In 1728, John Gay wrote "The Beggar's Opera" which has increased in fame ever since. "The Beggar's Opera" began a new style in Opera, the "ballad opera" which brings the operatic form down to a more popular level and precedes the genre of comic operettas. Also in 1728 came the publication of "Cyclopaedia, or, A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" (folio, 2 vols.), an encyclopedia by Ephraim Chambers. The Cyclopaedia was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English and was the main model for Diderot's "Encyclopédie" (published in France between 1751 and 1766).