John Mills (Author)

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John Mills (* 1717 in England , † between 1786 and 1796) was an author of agricultural textbooks. In addition, he was next to Gottfried Sellius and André Le Breton one of the three initiators of the encyclopedia project, which later led by Diderot for Encyclopaedia was.

biography

John Mills probably lived in France for some time as a young man. In 1741 he was back in London and planned to travel to Jamaica in the meantime. Instead he lived in Paris with his French wife in the following years , who bore him a child in 1742 and 1743.

1745 John Mills, Gottfried Sellius and André-François Le Breton joined together to create the 1728 published two-volume Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers translated into French. Mills and Sellius were to act as translators, while Le Breton, as publisher , applied for the permission to publish, the so-called privilege , which was required at the time . A little later, the decision was made to expand the translation with additional content and expand it into a five-volume edition. The privilege was finally officially registered in April 1745.

However, Le Breton was soon dissatisfied with the lack of progress in the translations and accused Mills of not having a good enough command of French and of not sticking to agreed deadlines. There was an open argument between the two, which escalated to a violent argument at the Mills house on August 7th. Mills then sued Le Breton for assault and assault. However, Le Breton was acquitted and Mills left Paris for England soon after. Le Breton then transferred the management of the encyclopedia project as editor to the clergyman and mathematician Jean Paul de Gua de Malves and, after his departure, Diderot .

In London, Mills made a name for himself in the 1760s as an author of specialist agricultural literature. His most famous work was the five-volume A New and Complete System of Practical Husbandry (dt. Full of doctrine from the practical field management ), which has just been translated into German after its release. It is considered the first agricultural reference work to cover all areas of agriculture and also the first to describe the cultivation of potatoes. In 1766 he was elected to the Royal Society , with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Birch as sponsors for his admission . Mills was also a member of the Mannheim Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of Agriculture in Paris and Rouen .

Works

translator

  • Jean-Baptiste Louis Crévier: The History of the Roman Emperors, from Augustus to Constantine, by Mr. Crevier, professor of rhetoric in the college of Beauvais. , 1755 ( online copy )
  • Duhamel du Monceau : A Practical Treatise of Husbandry . J. Whiston and B. White, London 1759.

author

  • Of Commerce and Luxury
  • An Essay on the Management of Bees . London 1766
  • An Essay on the Weather . London 1770
    Try from the weather . Engelhart Benjamin Schwickert 1772
  • A New and Complete System of Practical Husbandry . London 1762–1765 (5 volumes)
    Complete teaching concept from practical field management . Trattner 1764–1769 (online copy: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 , Volume 4 , Volume 5 )
  • A Treatise on Cattle . 1776 ( online copy (Google) )

literature

Web links

Commons : John Mills (agricultural writer)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d John Lough: The Encyclopédie . Slatkine 1971, ISBN 9782051010467 , p. 9ff ( excerpt (Google) )
  2. ↑ Ulrike Spindler: “1. The Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert. “From: Madame de Pompadour - The Encyclopédie , in: historicum.net, URL: http://www.historicum.net/no_cache/persistent/artikel/2917/ (accessed March 31 2010)
  3. ↑ John Goldworth Alger: Mills, John . In: Dictionary of National Biography volume 37 . Elder Smith & Co, 1894
personal data
SURNAME Mills, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English author
DATE OF BIRTH 1717
PLACE OF BIRTH England
DATE OF DEATH between 1786 and 1796