“Her eyebrows from a mouse’s hide, Stuck on with art on either side, Pulls off with care, and first displays ‘em, Then in a play-book smoothly lays ‘em.” So wrote Jonathan Swift, commemorating the 18th century’s false-eyebrow trend in his ode, A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed (1731). (He goes on to describe her [...]
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Diderot worked for twenty-six years as the editor of the monumental French Encyclopédie, producing 17 volumes of text and 11 of illustrations published between 1751 and 1772. It summed up the world’s knowledge, but its writers also challenged the beliefs of the church and, less directly, the sovereignty of the King. The books were so controversial [...]
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