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).
- ISBN10 1843540878
- ISBN13 9781843540878
- Publish Date 8 July 2004
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 1 March 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Atlantic Books
- Edition Main
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 368
- Language English