The Library retains most of the eighteenth century books relating to Freemasonry . It is first of all the exposures , that is to say , those books whose titles are L ’ Ordre des francs-maçons trahi or Le Sceau rompu and which deliver to the public the uses and rituals of the lodges of the Age of Enlightenment .
The Pamphlets , that is to say the texts that attack or , on the contrary , make the apology of the Order , constitute the second major category . It can be seen that the arguments which will be developed over 300 years to criticize or defend Freemasonry are in place as early as the 1740s . Finally , most of the works are a Masonic profession of faith and a debate of ideas . Many defend the Enlightenment philosophy . Others profess theosophical conceptions and show that the lodges have also played a role in literary history by being one of the occult sources of Romanticism to quote the title of Auguste Viatte ’ s famous book .
Paradoxically , masonic works of the 19 th century are often rarer than those of the 18th century . Indeed , if the prints relating to Freemasonry published in the nineteenth prove much more numerous , on the other hand the prints were relatively weak and one knows little reprints . Thus , the collection of books , plates and pamphlets of the nineteenth century preserved at the Library of the Grand Orient is exceptional . For Masonry , the nineteenth century will also be the era of journals . Of the most ephemeral , like L ’ Abeille ( 1829-1831 ) of the republican Brother Quantin , to the most important ones like Le Monde Maçonnique ( 1858-1885 ), while passing by the Fourierist Revue Maçonnique de Lyon et du Midi ( 1839-1851 ), they are almost all available in our collections .
Finally , the Library presents a very complete collection for books published between 1880 and 1980 .
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