Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques popularises English liberty

Date

1733 (English) / 1734 (French)

Category

Culture, arts & philosophy

Region

France / England

Era

Early Modern

Significance

Drawing on his exile in Britain from 1726 to 1729, Voltaire published the Letters Concerning the English Nation in English in 1733 and in French as the Lettres philosophiques in 1734.

Praising English religious toleration, constitutional government, commercial vigour and the science of Newton and Locke, the work used implicit contrast to attack French absolutism, censorship and the privileges of the Catholic Church. The French edition was condemned, and copies were publicly burned in 1734 while Voltaire fled Paris. The book helped make Anglophilia and admiration of Newtonian and Lockean thought central to the French Enlightenment, and established Voltaire as its most influential popular voice and a relentless campaigner against intolerance.

Empires active in 1733 (English) / 1734 (French)

• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Mughal Empire
  1526 CE – 1857 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE

Related culture, arts & philosophy events

• The Enlightenment (Age of Reason)
  c. 1685–1815
• Locke's Two Treatises and Essay: social contract and empiricism
  1689 (published; dated 1690)
• Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie
  1751–1772 (first 17 text vols. + plates)
• Rousseau's The Social Contract and Émile
  April–May 1762
• Thomas Paine's Common Sense popularises the case for independence
  10 January 1776
• Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and 'What Is Enlightenment?'
  1781 (Critique) / 1784 (essay)

Further reading

The Story of Art

The wider story

The Story of Art

E. H. Gombrich

The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.

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