Voltaire in Exile by Ian Davidson
In 1753, Voltaire - playwright, poet, philosopher, and one of the most fêted 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 élite, 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).
Ian Davidson graduated in Classics from Cambridge and joined the Financial Times in 1960. Reporting on European news, he was the newspaper'sBrussels and Paris correspondent for many years and Foreign Affairs columnist on his retirement in 1997. The Trials of Voltaire is his first book.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781843540878 |
| ISBN 10 | 1843540878 |
| Title | Voltaire in Exile |
| Author | Ian Davidson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Atlantic Books |
| Year published | 2004-07-08 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |