Voltaire in Exile

by Ian Davidson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.32

  In 1753, Voltaire - playwright, poet, philosopher, and one of the most feted figures in Europe - was forced into exile by King Louis XV, where he would remain for the last 25 years of his life. This period heralded a startling new beginning for this remarkable character during which Voltaire became a successful entrepreneur and wrote his masterpiece Candide. Cast out by the establishment, he also developed astonishingly modern ideas about human rights, borne out in his campaigns against a series of miscarriages of justice.

  Ian Davidson has drawn on the rich correspondence between Voltaire and his family, members of the Court at Versailles and the French intellectual elite, to paint a wonderful portrait of the man declared by Diderot to be 'the unique man of the century'.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.32

  In 1753, Voltaire - playwright, poet, philosopher, and one of the most feted figures in Europe - wasforced into exile by King Louis XV, where he would remain for the last 25 years of his life. These years heralded a startling new beginning for this remarkable character. Voltaire carved out a new and vibrant world in isolation, becoming a successful entrepreneur, writing his masterpiece Candide, and lavishing upon those around him the finer things in life. And it was as a figure cast out by the establishment that Voltaire began to develop his astonishingly modern ideas of human rights and social equality, borne out in his campaigns against a series of miscarriages of justice.In Voltaire In Exile, Ian Davidson has recreated this brilliant period in the life of one of the giant figures of the Enlightenment. And by painstakingly translating the rich correspondence between Voltaire and his family, members of the Court at Versailles and the French intellectual elite, Davidson allows us to discover Voltaire the artist, the campaigner, the aesthete, the lover, the humorist. The result is a wonderfully vivid portrait of this extraordinarily funny, iconoclastic, complex and above all ferociously intelligent individual: 'the unique man of the century' (Diderot).