A remarkable and turbulent life - a lively and irreverent biography
Roger Pearson is Professor of French at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Queen's College. He has translated and edited Candide and Other Stories for Oxford World's Classics and is the author of The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire's Contes Philosophiques. His other publications include books on Stendhal and Mallarme.
'The book is an admirable achievement; it makes a compelling narrative out of the multiple character of Voltaire's gifts, the teeming output of his pen, and the complicated nature of eighteenth-century France ... A delightful read' A. C. Grayling, Literary Review 'Excellent, acidly witty ... Pearson has constructed his narrative like a picaresque novel, with chapters promising sensational changes of fortune ... or salacious tattle' Observer 'Voltaire Almighty is a lively and erudite tribute to its subject' Sunday Telegraph 'Sparklingly witty and eminently readable' Sunday Times
'The book is an admirable achievement; it makes a compelling narrative out of the multiple character of Voltaire's gifts, the teeming output of his pen, and the complicated nature of eighteenth-century France ... A delightful read' A. C. Grayling, Literary Review 'Excellent, acidly witty ... Pearson has constructed his narrative like a picaresque novel, with chapters promising sensational changes of fortune ... or salacious tattle' Observer 'Voltaire Almighty is a lively and erudite tribute to its subject' Sunday Telegraph 'Sparklingly witty and eminently readable' Sunday Times
This new biography's title seems to deify one of the leaders of the French Enlightenment, whose writings espoused reason and the dignity of man. But while Pearson, a professor of French at Oxford, speaks loftily of Voltaire (1694-1778) as a hero, his book offers a grounded portrait of his long and often troubled life. Born Francois-Marie Arouet, he was imprisoned early on for his heretical writings and was exiled from Paris for 25 years. His work wasn't truly respected until he was past 80 and near death; it was then that statues of him were erected and he became godlike. Voltaire's plays caused a furor because they satirized the Catholic Church and the royal family, against whose repressive rule Voltaire revolted in his writings and through his financial support of victims of the repression. His business fortune also went to the two women in his life, the Marquise du Chutelet, a mathematician and his longtime mistress, and his niece (and also his mistress), Marie-Louise Denis. Yet the author of Candide and major works of philosophy seems to have had less interest in the physicality of love than in the emotion, and this book illuminates the man as he struggled to support freedom in a repressive world. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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