''The Friends of Voltaire'' is an anecdotal biography of 18th-century French writer
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his ...
written by English author
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Evelyn Beatrice Hall (28 September 1868 – 13 April 1956),Sources which date Hall's death to 1919, such aFred R. Shapiro's ''The Yale Book of Quotations'' are in error. The confusion may have arisen because Hall published no further written wor ...
under the pseudonym ''S. G. Tallentyre''. It was published in 1906.
In 1907, it was published in Great Britain under the author's own name by
G. P. Putnam's Sons
G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.
History
The company began as Wiley & Putnam with the 1838 partnership between George Palmer Putnam and J ...
.
The classic work about Voltaire was still being printed nearly 100 years later in 2003.
Overview
The book is in the form of an anecdotal biography telling the stories of ten men whose lives fell very closely together. The ten men were true contemporaries and aside from their friendship with Voltaire they were more or less closely associated with one another. Each of the ten is characterized by giving him an identifying label:
d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (; ; 16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was, together with Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the '' Encyclopé ...
the Thinker,
Diderot the Talker,
Galiani
Ferdinando Galiani (2 December 1728, Chieti, Kingdom of Naples – 30 October 1787, Naples, Kingdom of Naples) was an Italian economist, a leading Italian figure of the Enlightenment. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to him as "a most fastidious and ...
the Wit,
Vauvenargues the Aphorist,
d'Holbach
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (; 8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), was a French-German philosopher, encyclopedist, writer, and prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Lan ...
the Host,
Grimm
Grimm may refer to:
People
* Grimm (surname)
* Brothers Grimm, German linguists
** Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), German philologist, jurist and mythologist
** Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), German author, the younger of the Brothers Grimm
* Christia ...
the Journalist,
Helvétius the Contradiction,
Turgot Turgot may refer to:
* Turgot of Durham ( – 1115), Prior of Durham and Bishop of St Andrews
* Michel-Étienne Turgot (1690–1751), mayor of Paris
* Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), French economist and statesman
* Louis Félix Étienn ...
the Statesman,
Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (; 24 January 1732 – 18 May 1799) was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, ...
the Playwright, and
Condorcet
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet (; 17 September 1743 – 29 March 1794), known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French philosopher and mathematician. His ideas, including support for a liberal economy, free and equal pu ...
the Aristocrat.
The chapter on Helvétius contains a famous quotation that was subsequently misattributed to Voltaire himself. While discussing the persecution of Helvétius for his book "On the Mind" (which was publicly burned), Hall wrote:
The phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", which was originally intended as a summary (by Hall) of Voltaire's attitude, was widely misread as a literal quotation from Voltaire.
References
External links
''The friends of Voltaire by S. G. Tallentyre''— Full text at Open Library.
1906 non-fiction books
Works about Voltaire
Biographies about philosophers
Biographies about writers
{{lit-bio-book-stub