Voltaire's England

This selection gathers Voltaire's writings on England, above all the Letters concerning the English Nation first issued in the 1730s, together with related pieces on English government, religion, and letters. He describes Parliament and taxation, the Quakers, the Church and the sects, Bacon, Locke, and Newton, and the liberty of men of letters as he found it after his stay in the 1720s. Comparisons with France are constant. The volume is a set of observational letters and essays, not a travel diary in daily form and not a history of the Hanoverian state.

14. Frontispiece portrait of Voltaire by J.E. Liotard. Quarter bound in dark green or light green cloth embellished with a gilt pattern, khaki cloth covers. White dust-jacket printed in green on cover and spine with a picture. White endpapers.