Books by Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), universally known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, dramatist, and philosopher celebrated worldwide as the supreme embodiment of the Age of Reason. Renowned for his biting wit, conversational clarity, and passionate defense of civil liberties, Voltaire used his pen as a formidable weapon against religious intolerance, judicial corruption, censorship, and feudal tyranny. Banished from Paris and imprisoned in the Bastille in his youth, he spent years in exile in England, where he absorbed the constitutionalism of John Locke and the physics of Isaac Newton, publishing his revolutionary Letters Concerning the English Nation in 1733. His prolific output spanned historical treatises, epic poems, and philosophical tales, culminating in his 1759 masterpiece Candide, which delivered a devastating, hilarious satire of Leibnizian philosophical optimism. Voltaire’s tireless championing of free expression, religious freedom, and the right to a fair trial helped ignite the intellectual foundations of the modern democratic world.