The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ Harvard University Graduate School of Education Gutman N007523 London : printed for H. D. Symonds; and sold by Barrois, Senior, Paris, 1793. 262p. ; 8#xFFFD;
show more 
show less
Born in Paris the son of a government official, Francois-Marie Arouet was educated at the College Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit seminary. He was educated to be a lawyer, but the had no taste for the law. When he was sent to Holland as a diplomat, an unwise love affair caused him to be sent back quickly to France. Shortly after returning, he was charged with writing a scathing satire of the nobility and was sent to prison for 11 months. While there, he assumed the name Voltaire and continued his writing. Throughout his life, Voltaire was a progressive thinker and an opponent of political and religious oppression. He was instrumental in popularizing philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas that were frequently derived from liberal thinkers in England, where he lived for two years after his imprisonment. Probably more than anything else, Voltaire can be characterized as a "liberator," fighting always for man's freedom. Despite his many works of philosophy, plays , and political essays, Voltaire is best known to twentieth-century readers as the author of the novel Candide (1759), a masterpiece of satire on the overly optimistic views of the German philosopher Leibniz, for whom "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" Candide, which has been called "a philosophical romance" was made into a musical by American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and played successfully in New York City on Broadway.
