes. Edited by Henri Basnage de Beauval.
• 1727 : Dictionnaire universel. The Hague: Pierre Husson, Thomas Johnson, Jean Swart, and others. Fourth edition. 4 volumes. Edited by Jean-Baptiste Brutel de la Rivière.

At the behest of Louis Auguste, Prince of Dombes, the Jesuits of the Collège of Louis le Grand in Paris literally copied the 1701 edition of Furetière's Dictionnaire universel before editing the work to suppress deviant Protestant notions. The Jesuit version was printed in 1704 outside Lyon at Trévoux, then the capital of Dombes; the same press at Trévoux also published the Jesuit periodical Journal de Trévoux, which appeared monthly from 1701 until 1782. The Jesuits even plagiarized the name of Furetière's work: the title given on the title page of the Jesuit editions was Dictionnaire universel françois & latin; the words "françois & latin" were appended to the title because the Jesuits appended a brief Latin-French dictionary to the last volume of their editions. Although almost immediately known as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux to distinguish it from the dictionary of Furetière, these words did not appear on the title page until the last edition in 1771, which followed the suppression of the Jesuits in France. Further work on the Dictionnaire de Trévoux came to an end after the removal of the Jesuits from Paris.

The 1721 edition of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux significantly expanded Basnage de Beauval's edition of Furetière's work; however, quite remarkably, while material was added to articles, very little existing material was removed or even reworked: additional material was simply bolted on to the text of the 1704 edition of the Trévoux dictionary. The first most visible difference between the 1701 edition of Basnage de Beauval and the 1721 edition of Trévoux is a tweaking of the abbreviations of the names of the authors cited in the articles of the dictionary.

Subsequently, Brutel de la Rivière updated his 1727 edition of Furetière's dictionary largely by copying material added by the 1721 edition of the Trévoux dictionary.