Voltaire : A Reference Guide to His Life and Works

VOLTAIRE: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO HIS LIFE AND WORKS offers an accessible introduction to this key 18th-century French author. This Guide offers 21st-century readers a glimpse into the multifaceted Voltaire: the thinker, rebel, writer, exile, and campaigner who became a transnational celebrity in his day. A wide-ranging Introduction situates the prolific author from the perspective of 21st-century readers and critics, both for those new to Voltaire and for those already familiar with his life and works. A Chronology gives a detailed sense of how incredibly active and well-networked the writer was throughout his remarkable 84-year-long life. A Bibliography provides further insight into the sheer enormity and versatility of his writings, whether published, private, literary, philosophical, or personal, with emphasis on the most recent critical works in a long tradition of Voltairean reception and criticism. The extensive main A-Z Encyclopedia section includes hundreds of entries relating to Voltaire’s life, friends, lovers, enemies, exiles, critics, works, theater, poetry, finances, polemics, history, travels, ideas, campaigns, disputes, legacy, posterity and more. As a writer with a towering personality, this Guide shows how the indefatigable Voltaire exercised his quill to put his unique stamp on the vast, flawed 18th-century world around him.