Origins
The Encyclopédie was originally conceived as a French translation of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728). In 1743, the translation was entrusted by the Parisian book publisher André Le Breton to John Mills, an English resident in France. In May 1745, Le Breton announced the work as available for sale, but to his dismay, Mills had not done the work he was commissioned to do; in fact, he could barely read and write French and did not even own a copy of Cyclopaedia. Furious at having been swindled, Le Breton beat Mills with a cane. Mills sued for assault, but Le Breton was acquitted in court as being justified. For his new editor, Le Breton settled on the mathematician Jean Paul de Gua de Malves. Among those hired by Malves were the young Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Denis Diderot. Within thirteen months, in August 1747, Gua de Malves was fired for being an ineffective leader. Le Breton then hired Diderot and Jean d'Alembert to be the new editors. Diderot would remain editor for the next twenty-five years, seeing the Encyclopédie through its completion.
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