Abstract
Diderot's letter to John Wilkes of 2nd April 1768 was published in the Assézat-Tourneux edition from a French translation of the English 'translation3 published in Wilkes's Correspondence in 1805. In D.H.S. n° 6, F. Moureau presented a French text of the letter, found in the 18th May 1768 issue of the Courrier du Bas-Rhin published in Cleves ; but the mystery remained as to how a letter sent to London arrived in Cleves. In fact Diderot's letter was published in French with an English translation in the May 1768 issue of the pro-Wilkes propaganda organ, the Political Register, published by Wilkes's friend John Almon. One can easily suppose that Wilkes, wishing to exploit the propaganda value of a letter from the philosophe, gave a copy, or the original letter, to his friend for publication. In the absence of a manuscript, we can thus take the French text in the Political Register as the original version of Diderot's letter.
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