Larousse Encyclopedias

encyclopedias published by the Librairie Larousse, a publishing house founded in Paris in 1852 by the teacher and lexicographer P. Larousse (1817–75).

The Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, or Nineteenth-century Larousse, was published from 1865 to 1876 in a 15-volume edition. (Two supplementary volumes appeared in 1878 and 1888.) Articles dealing with the humanities predominated, and a considerable amount of space was devoted to individual literary and musical works. Many articles were liberal and anticlerical in nature, as a result of which the encyclopedia was placed by the Vatican on the Index librorum prohibitorum. Between 1897 and 1904 the Nouveau Larousse illustré en sept volumes was published; a supplementary volume appeared in 1906. Between 1927 and 1933 the Larousse du XXe siècle en six volumes was published; a revised edition came out between 1948 and 1950, and a supplementary volume appeared in 1953. A modern multivolume encyclopedia, the Grand Larousse encyclopédique en dix volumes, was published between 1960 and 1964, and a supplementary volume appeared in 1968. Articles are in the form of short entries, and therefore the encyclopedia contains more than 450,000 items. Coverage of technology and the natural sciences has been considerably broadened. Many articles are accompanied by bibliographies, which are placed at the end of volumes. There are many illustrations, primarily in black and white, and some are in the margins.

Since 1906 a one-volume Petit Larousse has been published each year. Between 1906 and 1923, the Petit Larousse illustré was published; and between 1924 and 1959, the Nouveau Petit Larousse illustré. V. I. Lenin noted the advantages of the structure of the Petit Larousse dictionaries, which combine the functions of explanatory and encyclopedic dictionaries (Poln. sobr. sock, 5th ed., vol. 52, p. 199). The firm has published the following small encyclopedias: Encyclopédie Larousse méthodique (1955), Larousse: Trois Volumes en couleurs (1965–66), Encyclopédie générale Larousse en trois volumes (1968), and Nouveau Larousse universel (1969–70). Larousse has also published encyclopedic dictionaries for children and young people; musical, medical, agricultural, geographic, and gastronomic encyclopedias; and encyclopedias on gardening, housekeeping, and sports. From 1907 to 1958 (with an interruption from 1941 to 1947), the firm published the magazine Larousse mensuel illustré. In 1971 the publishing house began to publish the 60-volume La Grande Encyclopédie.