Francois Voltaire: 9 books

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not to mention the...

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.

Something between a tale and a polemic, these "fables of reason" are feats of narrative compression and contain much of Voltaire's best and funniest writing. From ribald tales of adultery to conversations between cosmic travellers, the stories in this collection pose moral, philosophical...

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, first published in 1764, is a series of short, radical essays - alphabetically arranged - that form a brilliant and bitter analysis of the social and religious conventions that then dominated eighteenth-century French thought. One of the masterpieces of the Enlightenment,...

Includes Part One of Candide; three stories; selections from The Philosophical Dictionary, The Lisbon Earthquake, and other works; and thirty-five letters.

Contents A Piece of Bread By Francois Coppee The Elixir of Life By Honore De Balzac The Age For Love By Paul Bourget Mateo Falcone By Prosper Merimee The Mirror By Catulle Mendes My Nephew Joseph By Ludovic Halevy A Forest Betrothal By Erckmann-chatrian Zadig the Babylonian By Francois Marie...

El destino de Francia no puede residir en el himen de una mujer. Para defender esta teoría, Voltaire compuso en 1730 un poema épico burlesco en versos decasílabos con el que pretendía reirse de la sagrada virginidad del mito más arraigado en la Francia de su época, Juana de Arco. La Pucelle,...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.  Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary is one of the most emblematic works of the French Enlightenment. Caustic, witty, and bold, the work was accused by French authorities of undermining the foundations of civil society,...

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary is one of the most emblematic works of the French Enlightenment. Caustic, witty, and bold, the work was accused by French authorities of undermining the foundations of civil society, rashly applying human reason to matters long considered sacred. Its articles chipped...