The Atlas Linguistique de la France was first published between 1902 and 1910 and includes 1,421 maps as well as 499 partially completed ones, all in large format. They were compiled by the great French linguist Jules Gilliéron, and were based on dialectological surveys conducted during the last years of the 19th century by Edmond Edmont in 639 parishes of Romance-speaking regions of France "and heir contiguous linguistic colonies" in Belgium, Switzerland and Italy.

Each map of the linguistic atlas includes specific words which are transcribed in the phonetic alphabet. Although it might be a potentially disorienting experience for the non specialist, this work is an irreplaceable linguistic monument in the sense that it reflects the last links with an orally transmitted rural culture having its origins thousands of years ago. Furthermore, the authors interpret a potentially chaotic array of variant linguistic forms by presenting the reader with a coherent analysis of phonetic, morphological and lexical zones in the form of 500 colour maps.

The book is divided into three parts, each of which has been written on the basis of cartographic analyses: 1) Time : diachronic investigation of long-term linguistic situations; 2) Space : the influence of geography on the formation of dialect zones; 3) Movement : the paths that linguistic forms have followed over the centuries on account of variable political and economic conditions.

Several maps include data extracted from Pierre Le Roux’s Atlas Linguistique de la Basse-Bretagne whose fieldwork was undertaken around the First World War.

The authors are Jean Le Dû and Yves Le Berre, both professors at the University of Western Brittany, Brest, and Guylaine Brun-Trigaud, an engineer for the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in Nice,where she is currently collaborating on the Thesaurus occitan.

In order to benefit from a 20 % reduction, order before September 15, 2005