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Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
(1694-1778)
Voltaire was the assumed name of Francois Marie Arouet. The French writer
was born in Paris and educated in under the Jesuits at College Louis le
Grand. He began writing at an early age, his expert satire getting him into
trouble from the first. While imprisoned in Bastille (1717-18), he finished
his first tragedy, OEdipe, and began an epic poem on Henry IV of
France. La Henriade was completed on his return from England. His
observations on English social and political institutions are contained in
the Lettres Anglaises ou Philosophiques, which caused an uproar
making it necessary
for him to seek seclusion. In 1750 Voltaire accepted an invitation to visit
Frederick the Great at Prussian court. There he prepared and published his
greatest historical work Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1751).
The last twenty
years of his life were spent at Ferney, near Geneva. Voltaire gained fame
as a defender of victims of religious intolerance, but chiefly as a master
of satire. Among his works are the tragedies Brutus (1730),
Zaïre (1732), Alzire (1736), Mahomet (1741),
Mérope (1743); philosophical novels Zadig (1747), and
Candide (1759; a satire on the philosophical optimism of Pope
and Leibnitz); Philosophical poems Le Mondain (1736),
Discours sur l'Homme (1738), and Le Dèsastre de Lisbonne
(1756); historical works Charles XII (1730), and
Essai sur les Mæurs (1756); and the Dictionaire
Philosophique (1764).
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