A tragedy based on the story of Romulus and Remus; Voltaire destroyed the manuscript and only two fragments have survived.

Voltaire's first know short story.

Verse tragedy which made Voltaire’s name. He started to work on the play in his late teens and it was first performed on 18 November 1718, it ran for twenty-nine nights and was seen by over 25,000 people.

A short story set in Hippo, North Africa, birthplace of St Augustine, in which a wife saves the lives of her husband, son and brother by sleeping with a proconsul, a doctor and a local chief.

Poem in which a 60 year old husband uses a chastity belt to guarantee his young wife's faithfulness.

Voltaire's second play only fragments of which survive. It tells the story of the eponymous queen of Macedonia and was first staged on 15 February 1719 and ran for only eight performances.

A Lucretian inspired poem, written in 1722 for Mme de Rupelmonde but not published until the 1730’s. The poem loudly condemns the God of Christainity.

Untitled piece.

Published surreptitiously. An epic poem in honour of Henri IV, later renamed the La Henriade (The Epic of Henry), it was published in England by subscription in 1728, with a dedication to Queen Caroline. It could not appear in France due to its many condemnations of religious fanaticism.

The play was first performed on the 10th April 1725 at the Comédie-Française. It proved to be more succussful that its first version Mariamne.

A play dedicated to Mme de Prie, it was first performed at the Comédie-Française on 18th August 1725.

Two essays Voltaire published just prior to the publication of La Henriade in 1728. They appeared on 6 December 1727 and were published in the Strand by Nicolas Prévost, an exiled French Huguenot. In the Preface Voltaire announces that he will soon be publishing "an account of my journey in England", that is, the Letters Concerning the English Nation.

In an attempt to revive tragedy, Brutus, begun in London and accompanied by a Discours à milord Bolingbroke, met with little success. The play, written first in English, centered on the Roman proconsul who sentenced his two sons to death for treason. Voltaire later revised the play and it was first staged on 11 December 1730 with a paying audience of 1500. It only ran for a further fifteen performances though it was revived on the French stage after the Revolution.

Voltaire was denied permission to dedicate the poem to Louis XV and refused a privilege, a guarantee of royal permission to print the work. The poem was therefore printed in Rouen and an edition of 4000 copies was secretly circulated in Paris. In March 1728 Voltaire published a luxury edition in London after securing 343 subscribers. He dedicated this edition to Queen Caroline, wife of George II.

After meeting Fabrice, a former companion of Charles XII, in London, Voltaire wrote this biography. All 2,600 copies of the first edition were sold immediately and it appeared in sixty editions during Voltaire's lifetime.

A poem Voltaire wrote on the death of his former mistress and actress Adrienne Lecouvreur at the age of thirty-eight. He was at her bedside at the time of her death and subsequently tried unsuccessfully to arrange for her funeral, since France was the only Catholic country in Europe which refused to allow actors a Christian burial. The poem was circulated privately.

Mock-heroic verse epic based on the life of Joan of Arc; the subject was suggested to Voltaire by the duc de Richelieu.

Another example of Voltaire’s verse tragedies which met with little success; it was performed only in a college.

A tragedy, which like Hamlet, included an apparition of a ghost. It was booed by the audience at its first performance on the 7th March 1732. Voltaire revised the play fifteen years later with the more successful Sémiramis.

Zaïre, was written in twenty-two days; with its exotic subject matter, bringing Christian crusaders in conflict with acts of Muslim chivalry, was greeted with great acclaim on its first performance on 13 August 1732. Garrick appeared in the staging of the play at a latter date.

Fictitious letter to a State censor that Voltaire did not publish for another thirteen years. Using England as an example Voltaire argues that the state has no right to decide what can and cannot be read by the public.

Voltaire's first attempt to write an opera.

Vast history written between 1740-51. Voltaire spent twenty years preparing the material for this work by interviewing survivors of le grand siècle.  He was concerning with establishing the truth by collecting evidence from as many witnesses as possible.

The famous opening paragraph reads: “It is not merely the life of Louis XIV that we claim to write; we have set ourselves a larger objective. We want to attempt to paint for posterity, not the actions of a single man, but the spirit of men in the most enlightened century that ever was.” Concluding the work with chapters on religious disputes and the Jesuits’ penetration of China Voltaire finishes with the comment, “But if God had wanted China to be Christian, would he have been content with putting crosses in the air? Would he not have put them into the hearts of the Chinese?” “The time will not come again when a duke de La Rochefoucauld, author of the Maximes, upon leaving the conversation of a Pascal and an Arnauld, goes to the theatre of Corneille.”

Libretto for an opera commission by Rameau, it was never staged.

Published first in English in August in a print run of 2,000 copies; the French version appeared in 1734 augumented by a long 24th letter on the Pensees of Pascal. Also known as Les Lettres philosophiques, the Letters introduced the ideas of Locke to a French reading public and thus help to establish sensationalism within French philosophy. The work became an 18th century best-seller and appeared in a further eighteenth editions before 1800.

The French government seized the French edition in June 1734 and had it publicly burned as “scandalous, contrary to religion, good morals, and the respect due to authority”. In spite of Voltaire’s attack on Pascal the Jesuits found Les Lettres philosophiques disturbing; a reviewer in the Journal de Trévoux said Voltaire had acted the “deist with the Quakers”.

Gustave Lanson, the first modern editor of the French text, famously described the work as "the first bomb thrown against the ancien régime".

Inspired by Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, this was Voltaire’s attempt to satirize French cultural dullness. It provoked many denunciations.

“To wish and to act, this is precisely the same thing as to be free”.

“It is with this motivating force (i.e. the passions) that God, whom Plato called the eternal geometer, and whom I call the eternal machinist, has animated and embellished nature: the passions are the wheels which make all these machines go”.

“In general, we have a natural right to use both our pen and our tougue at our own risk. I know many tedious books, but I do not know a single one that has done any real harm”.

Voltaire’s radical comments on philosophy and religion caused him to attract further scandal. A warrent was issued for his arrest in May and he took refuge in the château of Mme du Châtelet at Cirey, in Champagne. The Lettres have been described as the first bomb thrown at the ancien régime.

The work was condemned by the Paris parlement on 10 June 1734 and was meant to be burnt at 11 that morning on the steps of the Palais de Justice. The clerk in charge of the burning substituted the Lettres Philosophiques with a book about the Spanish Inquistion.

A drama set during the early years of the Hundred Years war; it was first performed at the Comédie-Française on 18th January 1734.

An optimistic Epicurean poem celebrating worldiness.

A play staged with great success. The action takes place in Lima, Peru, during the Spanish conquest and displays the moral superiority of civilized behaviour over acts of brute force. Despite its conventional portrayal of ‘noble savages’, the tragedy remained part of the repertoire of the Comédie Française for almost a century.

An example of Voltaire’s attempt at the comédie larmoyante (sentimental comedy), which met with little success.

Written in collaboration with Châtelet-Lomont, Voltaire’s long-term lover, and containing the famous story of Newton and the falling apple, which ‘demonstrated’ the universal law of gravity.

In his dedication to Madame du Châtelet, Voltaire wrote, “this philosopher gathered in during his lifetime all the glory he deserved; he aroused no envy because he could have no rival. The learned world were his disciples, the rest admired him without daring to claim that they understood him”.

The book consists of three sections: beginning with Newton’s religion, continuing with his optics and concluding with his physics. Without using mathematics Voltaire seeks to explain the nature of perception, the character of colours, the orbits of the planets, and the laws of gravitation. A year after the book appeared Voltaire wrote in his Réponse, “the author of the Eléménts tried to make these new truths available to minds with little practice in these matters.” An English translation appeared in the same year 1738.

The first of twenty-six contes philosophiques Voltaire wrote between 1738 and 1773, the last being The White Bull

Performances of the play, in which the founder of Islam is portrayed as an imposter, were forbidden afters its first successful production in 1742.

“I exist, therefore, something exists throughout eternity, is an evident proposition”.

A tragedy about the mythical Greek queen which met with instant acclaim on its first night.

“Perhaps soom what has already happened in physics will happen in the writing of history. New discoveries have led us to proscribe ancient systems. We will want to know mankind in the interesting detail which today forms the basis of natural philosophy.”

Untitled piece.

After this poem, celebrating the victory at Fontenoy (1745), Voltaire was appointed historiographer, gentleman of the king’s chamber and academician. Although the poem was heavily criticised Marechal de Saxe in a letter to Mme du Chatelet wrote, "the King is very much pleased with it and even says that the work is beyond criticism".

Widely applauded address upon election to the Académie française.

Staged by Voltaire as a court spectacle, with an elaborate decor, as well as the apparition of a ghost, Sémiramis failed to entertain the public.

Written between 1746 and 1747 Zadig, Voltaire’s first important short story and originally published under the title Memnon, became the basis of Voltaire deist faith; it was later to be the subject of bitter disagreements between him and the next generation of philosophes, in particular Holbach.

“In Memnon, one of his most biting stories, Voltaire created a self-satisfied rationalist who conceives the foolish notions of being wholly wise and of establishing the supremacy of reason over passion. In his ludicrous quest, he loses an eye, his money, his property, and at last his presumptuousness. Memnon is the ideal representative of an age of reason, but he is an anti-Voltaire; he is the very type that the Enlightenment repudiated and that its critics later took as its embodiement.” (Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: the Rise of Modern Paganism, 143.)

One of the central motives for writing this play was to remind the public of a great figure from antiquity, to “make young people who go to the theatre acquainted with Cicero”. At some private performances in 1750, the author took the part of Cicero and played it with such fire that his audience claimed to be in the presence of the great orator himself. In his preface to the play, Voltaire called Cicero the “greatest as well as the most eloquent of Roman philosophers”and praised him as an individual who was able to write so much philosophy “in the midst of the tumults and storms of his life, steadily engaged in affairs of state”

A play based on an incident in Richardson’s novel Pamela.

A pamphlet published in November ridiculing the scientific pretensions of Maupertuis, who at the time was president of the Berlin Academy. Fredrick II consigned the work to the flames and condemned Voltaire in person. Voltaire left Prussia on 27 March 1753 and was soon arrested under orders from the king.

This tale was inspired by Swift’s Gulliver, which Voltaire had read soon after his arrival in England in 1726. A first version was written in 1739 entitled Les Voyages du baron de Gangan.

A tale inspired by Swift’s A Tale of a Tub.

A ‘most improper’ poem, which the booksellers printed in spite of Voltaire’s protests.

Lekain (originally Henri-Louis Cain, 1729-78), who Voltaire considered the greatest tragedian of his time, appeared in the title role of Genghis Khan. He made his debut at the Comédie-Française as Titus in Voltaire’s Brutus (1754); although ugly and harsh-voiced, he was extremely popular. He was also to appear inTancrède (1760). Lekain also introduced more realism into the theatre. L' Orphelin de la Chine was a great success when it was performed at the Comédie-Française in August 1755.

An attack on atheism.

Short story in which Voltaire imagines that while God himself is perfect, he left the creation of the world to a lesser angel who made a poor job of it; hence the prevalence of evil.

Published in February, Voltaire’s long poem on the Lisbon earthquake which occurring on the morning of All Saints’ Day in 1755, killed an estimated 50,000. Voltaire first heard about the earthquake with certainty on 23rd November, by the first week in December he had completed his poem, consisting of a preface and 234 alexandrine verses. “I had to say what I thought and say it in a way that would revolt neither overly philosophical nor overly credulous spirits”. Letter to Cideville, 12 April, 1756.

In August, Rousseau wrote to Voltaire defending his faith in reply to the poem on the earthquake: “All the subtleties of metaphysics will not make me doubt for a moment the immortality of the soul of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I want it, I hope for it, and I shall defend it to my last breath.”

An translation was published in 1759 under the title Candide, or All for the Best.

Voltaire denied authorship of Candide and called it ‘une coionnerie’ (in effect, “a load of all balls”). Written in 1758, it was published simultaneously in Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, London and Brussels on 22 February. Cramer, its Genevan publisher, printed an initial run of 2,000 copies, the usual number for a work expected to sell well: within a month, after further printings and pirated editions, at least 20,000 copies had been sold, an astonishing figure for a work of fiction in the mid-eighteenth century, over three times the sales of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) in a similar period. The first English translation, by a graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, came out within six weeks and sold at least 6,000 copies. In 1759 it appeared in eight editions.

A work which Voltaire published between 1759 and 1763 to ingratiate himself with the Russian court, “a collection of gross compliments disguised as history” (Gay), d’Alembert said the book made him want to vomit. An English translation appeared in 1763.

A polemical and personal attack on Élie Cathérine Fréron (1718-1776), a staunch opponent of the philosophes and editor and founder in 1754 of L’Année littéraire, which produced a complete survey of French literary writings. It appears that Fréron denounced the printers of the Encyclopédie to the police. In L’Écossaise, a sentimental comedy, Fréron is portrayed as a disreputable journalist who intervenes in a quarrel between two Scottish families.

A polemical rebuttal of Lefranc de Pompignan’s attacks on threats of impiety. On 10 March Pompignan, nobleman of the robe, brother of a bishop and minor poet, was elected to the Académie française and used his opening address to claim that modern men of letters were undermining church and state and that “the true philosopher is a wise and virtuous Christian”. Voltaire, picking up a number of philosophical indiscretions and deist sentiments Pompignan had made in earlier years, laid down a list of reminders: “When one has the honour of being received into a respectable company of literary men, one should not turn one’s inaugural speech into a satire against men of letters . . . when one has translated, and ‘improved’, Pope’s Deist Prayer; when one has been suspended for six months from one’s provincial post for translating that deist creed and making it more poisonous . . . then it is an insult to good manners to give oneself airs in speaking of religion; when one delivers to an Academy one of those discourses people talk about for a day or so, but which might be carried to the foot of the throne, then, if one dares to say in that discourse that the philosophy of our time undermines throne and alter, one has committed an offense against one’s fellow citizens . . .”

Les quand was admired and imitated, for example, Morellet wrote the Pourquoi. In May Pompignan replied to Voltaire by sending an address to Loius XV, claiming to have defeated impiety and to being the king’s favourite reading. Voltaire responded in June with a collection of satires in which Pompignan appears as a poor devil, full of self-importance and misguided zeal: Et l’ami Pompignan pense être quelque chose! Pompignan never went back to the Academy.

Tancrède was first performed at the Comédie-Française on 3 September 1760 and became a popular success.

38 volumes, translated by Smollett and others, published in England between 1761 and 1774.

Pamphlet attacking Fréron.

Written ten years before at the Prussian court.

“May this great God who is listening to me, this God who surely cannot have been born of a virgin, or have died on the gallows, or be eaten in a piece of dough, or have inspired these books filled with contradictions, madness, and horror - may this God, creator of all the worlds, have pity on this sect of Christians who blaspheme him.”

Pamphlet consisting of purported letters, written by Voltaire, from Mme Calas and her two sons recounting the events involving Jean Calas on the night of 13 October 1761. Voltaire hoped the pamphlet would exert pressure on the King and his ministers to declare the innocence of Jean Calas. It was widely circulated in Paris and Voltaire claimed it had a "prodigious effect".

The Traité sur la Tolérance begins with a brilliant forensic analysis of the Calas case and ends with a moving declaration of the principle of universal tolerance. It was printed on 13 April 1763 and a small number of copies were circulated amongst key figures in Paris, including Mme de Pompadour and Ministers of State as well as King Frederick and a number of German Princes.

“Doubtless like us, the Huguenots have been intoxicated with fanaticism and sullied with blood; but is the present generation as barbarous as its parents? Time, reason which is making so much progress, good books, the decent manners of society - have they not penetrated at all among those who guide the souls of these people? And do we not see that almost all of Europe has changed its face during the last fifty years or so?”

“Let all men remember that they are brothers! Let them hold in horror the tyranny that is exercised over men’s souls...If the curse of war is still inevitable, let us not hasten to destroy each other where we have civil peace. From Siam to California, in a thousand different tongues, let us each use the brief moment of our existence, to bless God’s goodness which has given us this precious gift.”

“It (reason) is mild, it is humane; it teaches us forbearance and dispels discord; it fosters virtue and makes obedience to the laws agreeable rather than compulsory”.

An English translation appeared in 1764 entitled A Short Account of the Death of John Calas.

The history of the human spirit “shows us errors and prejudices succeeding one another in turn, and driving out truth and reason. We see the clever and the lucky enslaving the stupid and crushing the unfortunate; and yet, these clever and lucky people are themselves the playthings of fortune as much as those whom they dominate. In the end, men enlighten themselves a little through this account of their misfortunes and their stupidities. As time goes by, societies manage to amend their ideas; men learn to think”.

Published in Geneva, with a false London imprint. Voltaire revised and expanded the Dictionary through several editions between 1764 and 1769. It was translated in 1764 under the title The Portable Philosophic Dictionary.

“What does a dog owe a dog, a horse owe a horse? Nothing. No animal depends upon his fellow beast; but as man has received the ray of divinity we call reason, what has been the result? To be enslaved almost the whole world over.”

The Dictionnaire philosophique was one of the books thrown into the flames when in July 1766 the French government decapitated and burned the 19 year old Chevalier de La Barre at the stake (1 July 1766) for acts of blasphemy (insulting a religious procession and damaging a crucifx) - a book, Diderot latter said, La Barre did not own. After this incident Voltaire fled Fernay to Geneva. In a letter to Morellet, dated 7 July 1766, Voltaire wrote, “the scene which has just taken place in Paris conclusively proves that the brethren must carefully hide their mysteries and the names of their fellows. . . . In such baneful circumstances sages must keep quiet and wait”. (Correspondence, LXII, 14-15) He also suggested that the philosophes should leave French territory and settle in the town of Cleves offered to them by Frederick II. In spite of his protestations, Voltaire was unable to obtain a review of the trial.

In a letter dated 19 September 1764 to his Paris correspondent Damilaville, Voltaire said about the book, “I never want it said that I wrote this book; I have written to M. Marin in this vein, since he spoke to me about it in his last letter. I flatter myself that the true brethen will back me up. This work must be regarded as a collection from several writers put together by a Dutch editor. It is extremely cruel to name me: it would deprive me henceforth of the freedom to render services. The philosophes must make the truth public and hide their persons”.

Pamphlet published anonymously in December but generally regarded now as by Voltaire. It contains a violent attack on Rousseau - Voltaire revealed that Rousseau and his gouvernante, Levasseur, had had five children whom Rousseau had “exposed at the gates of an orphanage” - who received and read it on the last day of the year. (After he had recovered from the shock, Rousseau decided to write the Confessions.)

Rousseau never suspected the pamphlet was written by Voltaire, so effective was Voltaire’s imitation of the style of the local Calvinist clerics. He sent it to Paris to be reprinted with notes of his own, refuting its allegations. He gave the names of doctors who could verify that he had never suffered from venereal disease (which was true); he asserted that Mme Levasseur was alive and in good health (which was also true; and that he had never exposed any children at the door of a foundling hospital (which was true in letter but not in spirit, for the children had been carried safely inside the hospital by the midwife).

Voltaire had by this time realised that Rousseau had been trying, in his Letter Upon Stage-Performances, to make trouble for him in Geneva, where even private theatricals - by now his great passion in life - were forbidden by law. In the Sentiments Voltaire described Rousseau as “a man who, disguised as a mounteback, drags with him from village to village, from mountain to mountain, the unfortunate woman whose mother he brought to her death and whose children he exposed at the door of the Foundlings’ Hospital”.

The pamphlet was also a direct response to Rousseau’s Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont. Pretending to a citzen of Geneva Voltaire asked who is this man who thinks statues ought to be erected to him, and with the same humility compares his life with that of Jesus.

Short story translated with the title The Two Genies in 1895.

Short story.

“To burn a rational book is to say ‘We do not have enough intelligence to reply to it.’ . . . In a republic worthy of its name, the liberty to publish one’s thoughts is the natural right of the citzen. . . . A criminal code is absolutely necessary for citizens and magistrates. . . . The magistrates are not the masters of the people; the laws are masters. . . . We have the right, when we are assembled, to reject or approve the magistrates and the laws that have been proposed to us. . . . Civil government is the will of all, carried out by a single person or by several, in accord with the laws that all have supported. . . . When a law is obscure, all must interpret it, for all have promulgated it. . . . It is to insult reason and law to pronounce these words: civil and ecclesiastical government. We must say, civil government and ecclesiastical regulations, and these regulations can only be made by the civil power. . . . It is perhaps useful to have two parties in a republic, because then one watches over the other.”

Many ask, Voltaire wrote, what shall replace Christianity? “What! A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my family; I tell you to get rid of that beast, and you ask me, What shall we put in its place!” “Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.”

Voltaire's commentary on Beccaria's Dei Delitti e delle Pene. Later editions of Beccaria's work often appeared with Voltaire's commentary.

“On the dunghill where Rousseau lies, grinding his teeth against the human race, it is permissible to throw him a hunk of bread if he needs it, but it is necessary to make his character known, and to warn those who feed him of his habit of biting their hands.”

An English translation appeared in 1766 entitled A letter from Mons. de Voltaire, to Mr. Hume, on his dispute with M. Rousseau.

An attack, based on the ideas of Spinoza and Malebranche, on the materialist beliefs of the philosophes.

“One of the most brillant short criticisms of the Old Testament in Rationalist literature.” (Joseph McCabe)

Pamphlet published in September 1766 which aimed to prove the innocence of Calas and Sirven. It was also published in order to raise money for the Sirven family.

A sly attack on Rousseau’s theories of education.

A presentation of European philosophies in the fairyland of The Thousand and One Nights, with an interesting excursion into sexual politics.

An English translation in two volumes appeared in 1774.

A work on political economy. In a letter to Sophie Volland, dated 8 October 1768, Diderot reported that a book peddler, a colporteur named Lescuyer, who had sold copies of L’Homme aux quarante écus and Holbach’s Christianisme dévoilé, had been arrested with his wife and apprentice, and that all three were pilloried, whipped and branded, the men sent to the galleys, and the wife to prison.

Immediately placed on the Roman Index of Prohibited Books.

Drama containing the much quoted line, Le monde avec lenteur

A work in support of René-Nicolas de Maupeou, who had become chancellor in 1768, and of his plans for reducing the power of the parlements. Voltaire’s history, in acknowledging some of the parlements achievements, painted a grim picture of its failings: its opposition to the founding of the Académie française and the distribution of the Encyclopédia, its responsibility for civil and religious conflict throughout the centuries, its illegal trial of the dauphin Charles in 1420, its condemnation of the first printers and support for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

In June 1769 Diderot correctly identified Voltaire as the author of the pseudonymous history. “Voltaire clearly proves” that the parlements are “merely simple salaried courts of law whose supposed privileges are only a sort of usurpation founded on fortuitous, sometimes quite frivolous circumstances.” However, Diderot goes on to argue that had Voltaire been more thorough he would have been even more critical of the magistrates; had he gone back to the origins of the parlement of Paris, he would have shown the parlement displaying esprit de corps at its worst. “We would have seen that body having itself exiled, refusing to deal out justice to the people, and bringing about anarchy when its chimerical rights were involved but never when it was a question of defending the people. We woould have seen its intolerant, bigoted, stupid, preserving its gothic and vandal privileges and proscribing good sense. We would have seen it burning to meddle in everything: religion, government, war, finance, the arts and sciences, and mixing up everything with its ignorance, its self-interest, and its prejudices. We would have seen it too bold under feeble kings, too feeble under firm kings. We would have seen it further behind the times, less in touch with intellectual progress than the monks locked in the cells of Chartreux.” (Letter to Grimm, June 1769, Correspondance, IX, 64-5.)

Voltaire began this series of philosophical essays in 1770. They eventually extended to nine volumes.

“More than half the habitable world is still populated by two-footed animals who live in a horrible condition approximating the state of nature, with hardly enough to live on and cloth themselves, barely enjoying the gift of speech, barely aware that they are miserable, living and dying practically without knowing it.” ‘Homme’

A ten-page pamphlet in which Voltaire demonstrated the injustice undermining the trail against Mme Monbailli who with her husband was accused of murdering her mother. Mme Monbailli was acquited in May 1772.

“Lucretius is admirable in his exordiums, in his descriptions, in his ethics, in everything he says against superstition. That beautiful line, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (Such are the heights of evil that religion can urge, I, 101), will last as long as the world lasts. If he had not been as ridiculous as all the others as a physical scientist, he would have been a divine man”.

A short work that shows that Voltaire believed in God, though not in immortality.

An English translation which was attributed to Jeremy Bentham.

Published in three instalments in the Correspondance littéraire, in November and December 1773 and January 1774.

Drama containing the much quoted line, Le monde avec lenteur marche vers la sagesse, in Act III, Scene 5.`

A Lettre provoked by Pierre le Touneur’s translations of Shakespeare which appeared in 1776. It was here that Voltaire spoke of Shakespeare as “a drunken savage”. D'Alembert read the work to members of the Académie who were generally amused, the King though was unhappy since he originally commissioned the translations.

Untitled piece.

Sixty page treatise on penal reform Voltaire completed towards the end of 1777. In February 1777 the Gazette de Berne offered a prize of 50 louis for the best essay on the reform of criminal law. When Voltaire found out about the competition he doubled the prize money and composed his treatise.

“If anyone has ever battled to restore liberty, the right of nature, to slaves of all kinds, surely is was Montesquieu. He pitted reason and humanity against all kinds of slavery,” against the enslavement of Negroes bought on the Gold Coast to harvest sugar in the Carribbean Islands, and against serfdom in Europe.

After a break of 28 years it was the theatre that took Voltaire back to Paris. Wishing to direct rehearsals of Irène he returned on 28 February and saw a performance of the play at the Académie on 30 March. Voltaire died on 30 May.

Publication of ‘Kehl’ edition of Voltaire’s works; they appeared in 70 volumes between 1784 and 1789. Begun in 1799 they were edited by Beaumarchais. For this edition Beaumarchais brought eighty printing presses, used special paper and acquired Baskerville's type and typographers. He spent over 2 millions livres on the edition and lost half of his investment because he failed to attract enough subscribers. When the Revolutionary mob ransacked his house in 1792, looking for arms, they found only stocks of unsold copies of Voltaire's works.