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Complete works (1880) : https://archive.org/details/oeuvresco... In 1694, Age of Enlightenment leader Francois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born in Paris. Jesuit-educated, he began writing clever verses by the age of 12. He launched a lifelong, successful playwriting career in 1718, interrupted by imprisonment in the Bastille. Upon a second imprisonment, in which Francois adopted the pen name Voltaire, he was released after agreeing to move to London. There he wrote Lettres philosophiques (1733), which galvanized French reform. The book also satirized the religious teachings of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, including Pascal's famed "wager" on God. Voltaire wrote: "The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire's French publisher was sent to the Bastille and Voltaire had to escape from Paris again, as judges sentenced the book to be "torn and burned in the Palace." Voltaire spent a calm 16 years with his deistic mistress, Madame du Chatelet, in Lorraine. He met the 27 year old married mother when he was 39. In his memoirs, he wrote: "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did, and decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind." He dedicated Traite de metaphysique to her. In it the Deist candidly rejected immortality and questioned belief in God. It was not published until the 1780s. Voltaire continued writing amusing but meaty philosophical plays and histories. After the earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755, in which 15,000 people perished and another 15,000 were wounded, Voltaire wrote Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster): "But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?" Voltaire purchased a chateau in Geneva, where, among other works, he wrote Candide (1759). To avoid Calvinist persecution, Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney, where the wealthy writer lived for 18 years until his death. Voltaire began to openly challenge Christianity, calling it "the infamous thing." He wrote Frederick the Great: "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." Voltaire ended every letter to friends with "Ecrasez l'infame" (crush the infamy—the Christian religion). His pamphlet, The Sermon on the Fifty (1762) went after transubstantiation, miracles, biblical contradictions, the Jewish religion, and the Christian God. Voltaire wrote that a true god "surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough," or inspired "books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror." He also published excerpts of Testament of the Abbe Meslier, by an atheist priest, in Holland, which advanced the Enlightenment. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was published in 1764 without his name. Although the first edition immediately sold out, Geneva officials, followed by Dutch and Parisian, had the books burned. It was published in 1769 as two large volumes. Voltaire campaigned fiercely against civil atrocities in the name of religion, writing pamphlets and commentaries about the barbaric execution of a Huguenot trader, who was first broken at the wheel, then burned at the stake, in 1762. Voltaire's campaign for justice and restitution ended with a posthumous retrial in 1765, during which 40 Parisian judges declared the defendant innocent. Voltaire urgently tried to save the life of Chevalier de la Barre, a 19 year old sentenced to death for blasphemy for failing to remove his hat during a religious procession. In 1766, Chevalier was beheaded after being tortured, then his body was burned, along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. Voltaire's statue at the Pantheon was melted down during Nazi occupation. D. 1778. Voltaire (1694-1778), pseudónimo de François-
2010
1746
1789
suivi de L'Homme aux quarante écus
1997
2015
2014
1731
The Five Foot Shelf & The Shelf of Fiction
1722
1734
The Maid Of Orleans
1762
1759
1759
1752
1759
1748
First English Translation
2010
Vision de Babouc
1748
1766
2009
1761
1949
2025
1717
Sämtliche Romane und Erzählungen
2026
Comédie en deux actes, et en vers, mêlée d'ariettes : représentée, pour la première fois, par les Comédiens italiens ordinaires du roi, le 20 août 1768
2010
D'Ovide à Ginsberg, petit précis de la littérature végétarienne
2019
A Philosophical Dictionary
1764
1749
1752
2000
1783
2012
2000
2018
1767
A Tragedy in Verse in Five Acts
1732
Siècle de Louis XIV - Précis du siècle de Louis XV - Histoire de Charles XII - Histoire de Russie - Histoire du Parlement - Fragments historiques sur l'Inde
2026
1983
1767
, Musique de M. Kreutzer, Ballets de M. Gardel...
2018
1763
1738
2013
1979
2006
Don Quixote, Les Miserables, The Scarlet Letter, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, A Midsummer Night's ... Dead Souls
2019
Political Writings
1994
2024
1979
1736
1961
1945
2018
1718
1764
1733
2010
1977
Romances
1933
Candide
1995
1993
2004
1763
2005
2021
1767
1747
2026
1980
2024
1741
suivi de Micromégas
2024
1747
1934
1768
1948
2026
1759
1723
2011
1748
1747
1768
1765
1773
2009
1776
1973
1753
1914
Selected Correspondence
1974
1751
1752
1764
1756
2000
2014
The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture
1991
2009
1759
Being a Selection from His Correspondence
1971
2012
2000
2005
