 Begun in 1745 as a project to publish a complete French translation of Ephraim Chambers’ 1728 Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, the Encyclopédie, arguably the single most transformative work of the French Enlightenment, had become by 1749 something entirely new. Breaking free of the translation agenda, a new work was imagined, to be edited by Diderot and D’Alembert, that would serve as the vehicle promoting the new philosophie.