Letters on England

by Voltaire, Francois; Tancock, Leonard; Tancock, Leonard

• ISBN13: 9780140443868
• ISBN10: 014044386X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1980-07-31
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Also known as the Lettres anglaises ou philosophiques, Voltaire's response to his exile in England offered the French public of 1734 a panoramic view of British culture. Perceiving them as a veiled attack against the ancien regime, however, the French government ordered the letters burned and Voltaire persecuted.

Author Biography

François-Marie Arouet, writing under the pseudonym Voltaire, was born in 1694 into a Parisian bourgeois family. Educated by Jesuits, he was an excellent pupil but one quickly enraged by dogma. An early rift with his father—who wished him to study law—led to his choice of letters as a career. Insinuating himself into court circles, he became notorious for lampoons on leading notables and was twice imprisoned in the Bastille.

By his mid-thirties his literary activities precipitated a four-year exile in England where he won the praise of Swift and Pope for his political tracts. His publication, three years later in France, of Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (1733)—an attack on French Church and State—forced him to flee again. For twenty years Voltaire lived chiefly away from Paris. In this, his most prolific period, he wrote such satirical tales as “Zadig” (1747) and “Candide” (1759). His old age at Ferney, outside Geneva, was made bright by his adopted daughter, “Belle et Bonne,” and marked by his intercessions in behalf of victims of political injustice. Sharp-witted and lean in his white wig, impatient with all appropriate rituals, he died in Paris in 1778—the foremost French author of his day.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION	7	(16)
Letter 1 On the Quakers	23	(4)
Letter 2 On the Quakers	27	(2)
Letter 3 On the Quakers	29	(3)
Letter 4 On the Quakers	32	(5)
Letter 5 On the Anglican Religion	37	(3)
Letter 6 On the Presbyterians	40	(2)
Letter 7 On the Socinians, Arians or Anti-Trinitarians	42	(2)
Letter 8 On Parliament	44	(3)
Letter 9 On the Government	47	(4)
Letter 10 On Commerce	51	(2)
Letter 11 On Inoculation with Smallpox	53	(4)
Letter 12 On Chancellor Bacon	57	(5)
Letter 13 On Mr Locke	62	(6)
Letter 14 On Descartes and Newton	68	(5)
Letter 15 On the System of Gravitation	73	(9)
Letter 16 On the Optics of Newton	82	(4)
Letter 17 On Infinity and Chronology	86	(6)
Letter 18 On Tragedy	92	(5)
Letter 19 On Comedy	97	(4)
Letter 20 On Noble Lords who cultivate literature	101	(2)
Letter 21 On the Earl of Rochester and Mr Waller	103	(4)
Letter 22 On Mr Pope and some other famous poets	107	(4)
Letter 23 On the Consideration due to Men of Letters	111	(4)
Letter 24 On Academies	115	(5)
Letter 25 On the Pensees of Pascal	120	(27)
NOTES	147	(7)
APPENDIX	154