Voltaire
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: good, worn/faded (refer to image). Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few figures in Western intellectual history cast as long a shadow as François-Marie Arouet — the man the world knows as Voltaire — and Jean Orieux's sweeping biography brings this towering philosophe to vivid, uncompromising life. Translated from the original French by Barbara Bray and Helen R. Lane, this magisterial work chronicles the full arc of Voltaire's extraordinary existence: his razor-sharp wit, his scandalous imprisonment in the Bastille, his decades of exile, and his relentless crusade against religious intolerance, tyranny, and superstition across eighteenth-century Europe. Orieux commands his subject with the precision of a scholar and the narrative flair of a novelist, presenting Voltaire not merely as a literary genius but as a deeply human figure — vain, contradictory, brilliantly combative, and ceaselessly driven. The biography illuminates the Enlightenment itself through the prism of one man's restless intelligence, arguing that Voltaire's battles — waged through pamphlets, tragedies, philosophical tales, and correspondence with the crowned heads of Europe — shaped the very foundations of modern liberal thought. For readers who believe they know Voltaire, Orieux's portrait promises to overturn every assumption.
Author: Jean Orieux
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: good, worn/faded (refer to image). Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few figures in Western intellectual history cast as long a shadow as François-Marie Arouet — the man the world knows as Voltaire — and Jean Orieux's sweeping biography brings this towering philosophe to vivid, uncompromising life. Translated from the original French by Barbara Bray and Helen R. Lane, this magisterial work chronicles the full arc of Voltaire's extraordinary existence: his razor-sharp wit, his scandalous imprisonment in the Bastille, his decades of exile, and his relentless crusade against religious intolerance, tyranny, and superstition across eighteenth-century Europe. Orieux commands his subject with the precision of a scholar and the narrative flair of a novelist, presenting Voltaire not merely as a literary genius but as a deeply human figure — vain, contradictory, brilliantly combative, and ceaselessly driven. The biography illuminates the Enlightenment itself through the prism of one man's restless intelligence, arguing that Voltaire's battles — waged through pamphlets, tragedies, philosophical tales, and correspondence with the crowned heads of Europe — shaped the very foundations of modern liberal thought. For readers who believe they know Voltaire, Orieux's portrait promises to overturn every assumption.