Letter to George Conrad Walther, 8 July 1752 in Collection Complète des Oeuvres Mr. de Voltaire. Vol. I

1768

De Beer Swc 1768 V

[Geneva: Cramer]

In 1718, after his imprisonment in the Bastille, François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) adopted the pen-name Voltaire. He continued to be a thorn in the side of government, the Catholic Church, and other French institutions, satirising them in many of his plays, poems, and political essays. He was also a prolific letter writer, and this original manuscript letter (8 July 1752), tipped inside volume 1 of his Collected Works, is one of some 20,000 written over a long literary career. The letter is to Dresden printer Georg Conrad Walther concerning his own Le Siècle de Louis XIV (The Age of Louis XIV), of 1751. It was first published in the journal AUMLA (November 1965) by R. G. Stone, a former Professor of French at the University of Otago.